Help! Yearling in bad condition

Safe floor feeding from a net.

Replace the hay net drawstring with a thin chain. Close the chain very tight with a small carabiner clip, Both available from ebay quite cheap. Do not tie or fix together the ends of the chain. Use a haynet with holes smaller than your horse's feet. Works a treat. Slows them down no end, because they have nothing to pull against.
 
Hi Rach247

I was recently in a similar situation - if you look at the album "Chip" on my profile (I'm not clever enough to post links/photos) you'll see the malnoursihed and neglected 2yr old Quarter Horse I bought, directly from stud, last year.

My plan with youngsters has always been to feed forage and keep things simple however when he arrived in that condition I had to rethink. As he was so poor I felt he needed a touch more.

The vet was there seeing my mum's horse the day he arrived and I had a faecal count done before worming in line with vet's advice; he was recounted after worming and clear so from then on has fallen in line with the yard programme of counts/worming.

Chip's teeth were worn down below the gum line (the guess is that he's been eating trees/bark/from high up having exhausted everything at ground level at the stud as along with the badly worn teeth the muscle under his neck was huge) and had actually moved. I had my EDT out a week later just to check and assess his mouth; thankfully everything is progressing well but even though he is now 3 he looks like a 2yr old and teeth etc are still at that stage.

It was only his tail that gave away that he was a 2yr old when he arrived rather than a starved weanling/yearling!

Re-feeding wasn't an issue with Chip but was something I was aware of from a previous horse and read up on again as a refresher, as well as having my vet for advice.

I fed adlib good quality hay. He was in the day he arrived (transporter brought him from Wales to me in Scotland) but I turned him out at night with a sensible older horse so that he could get grass. There's not much in the grass up our way at this time of year but if you can I'd get him out on grass if you can; again introducing it slowly.

Chip didn't understand buckets at all when he arrived. My plan was to feed low sugar/starch etc but I decided he would benefit from something pelleted given his poor condition. I posted on here asking for advice and Spring Feather, who is also experienced with QHs, recommended the Spillers youngstock cube (Grow n' win I think it's called). So I slowly introduced that and in total used 2 bags of it. I fed unmolassed chaff, alfabeet and linseed in 2 feeds a day along with adlib hay. He was in at night and out during the day. Everything was introduced gradually. When the spillers youngstock balancer was running down I changed to Progressive Earth Pro Balance and feed that to this day.

I think there are more photos in my album showing his progress. He put on weight slowly but consistently. I know of other horses that left the same yard in poor condition, but not as poor as Chip, and there was on 3x feeds a day packed full of balancers, cubes, condition mix, oil etc because they were to be "show horses".... I'd defnitely stick to the less is more and feed good quality hay.

Best of luck
 
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