Improving winter condition

[Cuileann]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone might be able to give me some advice.

I have a 15.3hh TBx gelding who turned 16 last year. I've owned him for twelve years, and every year he has dropped a lot of weight going into the winter, no matter what we do to try and catch it. He complicated things a bit this year by suddenly deciding to be fussy, so there were a couple of weeks where he wasn't eating very much at all. I can also only ride once a week at the moment due to work, so I think muscle loss has contributed to him suddenly looking very sorry.

On the plus side, he absolutely scoffs his hay. I think his teeth are in decent order. And we've now found a combination of things he likes, namely; Allen and Page Fast Fibre, standard chaff, sugar beet, micronized linseed and NAF Pink Powder.

I just wanted to know if anyone had any ideas about how to get some weight back on him, rather than just maintain the slightly skeletal state he's now in, without fizzing him up or causing him to go off his food again. A tall order, I know! But thank you in advance.

 

[be positive]

I think it can be extremely difficult to get weight on mid winter once they have dropped it, does he get out on decent grass, have genuinely ad lib good quality hay, have you worm counted and blood tested to see if something is going on other than him not eating well??
I would give as many small feeds as possible, if you can do 5 or 6 times a day it may help get a little more in without overfacing him, it is not always possible to do that many but it can really help when they are picky.
I probably wouldn't give chaff as it is just filling the bowl but adding very little to the overall value, a few extra mouthfulls of hay would be better, fast fibre is low energy and not ideal for a poor doer but if you have tried other things without success I suppose you are best sticking with something he will eat, I feed grassnuts to mine and have not had one leave them, I would look at a top quality vit/ min supplement or balancer but appreciate you may not want to buy feed he will leave or have already tried without success.

 

[Goldenstar]

You don’t say how much work he’s getting because you can reduce the intensity of work to reduce the horses energy needs .
Keep the horse warmer and reduce the energy it needs .
Feed haylege rather than hay or a mixture of the two .
I had a Tb who ran up in winter he was a hunter like yours he ate masses of forage it took me a couple years to work out that I had to manage his forage intake so would eat his hard food .
I would try haylege .

 

[Follysmum]

Ad-lib hay/haylage and as many small
Feeds as you can give of grass nuts and linseed.

 

[Leo Walker]

I'd add a rice bran oil pellet of some sort. They are high calories and only need to be fed in small doses. They wont heat him up either.

 

[Pinkvboots]

Grass nuts and Equijewel has worked for an elderly warmblood in the past, feed as much hay as he will eat and if you can give 4 smaller feeds per day rather than 2 large ones can also help.

 

[Cuileann]

Re. work, he's literally going out for about an hour's hack once a week. I think part of the problem is that he has lost muscle condition, and with that accepted, I've considered just leaving him away over the rest of the winter and getting back on with work once there's some good in the grass. But he is always a bit calmer when he's in some kind of work, even if it's the bare minimum.

He's out on grass during the day, and they have their heads down and eating - but god knows if there's anything in it. I see the sense in the suggestion about reducing forage to get them to eat hard feed, but I'm very, very reluctant to do that as it's the only thing he has eaten consistently. I honestly think I could chuck several bales in and he could get through them!!

He's also wrapped up warm (two turnout rugs w/ necks) and is in at night. Hopefully he's not losing that much energy to the cold, but who knows.

I will definitely look into grass nuts as that has come up in a lot of the suggestions!

Thank you so much for all the advice

 

[Cortez]

As Goldenstar has mentioned above, you may need to reduce his forage in order to get him to eat more of a high calorie hard feed. Adding oil may also be effective.

 

[paddi22]

equerry conditioning mash is brilliant for getting weight back on. With one of mine, he needs crazy heavy rugs from autumn on, if he doesn't have it before even mild cold comes in, then he drops weight. It took me years to figure out I needed to over rug him to keep condition on!

 

[be positive]

I wonder if he would benefit from having a big tub of soaked grassnuts and linseed left with him all night to pick on, the opposite to giving a fatty a tub of chopped straw, if he will eat it in between hay rather than in one go it may help, I did this for an oldie as it gave him options throughout the night, no much use if they try to eat it in one go but yours sounds as if he may enjoy picking as he wants.
If he eats hay well I would not want to restrict it, if he wants two bales he would get two bales if he was poor, I would give the main hard feed before he gets the hay and ensure it was higher calorie than fast fibre.

 

[Cuileann]

Thank you all so, so much for this! be positive - that's a really good idea re. 'picking food'. And paddi22, that's interesting since that's pretty much what my boy does. All fine, and then suddenly the weight drops. I will try seriously rugging him before he drops next year!!