How do you deal with over-fit horses?

only_me

only_me

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Billy is too fit really atm for the work he is in, but it is a bit like a vicious circle in that the fitter gets the more work he needs, which in turn makes him fitter...! Purely by accident though - at his last event he galloped round a hilly course and finished without breaking into a sweat,and looked (and felt!) that he could go round again. He also did a 1hr flatwork lesson then straight into a 1hr xc lesson without much effort!
I have done 1 canter session with him 2 weeks ago and that has been it on the fitness front, as he seems to get fit all on his ownsome :rolleyes: this is great, not complaining, in fact it is lovely that he gets fit very quickly, but then we start to have a problem!

Hacking for an hour dosen't appear to touch him, he is very relaxed and I do ask him to work - usually lateral work on lanes in walk and long&low trot up hills but the next day he comes out as fresh as a daisy and is a lovely feeling but takes a good 30mins to take the edge off and to get down to work! The reason he did the canter session was that we are off to tatts and it will be a longer than usual course so thought we would need to up work, which appears to be a false assumption! It doesn't help that we have also reached the 5 year old stage, that, whatever he does, it has to be done fast and furious :rolleyes:

Have cut his feed right down and is getting half rations till he settles a little, he lives out and is very sane. He gets barley, maize and chaff, and 1 very small handfull of oats (was on 2 big handfuls - scientific I know :p) He looks fantastic, has really come up behind the saddle and the power he produced from behind today was just wow, I couldn't stop grinning as, well, it just felt truely awesome!!
Ideas please! He needs to be kept in work till Wednesday.

Another question - do you find that if you have dressage and showjumping one day, and then xc the next that they are stronger xc? Slightly worried that I am going to have brake failure on xc day, especially with turbo billy!
 
I would let down a bit, hard to do as they will be uber turbo for the first bit but the only way to drop his fitness is to stop working him as hard. Once a horse is at the level of fitness you want they only need to be worked 4x a week to retain that fitness (think I read that in a Lucinda green book!).
 
When my mun was eventing she would get Murphys fitness up interval training ect but found once they started the events themselves kept Murph fit. She didn't do galloping in between but kept him ticking over.
 
Baggybreeches said:
A neck strap and quick reaction times ;)
Click to expand...

^^^ This ^^^ and maybe some velcro!

Vicious circle as you say, and i think you may just have to live with a turbo Billy for a while!! If you let him down, he will most likely still stay reasonably fit in his hilly field, and will just be more hardwork to ride!!

Best of luck :D
 
Firewell - but he will just be turbo billy on the days he is worked, he gets a day off and will soon be on his hols but atm, it can be rather challenging to get some sense out of him - jumping him in the field at home is, um, bordering on steeplechasing in his snaffle, especially over a course, gridwork just about keeps a lid on it! We only do 20mins max of it as it is so strenous for him.

lol BB, he dosen't actually do anything apart from going very fast,dosen't buck or leap about more the speed we get is a bit like riding a very fast but old car - 0-60 in about 3 seconds, and the brakes can be a bit dodgy :p

Lol dora,it really is a vicious circle :eek: but he just feels very lit up and wooosh away we go - he is VERY full of himself as well as turbo-d :p Another "quirk" I have found that he is now seeking ways to amuse himself if what I am doing with him is boring - for instance, in lesson, we were doing trot-halt-trot, billy found this far too menial and therefore decided to put his tongue over the bit :o
 
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Superglue and a neckstrap ;)

On a more serious note..Perhaps cut the barley and oats out completely on a day to day basis and compensate by increasing the chaff so he feels like he's getting the feed, he's just not getting the energy? You could always up his feed the day before and on the day of an event if you felt he needed extra oomph :)
 
lol hattikins!
Thats a good idea :) He was better today and only had one turbo moment, the change was we did a 15 minute hack before we did anything work wise, and he was much more settled :)
Half rations + very short hack worked today, tomorrow shall be interesting as he wasn't worked very hard :o

Although I did do some umbrella proofing with him today as well, used up all that adrenaline at the start :p
 
If he's carrying enough condition I would try a grain free diet feeding alfalfa or Spillers readigrass with a suitable balancer this worked well with one of mine who a a big turbo she needed no grain just had a kilo a day for 3starCCi but she did maintain her weight well
 
Hi I would try a slow release energy mix as the oats may be resulting in the high energy bursts.
My showjumper used to be very like your boy and got fitter and fitter every year she just loved work. We did a lot of hacking work at walk and trot rather than work in the school to keep her chilled out a bit.
Hope that helps
 
Baggybreeches said:
A neck strap and quick reaction times ;)
Click to expand...

Yep, me as well - and I haven't even got any hills at home so at the moment I am boxing my horse up to take her for proper hacks rather than risk my neck and her legs in the wide open hard as concrete flat fields! She's out at night which helped a bit and I ride her at the crack of dawn. Doesn't answer your question about how to reduce the enthusiam though....
 
I would also cut out the starchy cereals, and look to maintain him on fibre and oil where possible. Oats are ok, as they are relatively high in fibre in comparison to other grains, but ideally I'd stick to a low starch high energy diet, which is where oil works well!!
 
He is on straights to make sure there is no wheat in diet, although he could probably go back onto normal mixes now :) He reacted to a cooked cereal mix which has a high % of wheat so we cut it out all together :)
He gets showshine chaff which has oil in it, gets more of it than the rest of his feed :p

Thats good to know about the xc on the second day, hoping bill will love it :D

Evelyn I know maize has the highest energy levels of the straights but I am not cutting it out, the barley flakes and oats appear to have more say on his turbo booster than maize.

:)
 
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