loosing weight

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callmelucky

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My horse moved yards about 8 weeks ago. Its taken her quite a while to settle in. shes always seemed happy in the field but stressy when taken in by herself. shes only just back to her normal self this past couple of days, tying up ok and not being a numpty when shes being riddeb. She has been stabled for a week now, shes not overly impressed but shes fully clipped. she has two haynets overnight and is fed fast fibre and ummollassed alfa a. im waiting on a balancer to arrive to start her on too. she gets haylage in the field during the day. i noticed today that she looked leaner so stuck the tape measure thing on her and shes lost about 50kg. shes not underweight but i dont want her loosing anymore. the reason she does not get haylage overnight is because she has an incredibly sensitive stomach and has the major *****s. haylage 24/7 isnt agreeing with her but if she has hay overnight this seems to help dry her up a bit. Im hoping in time she can have haylage at night too once her stomach settles. she also cant have any feed with mollasses in it and cereals dont agree with her. does anyone have any ideas what else i can give her to put the weight back on? Shes usually a good doer but has had alot of changes recently which i know has had an effect. thanks
 
A&P calm and condition seems to be good for putting weight on. Also pink powder will help with the loose bowels- you may find that once her gut returns to normal the weight goes back on by itself.
 
It may not sound like an obvious choice but I've seen really good results with soaked Spillers High Fibre cubes, including a 17.2 TB that looked like a walking skeleton & was competely turned around by these & ad lib hay.
 
Equi jewel-worked wonders on my VERY poor doer ex racer who had struggled on every other feed. Expensive but only a cup per feed, my horse (17.1) goes theough 1 bag every 8/10 weeks. £33 a bag but eorth its weight in gold! Second pink powder-brewers yeast does same job but cheaper-search for both on here :-)
 
I absolutely would not feed calm and condition to a stressy horse... Calm and condition is designed for horses in a higher level of work and is known for heating up a lot of horses. I would go with something fibre based if the gut is compromised, alfa oil, speedie beet and possibly something like equi jewel if more weight gain is needed although with the Alfa oil you should see good enough results, use a probiotic, although personally I would not use pink powder either, I can't remember what I used for my girl, but agree, yeaa-sac is good for promoting a healthy gut
 
Thanks for the replies. shes not normally stressy but the move did stress her out although the past few days shes becoming more her normal self. think i will try the equi jewel....will this make her hot? As shes very fresh to ride at the moment. also is it ok to feed with d&h ultimate balancer or will she be getting vit&mins oveoad. thanks!
 
I would think the weight loss is down to the stress of moving, it also could be down to the haylege upsetting her, my mare is the same she can only have a small amount each day I have used pink powder also and it does help.

She has not lost that much I wouldnt waste your money buying fancy expensive feeds for a horse who is already a bit upset by the haylege you dont want to add to that upset, I would just increase the fast fibre for now and try and get some regular hay.

Also if you feed the correct amount of fast fibre she will be getting the right amount of mins and vits so you wont need a balancer, just a waste of money as its a complete feed on its own mine have it and do really well on it.
 
Hi - know your frustration. My boy has only been with me for 2 months but can be a stress head. He developed scours as soon as he arrived at our yard as a result of the move, I started him on cooling mix and hay which was comparable to his previous diet, he wolfed the mix but wouldn't touch the hay.

I don't have enough turn out for him to graze enough to keep his condition so got him haylage which he loves but is rich and didn't really help his tummy I don't think. Although now he's settled in lovely, his tummy didn't. He will now eat a bit of hay (better for the pocket!!) but he still had scours. I tried probiotic balancer to see if I could kick start his tummy into settling, but that didn't work (mainly because he hated it and could tell if it was hidden anywhere so wasn't getting enough into him), 6 weeks down the line still no improvement.

I picked up a smallish pot of Naf haylage balancer to see if he'd improve and almost overnight we're back to 'proper' dungs. I'm not ashamed to say how happy I was to see lovely firm dungs in his stable in the morning rather than a manky stinky churned up horrible bed!

I introduced this as recommended with some feed (small dipper of cooling mix) but now he has this out of hand with no additional feed quite happily. I'm assuming it's yummy as he's fussy as hell! Definately worth a try, I saw an improvement overnight and two weeks in it's as close to 'normal' as you're going to get on a pretty much pure hay/haylage diet.

Good luck with it - I know how demoralising it is when every single day you need to shampoo and detangle an extremely manky tail and pooey legs. Good job we love them!
 
Don't feed her haylage at all to start with, it basically gives horses a constant stomach ache! Just make sure she has ad lib hay. Then if you want to add more calories feed micronized linseed or Baileys Outshine :)
 
Thanks Guys. She wasnt on haylage at my previous yard as i had same problem. where i am now there's a horse with COPD hence the haylage. They have it in the field too. I tried giving her hay at night but she wont have it....she likes the haylage too much. I know i can separate her to avoid the haylage but ill end up with a stressy mare again! She has settled alot in her behaviour and is alot happier now shes settled. Shes not quite as bad as she was but still very 'loose' and i still get a manky bed. a friend gave me some sure-bio which ive started tonight....much to her disgust!! so ill see how it goes. Iv also looked at the haylage balancer. does anyone think she will settle over time on the haylage? Thanks
 
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