living out, losing weight - advice please

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boxcarhorse

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My 3yr old 16hh warmblood is living out, but has dropped weight the past few weeks and is looking too lean for my liking at this point in the year. There is still plenty of grass and I've been giving him a scoop & a half of leisure mix (which is what he had all last winter and did well on) plus chaff.

I'm thinking of swapping to conditioning cubes, how much do you think I should feed?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
first check teeth and is worming up to date? then give haylage 24/7 forage should be the starting point for all horses. if you have already done the above then i would recommend baileys no 4 its wonderful a stubbs scoop morning and night with ur chaff will add loads of condition.x
 
Ditto re rugs and worming, but i'd feed completely differently.

Firstly chaff is low in calories, so I'd replace this with alfa a or alfa oil. I don't like giving cereal to youngsters, so i'd cut that out and give a feed balancer, I like Equilibra... finally, i like sugar beet, I use the old fashioned pellets you soak for 24 hours.

My 2 oldies and 2 year old (all TB or warmblood) live out on alfa and sugar beet no probs :0)
 
Make sure he is warm/dry with rugs and shelter, and up the hay/haylage (no goodness in grass now) and possible change feed as suggested above.
 
There is still plenty of grass coverage, but I would doubt the goodness in it tbh. Due to mine being restricted and having to have a mate next door, they have been having hay all day, and the others out 24/7 having hay morning and evening they really seem to want it atm. My sisters 2yo is my horses companion horse for the day, and he is as fat as a barrel atm (prob on about just less than half a bale of hay a day) but we are happy with that atm, as he is unrugged, and came out of last winter looking a bit lean.

So I would start or up his hay intake before you do anything with hard feed, having access to hay a few hours a day (even if not ad lib all the time) will imho do better (and might be cheaper) than upping his hard feed :)

ETA - agree with above, ours do really well on sugarbeet and alfa a (and the oldie gets some fibreplus too) with a splah of linseed :)
 
Old-fashioned sugar beet, alfa, hay/haylage ad lib, and old fashioned soaked linseed in whatever hard feed you give him.

We have a 17.2 ex-steeplechaser, lean to the point of scrawniness when he came. He will be living out 24/7, and with the above regime (minus the haylage as we still have loads of grass left) he is doing really well ...putting on weight steadily and slowly and looking good.

Keep your horse wisely rugged - not necessarily heavily, but to turn the wind. Horses actually do well in cold, dry, still weather; it's the wind and the rain that get to them.
 
Are you feeding hay in the field OP??

And have you considered feeding a proper meal twice a day, rather than just a half scoop?
 
Thanks all for your good advice.

He's been wormed, is rugged and has a field shelter so I think as lots of you have suggested I'll up the haylage he's getting as my next step. :)
 
when one of my horses was living out he dropped his weight (seemingly for no reason) I used conditioning cubes, and alfalfa (no sugar beet - sends him wappy! lol) and a general purpose supplement, had had ad-lib hay in the field and seemed to do just fine on this :)
 
Poppys Nannan said:
Can anyone shed any light on the basic differences between

speedibeet, sugarbeet and beetpulp

cheers x
Click to expand...

The plant known as sugar beet is grown for commercial production of sugar. Once the majority of the sugar has been extracted what is left is known as 'beet pulp'. This is then processed in various ways for feeding to animals. For example:

Normal molassed sugar beet pellets (brands like Supabeet) - molasses is added to the beet pulp which is formed into pellets - recommended soaking time is usually 12-24 hours. Usually high sugar content - Supabeet is 21% sugar and quite high in calories - Supabeet has 12.5MJDE/kg.

Speedibeet - this is micronised (a heat treatment which improves digestibility), non-molassed, and is in flake form. Soaking time is about 10-15 mins in cold water, low in sugar (5%) but still high in calories - 12.4 MJDE/kg.

There are various other types of commercial beet products available - for example you can get unmolassed long soak beet pellets - but Speedibeet and molassed sugar beet pellets seem to be the normal choice in feed stores.
 
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