How much veteran vitality to feed?

[Puzzled]

Hello, have recently started looking after a 35 year old gelding, he's a little underweight but not to badly! He has difficulty eating hay (although he does try!) but loves his hard feed!! Bangs the door and whinnies at feed times!! He's happy to go out in the field and have a pick of grass etc and a roll so must feel reasonably well in himself. I feed him 2 round scoops (before soaking) of allen and page veteran vitality, one of dengie alfa a oil and one of conditioning mix in each feed, This is all mixed up into a big bowl so he can help himself throughout the day/night. He eats it all. Does this sound about right? Or should he be having more? He's only been with me 2 days so just trying to work out what's right for him!

 

[Bethie]

You haven't said how big he is so its a little difficult to say! I would use fast fibre as a hay replacer for him and let him eat as much as he likes of that, if he's having difficulties eating/digesting hay or grass that could well be the cause of his weight issues rather than needing a higher energy feed per se. 2 stubbs scoops of VV is about 3kg and I feed my 15.2 TB just under that split between 2 feeds, however that is all he gets as a bucket feed and I wouldn't bother with the conditioning mix as well.

 

[Puzzled]

Whoops! He's 14.3hh!! Don't think digestion is the problem just thst he drops more hay then he swallows (teeth etc good as can be expected and been regularly checked!) Thanks for the advice!

 

[LadyRascasse]

that sound about right, i feed my lad the same (he is 16.1 though) and he looks fab. it roughly 3.5kg dry weight (have weight it). i would leave it like that for a month of so to see if its working for you. you will soon see if you need to add more or feed less.