Help - My pony is too fat!!

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Pebbles

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Advice needed on my newish mare who really needs to loose weight and is too much of a good doer? She is still out at night and in 8 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. She is having minimal hay during day but so greedy finishes it early morning and I am worried that she then has an empty stomach the rest of the day and therefore when I ride her after work. How would I keep the weight off her without risking gastric ulcers etc? She is not currently having any hard feed although I will give her a small amount of chaff perhaps with a vitamin/mineral supplement and some oil for her joints once the grass is gone over the winter. She is in light work 4/5 times a week. She is relatively new to me so I am getting used to her and hoping the lack of grass through the winter will help restore her to a better weight along with regular exercise which I am not sure she was really getting before I got her and I will then restrict her grazing better next spring/summer. Views would be much appreciated, particularly as I read recently that its not good to exercise them on a very empty stomach like this and feel I should give her at least another few mouthfuls of hay when I get to yard after work? Help!!! She is such a piggy and I really want to find the right balance between keeping her weight down and not creating other issues as I know its their natural state to be able to eat ad lib style. Thank you all in anticipation!!
 
Muzzle her when out or make sure she is on a true starvation paddock and double net her hay..better still soak the hay and drain it off before she gets it too.

This way she can trickle feed without over indulging
 
Have you tried her on soaked hay? It reduces nutrients and calories-meaning they can near enough have ad lib of it but without worrying about the amount they're eating. Obviously you can't be feeding massive amounts, but can do half a large hay net in the morning, after lunch and at night. Make sure it is soaked for about an hour, and then drain it so there is no excess water dripping off it.
Also use a small holed hay net or double up large holed hay nets means it will take longer to eat. Absolutely no treats (friends mare used to be given treats all the time and has now lost a lot of weight since she stopped giving them to her! She also soaks her hay and that has helped a lot.).

Also, when you say light work 4/5 times a week-what sort of work is she doing? Lots of trot work helps with weight loss, and canter work doesn't help much at all (canter and walk being a horses 'easier' paces). Make sure she is working properly and don't take it easy on her if you want the weight to come off. A good interval training programme will help out a lot and will also help to build muscles in the right places if she is working correctly
 
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I do think people get too het up about feeding, it's quite simple really: if too fat, feed less. If too thin, feed more. With all the advice given nowadays about ad lib hay, supplements for everything under the sun, ulcers, calmers, etc., etc., you'd think it was rocket science! But there have never been so many obese horses! Or horses with serious behavioural problems. Horses DO NOT have to stuff their faces 24/7! If they are FAT FAT FAT, they are going to have to NOT eat for a considerable amount of time if you are not prepared to WORK the porkiness off. Horses were not designed to live out all the time on lush pasture, nor eat rich meadow hay constantly.
 
If soaking hay to get rid of sugars it will need to be soaked for 12 hours at least. Feeding clean straw, either barley or oat straw, also helps to reduce sugars while keeping fibre available. Horses and ponies which are overweight are overfed and underworked. Simple.
 
Cortez said:
I do think people get too het up about feeding, it's quite simple really: if too fat, feed less. If too thin, feed more. With all the advice given nowadays about ad lib hay, supplements for everything under the sun, ulcers, calmers, etc., etc., you'd think it was rocket science! But there have never been so many obese horses! Or horses with serious behavioural problems. Horses DO NOT have to stuff their faces 24/7! If they are FAT FAT FAT, they are going to have to NOT eat for a considerable amount of time if you are not prepared to WORK the porkiness off. Horses were not designed to live out all the time on lush pasture, nor eat rich meadow hay constantly.
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I agree!!!

When I was a child, the average horse lived out in a field on grass, and never got any hard feed, supplements, balancers and the like. They got hay in winter if they came in or there was no grass. They hacked miles to shows, competed all day and back again, and you maybe gave them some grub in the middle of winter when it snowed!

If it got fat, you chucked it out on a bare paddock with the ponies until it slimmed down. Somehow their perceived lack of vitamins and minerals from special feeds didn't affect them as they had glossy coats, bright eyes and kept their shoes on.

And they seemed to go on forever.... if you were lucky!
 
Thank you all - soaking the hay sounds like a great place to start and Cortez totally agree, do not remember worrying so much about simple basics over all my years of horse owning, we do over complicate it all now for sure (having returned to ownership after a 10 year break I really notice this and have clearly lost a little of my self confidence in just keeping it simple and using common sense!!) x
 
You should never ever starve a fat horse in the hope of making it loose weight. As some previous posters have said, soak the hay, split the amount allocated and put it into small holed haynets. Preferably split into 3 haynets a day.

Brisk walking is the best form of excercise to help slim down a fat horse. Faster work should only be introduced once a bit of weight has been lost and the fitness is up a bit.

With winter coming it should be an easier task providing your field isn't knee high in grass!!
 
When I need to leave my fatties in off the grass I also give soaked hay but also double net small holed nets not just normal sized nets. It lasts all day then on a trickle fed basis. I would never 'starve' I was told to always make sure that they had some roughage going through their system a minimum of every four hours. Plus lots of exercise. Good luck
 
Thats all really helpful thank you, we are doing lots of trot work to fitten up together which is working well and I will take all the advice over hay soaking and small hole nets as I knew it wasn't right to leave without roughage for too long - feel much happier about the way ahead now :-) x
 
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