feeding problems?

[joeanne]

Our youngest section A has always had a "bit" of a thing about food, to the point she will square up to the big girls in the field should they so much as sniff at her pile of hay or feed bucket.
Tonight she dived into the bucket as per usual and stopped dead after a couple of mouthfuls.
Then she started to, what i can only describe as choke.
She went rigid, and coughed repeatedly, until her feed was coming back through her nose as well as her mouth. I am assuming it had lodged in the back of her throat as she was making horrid rasping sounds.
She has had an anti inflamatory, and painkiller, but 5 mins later (i swear vet had barely left the drive!) she had her nose back in her bucket and was chomping away like her life depended on it!
Now how do i stop this because i have had 3 hysterical kids this afternoon thinking the baby is going to die, and she even scared the bejeebies out of me and i am fairly hard to scare!
we already feed her out the field, on her own, and leave her in peace to get on with it, so what else can i try????

 

[jewel]

was her food wet?

 

[carys220]

What do you feed her?

 

[Madasmaz]

A friend of mine used to make her feed really wet, but I have also heard that putting big chunks of thinks like swede, apple or carrot slows them down. Or use a trickle feeder ball, but sounds like that isn't possible in your case.

 

[joeanne]

she has hi-fi lite, and baileys yearling cubes, and yes its VERY wet.
its the hi-fi that caused the problem, purely i think because she has so much in her mouth at one time that this time she just couldnt get it down!

 

[TGM]

I would suggest you soak her feed thoroughly before feeding (not just wet it but add plenty of water and leave it for about 30 minutes until all absorbed). If you still have a problem then just leave the HiFi out and just soak the cubes to make a firm mash.

 

[Ebenezer_Scrooge]

My mare used to choke and she went to vets for invesitgation. Turns out she had severe problems with her back teeth even though she saw a EDT!! Maybe get her teeth checked if it re-occurs?

 

[hattefnattar]

It seems as the most important thing is to find a way to slow down her eating. Maybe you could mix the hard feed with chopped up hay which would force her to chew it properly?

Also, when did the problem start? Has she always been like this when you've been feeding her? How often do you feed her? Could it be that she is treating her food like that because she is actually rather hungry? Maybe you could feed her smaller portions but more frequently? You wrote that she doesn't like the other horses approaching her food. Do they ever try to drive her away from her hay? Could you spread the hay piles out more so that she doesn't feel threatened by the other horses?

Good luck!

 

[joeanne]

She is fed twice a day, and out 24/7 on good grazing, with hay given at night, i just cant see how she could be hungry!
She has always been funny about food, but i put that down to her not being fed until she came to me, her breeder wasn't into feeding unless they "needed" it, however that said she was certainly far from being a "skinny minnie" when we bought her!

 

[carys220]

My Haflinger in quite keen on her food and she had never had 'proper' hard feed until she came to us as a 3yo and I put it down to this which sound similar to your mare.

 

[dwi]

i have heard of people putting house bricks or salt licks into their feed bowls so that the pony has to eat around it and can't take really huge mouthfuls