Help needed on feed to gain weight on new horse

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I picking my new horse up next weekend and need to get some feed in ready.
Shes a 16.0hh part Warmblood who is underweight and lacks topline. She is also a crib biter/windsucker.
Ive a couple of ideas of what to feed (below) and am aiming on giving her 2 feeds a day maybe 3 in the first month or so
These are my ideas
1) WINERGY Equilibrium Condition and some speedibeet
or
2) Alfalfa oil, No4 top line conditioning cubes (and maybe speedibeet)
or
3)something else?

What do you think?
 
adlib good quality hay or haylage to start with and then something very simple until she settles and you know she is not going to go crazy, so Alfafa Oil and unmollassed sugarbeet plus vits/mins or if your budget stretches to it TOP spec compehensive balancer (its great stuff) or maybe Pink Powder for a month or so until she settles (because she is a cribber). I used Outshine on my boy to build condition and it worked a treat.

When she is then settled start introducing the Winergy or othe rconiditioning foods and see how it affects her attitude. Some conditioning feeds affect horses differently.

True top line will of course come from the correct schooling so you need to add that into the equation

Hope that helps and good luck with your new girlie
 
Outshine is brilliant for building condition in horses the other thing I feed to build condition, but do be careful as it can heat up some horses is Lucerne (grass) nuts, you soak them like sugar beet the best ones to buy are Simple System ones they work a treat and you can feed that with outshine and unmolassed sugar beet you will need to check your feeds so that you don't feed too much protein and this can undo the good that you are trying to do. I would personally feed a probiotic not pink powder as that lines the gut a lot better, we feed it too poor doers.
 
2 + lots of hay/haylage worked fabb for me
smile.gif
 
...another vote for Outshine! I have a cribber and he looked a darn sight better on this. I also gave him a course of Global Herbs Restore to pick him up...same sort of thing as Pink Powder.
 
I wouldn't go for the top line cubes as they are high starch (26% - from wheat) which can exaccerbate acidic conditions in the gut, I use a winergy feed for my new lad who cribs and it's reduced loads (not the condition but i guess they have the same sort of effect?) so would reocmmend it every time. also las much hay/haylage as you can cram in to her.
 
let her settle in and eat lots of grass....adlib hay (we steam ours) I use pink powder which is great .... id start with a simple feed and see how you get on....a high fibre cude.....alfa a oil....and some speedibeet?

best thing is not to over work her and let her start to gain some weight...theres so much you can do on the ground while she settles and PILES on the weight
smile.gif
 
If she cribs, then you want to cut out all starch and sugar (including apples and carrots) and just feed high fibre. The weight has to come on with grass and hay/haylage (although this can sometimes make the cribbing worse).

Feeding something to kick start the gut is also good - I use Global Herbs restore but have used Pink powder as well in the past.

Also, it may sound cruel, but if she is ignoring food and cribbing all day I would put a collar on her. It is a case of cruel to be kind. There are also loads of supplements that you can also try to help ease her cribbing. Not sure how effective any of them are. Some people have also said feeding anti-acids (e.g. rennies) have helped as has aloe vera juice.

If she doesnt put on weight and still cribs badly/loss of performance etc then I would have her scoped for ulcers. I would be keeping her as a horse with ulcers anyway - a good tip that I picked up from Spotted Cat on here was to feed a handful of chaff 30 mins before you ride - it really settles their stomachs.
 
to be honest though a collar just stresses them more, if they cant crib they can become depressed and irritable, you need to find the cause of the problem and address that instead.
 
Winergy condition and Allen and Page calm and condition. Hardly any cereal so no fizz, good for digestion. I feed this and Alfa A oil to a mare I took on recently that was underweight.

I tried Barley conditioning cubes for a week but she went bonkers in the field even though they were supposed to be non heating.

The Calm and condition needs to be quite wet or very well mixed in as it can ball up, but its a great feed.
 
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