How long after feeding do you leave it.....

H

H-J

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.........till you ride?

Following on from a post yesterday how long do you leave it.

I personally never feed before I ride, I ride in the evenings Mon-Fri so I ride then leave them 20mins or so then give them their dinner. (unless they have got really hot)

And on a weekend they have nothing or one handful before I groom tack up and ride, then eat their breakfast after. But then I dont get to the farm late on a weekend and they always have lots of hay.

So how about you
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I ride in the evenings Mon-Fri so feed them about 5 mins after untacking... not ideal, but beats getting mugged. They're also fed just fibre so I don't feel it's much different to them tucking into their hay after work.

At the weekend the YO feeds them about 7.30, and I'm never tacked up before 9.30 so they get plenty of time to digest.
 
Dont feed them before I ride, but if accidentally someone feeds them would usually wait mimimum one hour, after riding I tend to feed about 1/2hour after at the earliest
 
Dont usually feed them before I ride but occasionally I do, as long as its not full blown fast/hard work they are fine doing gentle schooling/hacking.
At a weekend they will have breakfast then go on the walker whilst i muck out before being ridden.
Once ive washed off and they arent blowing they have their supper after ive ridden.
 
It varies for me tbh and I might get shot down for this i think.

Our horses are fed three times a day and their lunch feed is generally at 12:30. I usually arrive at the stables for 1:15pm. I tack up and I ride.

However there have been times when ive arrived and he's clearly only just finished his lunch. When i first moved over to denmark, on those days, id just put it down to bad timing and not ride. It became obvious though that i was the only person who did this and everyone else on the yard carried on regardless. I happened to mention to one of the grooms one day that i wasnt riding because he'd just eaten and i got laughed at. A vet visiting the yard the same week told me there had never been any real evidence linking colic with riding shortly after work and although he'd never advise hard, fast work on a full stomach, schooling, hacking and the like were fine and the notion i had in my head was "very british" !!!

In the last month, there have been a couple of occasions where he's not had an hour to digest before ive ridden him. The yard is too far away for me to just head back later and he really needs working. He's not in hard work and on the occasions when i know he's not long since eaten, i tend to take a long time warming up in walk and just finish the schooling with some short trot work.
 
I normally ride in the evening after work so he gets fed after that but at the weekend either I ask someone to feed early i.e. 6 and then I ride when I get there about 8.30-9.00 or if no-one is up early I feed after Ive ridden. I also like to leave him at least an hour after coming off the grass before I ride.
 
Hard feed - I would leave it for about an hour, while mucking out etc before hacking. It would probably be about 3 hours before hunting. He doesn't get much anyway.

Sorry to hi-jack post but I would be interested in people views on feeding hay/grass before gentle hacking / hard work
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I don't really worry much about that as mine is on a fibre feed diet (Badminton Herbal chaff and fibre nuggets). Apparanty, horses can work from fibre without a problem as their stomachs are designed that way. I guess its different if you feed a mix. Nevertheless, if it was more than a small meal, I'd leave it 20 minutes!
 
If I'm only going for a gentle hack, I don't worry too much about it, and ride 30-60 mins after I've fed. If I were schooling, I'd leave it an hour.

They both get ad lib haylage, and I will bring them straight off the grass and ride them.

To be honest, I don't do 'proper' fast work with them, and that would be the only time I would really worry about it.

I think if you are feeding large amounts of grain and doing fast work, then you probably should leave plenty of time, but most of us aren't doing either!
 
Aslong as you dont just feed high starch feeds, and the feed is a mixture of mainly forage, I wouldnt leave it long at all to be honest! Alot of endurance riders feed on route, so it cant be that damaging!! Mine is fed fibre feed, and I have no probs with riding straight after feeding. However, I am very rarely in a situation where I have to ride straight after feeding
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Halfpass and her OH go up the yard really early and they put Axey's breakfast in for me, I go up there about 9am and ride then so its been a good 2 hrs since he's been fed.

Before now I've ridden first then given him his morning feed after.
 
We feed in the morning and go out in the afternoon, so no problems for us.

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Sorry to hi-jack post but I would be interested in people views on feeding hay/grass before gentle hacking / hard work

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See absolutely no problems as horses and ponies usually work straight from the field.
 
I tend to ride before work so get the YO to give him a handful of breakfast so he doesn't kick the door down when the others are being fed, he gets the rest of his breakfast after being ridden...thats probably why he works so well that early in the morning, v consciencious when food is involved!!!!

If I ride at the weekend in the morning (bit later!) I allow at least an hour if he's had his full breakfast!
 
Depends on the size of the feed, it it was just a small one then i would probably only wait half an hour tbh, but if it was a proper sized meal then id wait at least an hour, although in the wild horses dont wait if they have to run which is why if it was only a small feed i wouldnt worry as much.
 
Mine get ridden straight after breakfast - they are ususally licking bowls as I start tacking up
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The 'not working after feeding' only really applies for horses having large amounts of hard feed and going galloping. Schooling or hacking after a bit of chaff and mix is fine. No different to you riding after a bowl of porridge!
 
I never ride after feeding and would leave it at least three / four hours if I did.

I normally ride first thing in the morning. Then I feed them (after they have cooled off) and turnout. If I have to ride after work, I wait until I have finished schooling and then feed.
 
I feed before I ride if in the morning or after riding if I ride in the evening, if we are going out in the trailer he has his breakfast before travelling, we get to destintion do the ride, if it's a long ride he has his dinner before comeing home, if it's a shorter ride he has it when we get home.
He has 2 large scoops of Happy Hoof, apple, carrot, sometimes fresh garlic, superflex or equavalent, splodge cooking oil, and this time of the year a small scoop soaked speedy beet, all well mixed and wetted, he has access to hay while grooming tacking and resting, all worked fine for last 3 years up to now so stuck with it, weight stays steady apart from when on fresh grass in the summer, he pigs out so doesnt get breakfast and sometimes no dinner.
 
I don't worry about how long after feeding I ride - often I'll feed, tack up as soon as they've licked the bucket clean and head out. I do endurance and as has already been said during longer rides (50km+) including race rides horses will always be offered a feed at the vet gates, minutes before setting off again. That said I feed high fibre, low starch diet - feed a horse's digestive system is designed to deal with. The wait one hour rule is an old wives (grooms) tale assuming the horses digestive system works like a human beings, i.e. we need to rest and digest food before doing anything active. Of course we're predators and are designed that way. Horses are prey and need to be able to flee at high speed at any time - hence no need to 'rest' to digest.
 
Chumsmum: I believe you can ride a horse straight after grass or hay. It was a question in Horse magazine once, "Is it safe to ride my pony straight from grass, as their stomachs digest forage differently to hard feed
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Mine gets fed after work
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I'd feed hay up to the point I got on board (not usually after
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) but would wait an hour after hard feed.
The theory is that the blood supply to the digestive system increases when the horse has a lot of hard food to digest, thus taking blood away from the muscles. If you then work your horse hard, that diverts the blood to the muscles, causing the digestive system to shut down temporarily and perhaps cause colic.
I am unaware of any study where a direct link has been proven...but am equally unaware of any which disproves the theory....
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S
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Mine live out so I ride them straight off the field (ie. from grass & hay). I also allow them permanent access to hay at events whilst standing at the trailer. The only time I tend to take the haynet away at events is about a 1/2 hour before going XC. Fibre is so important for the gut I find it quite amazing that some people at shows withhold hay all day!

Hard feed-wise, I generally would always leave at least an hour after before riding.
 
There was an article in one of the horsey mags a few months ago about the fact it's totally unnecessary to leave horses after eating hay/grass before riding. I was surprised that a vet or whoever had made that point as I'd know heard of anyone waiting after a horse has eaten grass/hay. I was relieved however that I was doing the right thing!

So, according to that article you do not have to allow them time to digest hay/grass before riding.
 
We all seem to be agreed that it's fine to work after hay/fibre...
It probably depends regarding hard feed how much the horse is given...if it's a handful or two of mix it's probably not going to matter...if it's a big bucket of oats, barley, mix or whatever for a poor doer or horse in hard work, then the horse is probably better off left for a little while before ridden work.
Does that sound reasonable?
S
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Think Shilasdair has just summed it up really!! I tack up as my lad eats his breakfast but he has Simple Systems which as Gedenski's girl said earlier is fed during endurance rides and really no different from riding after fetching them in from the field!
However I wouldn't ride for an hour or so after feeding hard feed.
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