Help! Fussy horse with feeding

[WinstonsGirl]

Hi, Looking for some advice. My horse is apparently very fussy about her food and also drops weight really easily. She is currently on a scoop of conditioning cubes soaked, 2 handfuls of chaff, a scoop of pony nuts and between a quarter and a half of speedi beet to try and encourage her to eat. She has this twice a day, morning and night (in theory). She'll eat it up at dinner over a long period of time (were talking up to an hour!) but in the morning she'll have a couple of mouthfuls and leave it.
She's in really hard work (or was in the run up to lockdown and I'm planning on keeping her going as she loves to be in work!) so needs the calories and feed but with her not eating her breakfasts, its meaning she is having enormous feeds in the evening which I don't like her doing... and shes still not holding the weight. We don't have a massive amount of grass available to us but shes on lots of hay and these feeds, in overnight.

Someone has mentioned pink mash to me or I've considered moving her to a conditioning mix instead so its less wet and soggy but just don't know what to do. We have tried adding apple cider vinegar (I won it in a competition so thought we would give it a go) and she just left the whole lot!

Really I need something thats either going to give her enough calories and pile the weight on in one meal (evening) or something tasty that will mean she'll eat her breakfast up in the mornings. I've tried taking it to the field with her but she just leaves it to go eat grass... I have to feed her and put her out in the mornings before work so really don't have time to wait for hours on end for her to still leave the food... She is a 15.3/16hh 7 year old standardbred mare who was abandoned and starved for the first 6 ish years of her life so I'd expect her to eat anything I put in front of her at speed but she doesn't!

 

[Maesto's Girl]

Sounds like my girl! She's an Arab x TB and fussy as hell. I even have to alternate between steamed and dip-soaked hay else she gets bored!

She does however now love her breakfast and dinner since I added Baileys No. 20 (competition and conditioning mix). My mare LOVES it. I started giving it as a lunch with chaff (honeychop condition and shine) and she gobbled it up so now she has a small scoop in breakfast and a small scoop in dinner (now no lunch)

I have also added some micronised linseed to her dinner to add the calories

I hate to bare bad news but mine was a trial and error to find something she loved, but also added condition

I have seen success with the pink mash though so could be a good call to start?

 

[Ownedby4horses]

Have you tried soaked grass nuts and micronised linseed. Never had even a fussy horse refuse that, great for keeping weight on and not expensive.

 

[Auslander]

She's getting a lot of bulk, which might be overfacing her. I'd be inclined to decrease the volume and replace what she's on now with a smaller amount of nutrient dense feed, that won't take her ages to eat. If she's into nuts, Ulsakind cubes are great for putting on weight, or I really rate Baileys No21 as a great weight without idiocy feed that you don't need to feed loads of.
Mine is on Topspec Linseed Mash at the moment - it makes him a bit sharp, but he's looking fab on it.

 

[TGM]

Agree with the above that you need to concentrate on calorie dense feeds. Seems pointless to feed lower calorie pony nuts alongside the higher calorie conditioning cubes, for example. Micronised linseed is a very dense form of calories due to the high oil content, so this is a good way of getting lots of calories into a small amount of feed. However, unlike Ownedby4horses above, I have had one that didn't like it at all, but the rest of mine all hoover it up. You could also try giving her an alternative forage source alongside her haynet overnight, something like a bucket of grass chaff for example.

 

[PinkvSantaboots]

It is probably just the sheer amount being too much feeds like micronised linseed or Equijewel or Copra can be fed in smaller amounts but add condition and energy maybe try something like that.

 

[doodle]

Another vote for micronised linseed. It got weight back on Robin very quickly. I wasn’t sure he would eat it but he loved it. I still have him on a very small amount as it also makes his coat ultra shiney.