Feeding help for oldie please

MrsElle

MrsElle

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I am really struggling to keep the weight on Ellie at the moment. She is on relatively good grass, has ad lib haylage, two feeds of 16+, alpha beet, alpha a oil and pink powder.

Her ribs are still visable. Teeth checked and has been wormed. She is still lively, trotting about the field after the boys.

I don't want to admit defeat with her just yet, she is happy, but just so thin. She is 29.

Any advice regards feeding?
 
Have you tried Barley rings, they are designed for weight gain.
Also Top spec fibre plus which you can add water to, it is then easier for the oldies to eat and contains Linseed and Soya oil, and is only around £9 a bag.
 
I am a fan of Fast Fibre as it is just like mush nice and easy for them to eat. (Although i dont feed it to a oap but reviews say its good for oaps)
 
I fed Fast Fibre to my oldie (26) and was brilliant. Also, can not recommend Spillers conditioniong fibre enough!

Have you had your horses teeth checked? It maybe that she can not chew her feed properly and therefore cant digest it as well as she used to. Perhaps try a high calorie cube. Spillers slow response cubes do not contain cereal and are therefore more gentle on an oldies digestive system. They are also high in oil and fibre. I would feed this with a short soft chop such as the fore mentioned and speedibeet. All soaked and mixed well. Should you still need further calories then I would try adding micronised linseed. Oil containes 2x more calories than feed. This will allow you to up the caolries per feed without adding anymore bulk. Also, remember to feed little and often.

Is your horse getting any hay at the moment? Are you able to give her hay? If so, then I would try giving her more hay before changing her feed.

Hope she is ok.
 
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ive tried and never found 16+ mix or cubes to work on my old mare. I swapped to (soaked) grass nuts from simple systems which made a huge difference to her. i never had any problems with it causing fizziness. all mine are on the grass nuts now and they work out so much cheaper
 
We used FastFibre last winter for our oldie, he is a little exmoor who is 40 yrs old. He really cant manage hay any more as his teeth are very poor but came through the winter looking fantastic on a diet of FF with a few pony nuts mushed up in it. He was on a bag and a half a week but no hay at all, we gave him 2 big trugs of this every 24 hrs. I feed it to my TB, he is only 11 but has a sugar intolerance so this is perfect, fills him up without sending him loopy. A really useful feed I think.
 
Hi
My oap has sugerbeet and highfibre cubes soaked and i have just put her on the soft and soak range,cant remember who makes it but she has the red bag one and seems to be doing ok on it.:)
 
My boy (35yo, not a great foodie, TBx) hasn't looked back since he was started on Allen & Page Calm & Condition, Topspec Leisuretime and Fibrebeet, although I think probably any feed capable of being soaked will do any oldie good.
 
Are you sure he's skinny?, the reason I'm asking is that our 27 yr old looks skinny, but according to the weight tape he's fat, what has happened with ours is, he has lost his muscle tone, so looks like a bag of bones, so much so I wondered if it was time to let him go.
Since I stopped letting him amble on his walk outs and keep to an active walk and little trots uphill he is beginning to look better.
Just a thought
 
I used Winergy Equilibrium Conditioning on my old girlie. I'm in the process of sorting out some before + after pics for them so she can go on the website.

She was 489kg last December, and I was at my wits end. So went on to ad lib hay (approx 10kg per day), 2 kg WE conditioning, an equal volume of Graze On, a mug of soya oil, and vit+min supplement.

I weightaped her on Sunday at 565kg. I nearly keeled over! She has lost muscle tone along her neck and back, so she does look a bit skinny because of that, but otherwise she's well covered and I'm just contemplating putting her on a diet...

If you haven't come across it before, it's a high fibre, high oil, high energy but low starch feed. It's a sort of mix, with grasses and some small pellets - easy enough for the oldies to manage unless they have teeth problems. Rana loves it, always eats it and licks the bowl clean. She's super fussy too.

If she has teeth problems, I agree with whoever mentioned Fast Fibre. I kept Rana on that the winter before last and she did well on it.
 
It is very hard to get fat covering the ribs on an oldie, as someone else has already mentioned. The muscles over the back and ribs will have weakened with age and all the fat sits below.

My 31 year old is doing really well this year, infact better than I have seen him for a long time. However, he still looks ribby and bony in places. He does have a decent amount of weight on him though. He is fed fast fibre, speedibeet, alfalfa oil, micronised linseed and his supplements - and, as I say, is doing better on this diet that he has on any of the "veteran mixes" I have tried over the years (interestingly it is the first summer for many years that he has lost his winter coat properly, I'm putting this down to change of diet).

I think if your horse is looking in good health in all other areas - coat/eyes shining and still having a trot around the field, then you are doing a good job!
 
I feed my 24 yo arab a low molassed diet but he needs extra to keep condition nowadays.
At the mo he is out at night (avoiding sunburn) and in during the day with an enormous bucket of Fast Fibre, Speedibeet, brewer's yeast, magnesium, mint, and wheat bran (he's teeth won't allow haylage at the mo).

In winter he has day grazing and haylage at night. Bucket wise he has

Coolstance copra
Speedibeet
Wheat bran
limestone flour
micronised linseed
brewer's yeast
seaweed
magnesium
yea-sacc
mint

Contrary to what you may think, it is actually cheap after it is all bought!

The wheat bran or 'thirds' as it is known around here is very cheap, puts weight on, no sugar and they looove it. It needs extra calcium though (hence limestone flour).
Coolstance is low sugar and starch and puts on condition.
The micronised linseed also the same but with a beautiful coat.
 
Hi, I lost my dear old horse 6 weeks ago - a few months short of 40. I struggled to keep the weight on her for the last two years, but my vet told me to give her as much as she could eat, so she instead of breakfast and dinner, she would have up to 5 buckets a day of speedibeet, fast fibre, Old Faithful, with probiotics and joint supplement.
It cost me a fortune, but the weight DID go back on. Good luck with your OAP (by the way, my horse didn't have Cushings or laminitis)
 
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