Feeding underweight ponies

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esp1

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12 weeks ago we acquired a super skinny section A 3yo gelding, he came from a home with no grazing (2 acres between 10 sec a/b's plus one tb!), he was being fed rotten haylage with a few pony nuts sprinkled on it in the mornings.... needless to say he was skin and bone so we bought him out of pity, a decision which so far has proved a good one cos he is an absolute darling, you can do anything with him and he just loves all the attention the kids are giving him!
Anyway since then we have gradually introduced grazing, hay and of course feed and slowly the weight has gone on, i would say he has a few more weeks of feeding at his current level before reaching optimum condition for a sec A at this time of year. My question is.... then what?!

he is currently having alfa A Oil (highest calorie one!), with baileys conditioning cubes, 60ml soya oil, garlic and carrots..... do we keep him on this over the winter or do we switch feed to lower energy ones/smaller quantitys now to avoid him getting to big? Im worried that he will balloon before spring and then be a laminitis risk.

even if we switched to lower calorie feed im assuming if we keep giving him ab lib hay along side it would at least maintain his current weight.... i dont want him going backwards!

On a slightly different topic, although he is a sweetie 99% of the time he turns into a killer pony at feed times... his ears are flat back and he shows very defensive body language when eating.... he has kicked out and just missed us a couple of times. I understand this is probably because he is guarding his food but does anyone have any tips of how to combat this?... i only worry in case he hurts a child (he has already hurt a passing german shephard!)
 
I think much depends on how much his original poor condition was to do with just general lack of calories in the diet and how much down to him being a poor doer. Once he is at the correct weight I would definitely start to ease off the conditioning cubes, as these are cereal-based. You could either just reduce them slowly going down to a base feed of Alfa A Oil, or you could swap them for high fibre cubes of some kind. If he is actually a good doer who has been severely deprived of calories, then you might find that once he is in the correct condition he will maintain weight on adlib hay/haylage alone, with a vit/min supplement in a handful of chaff perhaps. Really it is trial and error, but I would want to be reducing cereal-based feeds (common trigger of laminitis) as soon as he is in a halfway reasonable condition.
 
Not very good with the first question I'm afraid
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But I think trust will be the main thing with the feed. Once he realises you aren't going to take it away, over time I'm sure he will get better.

This horse that used to be on our yard, Heartly, came in an awful condition and he was much the same. But once he was at his optimum weight and was more or less left to his food, and then got used to people being around/ not taking it he left everyone alone.
 
When my 2 were field kept I used to put their feed in their bucket, then go back and add their carrots, so they always associate me going near the buckets with extra yummies. You could try this.

Or give him half his feed then when he has finished, add the other half to the bucket. Then you can build up the amount of feed he has left in the bucket before you add the extra feed.

Hopefully he should then think you being near his bucket when he's eating will mean extra feed instead of less feed.
 
I bought a thin pony last year, she was elderly, and got her up to a reasonable weight in 3 months. Vet said it was too quick! So, I'd be careful feeding him all the stuff you are, it sounds a bit much for a pony. He might also do a growth spurt and get joint trouble. I'd stick to ad lib hay/haylage and a vit/min supplement in hi fi or something, you want him a bit on the light side.
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thanks for all the replies, i work at a vets so i am very careful about overfeeding in general as i know it can cause huge problems not least laminitis which is what im trying to avoid! i have made sure the quantitys of everything are pony sized and not the same as what i'd give my big boy so i think im ok on that score, i reckon he's prob another 6 weeks away from being optimum so hopefully 16weeks isnt to quick.... it seems like an age since we first got him. he has already been broken but we havent wanted to do anything with him cos he's skinny so we are waiting and hoping that he will be the angel we think he will be... prob wait till the spring now when he will be 4, the kids can climb on him thou and he doesnt care so hopefully he'll be a dream lead rein pony for them.... i wish i could have rescued them all, but the woman did tell us that some were going out on loan so hopefully conditions will improve for the rest of the ponies.

! think i will try the carrot thing with his bucket, maybe if i keep adding little treats he'll associate feed times with good things and not having to fight for your food!

i think in a few weeks time i'll switch to normal pony cubes and a less calorific dengie. i'll also prob dump the soya oil as that is pure calories..... i wont obviously do this all at the same time.... i will then work on getting the quantitys right for weight maintenance and then in late feb time all being well i would like to be able to tail off to a handful of low energy chaff with a multivitimin supplement (incidentally this is what my welsh cob gets!) and ab lib hay.
 
Once he is at the weight you want slowly switch him to a lo-cal diet, sec a's are notoriously good doers and he will just keep piling it on!! I would like to see him go into spring slightly lean.....ad lib hay and a balancer/vit min supplement would be adequate.
The food agression thing is obviously learned through having to fight for his food, can you not feed him out of the way in his own space?? We had a pony like this and just used to put her feed in and leave her to eat in peace.
 
[ QUOTE ]
i think in a few weeks time i'll switch to normal pony cubes and a less calorific dengie. i'll also prob dump the soya oil as that is pure calories.....

[/ QUOTE ] It is not really the calories you need to be worried about as a laminitis trigger, but soluble carbohydrates such as sugar and starch. If he is still underweight then you still need good sources of calories but these need to be from fibre and oil rather than sugar and starch.

In the long term, though, you don't want to feed more calories than he uses up as he will obviously become overweight - and long term obesity often leads to Equine Metabolic Syndrome which makes them more prone to laminitis (similar to the way humans being overweight increases their chance of certain types of diabetes).
 
I feed all mine on winergy low energy which does them well. Oscar was in prretty poor shape when i bought him april for a 2 1/2 year old pony he looked 22 and he's always been anxious about his food but it does get better in time as he's realised that he's in a stable on his own and nobody is going to snatch it away. I've had several animals like this dogs and cats and they never really grow out of it, so put them in a space where they feel safe eating and there will be no more ears back or barging.
 
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