My horse has a huge neck, but everywhere else is skinny!

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Apercrumbie

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I have a 16hh Welsh Sec D called Ted who is naturally quite bulky. When I bought him two years ago, he was clearly overweight and he had the most enormous neck with a huge crest. As I got the weight off him, his neck shrank. ATM, he is as thin as he has ever been, looking absolutely fantastic in every part of him, apart from his neck which has ballooned in size again! Here is a picture of him last year. It's not from a great angle but you get the idea of the shape of his neck. Apologies for the muddy legs! It is bigger now, and the rest of him is thinner but I need to take some more recent pictures :o
Ted.jpg


I don't know what to do because he is now beautifully muscled up on his topline and back end now but you can also just see his ribs and he is looking so fit and beautiful until you get to his neck, where it seems he is storing all of his fat. Does anybody know what could be causing it? And what I can do to get rid of it? If he loses any more weight on the rest of his body, he will definitely be underweight. I'm confuzzled!

Just to reiterate, that picture is not recent - it's just to give you an idea of the shape of his neck!
 
How old is he? Some of the Welshies seem to have this area of thickness where the fat lies and is extremely difficult if not impossible to shift. I reckon these are the ponies and horses with the metabolic gene and it's an indicator to keep these animals on the thin side of right and an eye out for low grade laminitis. Sorry to be a scaremongerer but I also think that apart from diet exercise and vigilance for laminitis, there's not much you can do about it.

My friend's pony has Cushings and you can count her ribs but she has an enormously thick and arched crest although there isn't a scrap of fat on her anywhere else.

Just carry on as you are with the weight awareness. It's as much as you can do x

ETS I was once informed a showing expert had told some people with a clearly EMS pony to sweat her neck off with a cling film wrap...
 
Some breeds naturally do that. Theres a Welsh Cob on our farm with a similar description of neck... unfortunately the trend follows all the way to his arse.

Also, you say he's fit now, so need to take into consideration bulk of muscle so adipose tisse now sits on top of muscle rather than all over if you get my drift.
 
Are you sure it's fat and not muscle? If he has a good topline and bottom and he's working correctly then he will naturally build neck muscle too.

Also, if he was cut late he will have a tendency to a bigger 'cresty' neck but short of dieting him down to a skeleton you may well be stuck with it. :)

As long as he's fit and trim I wouldn't worry.
 
I don't know how late he was cut, he is now 13 and I've only had him 2 years! I'm really hoping it is just muscle although IMO he still isn't muscled up enough to justify this! I don't mind at all - I don't show him so I don't need him to be in proportion :p Just wanted to check that there's nothing wrong with him and if there's anything I can do.

He has no history of laminitus but since I got him, I have always been careful with him for fairly obvious reasons which is why I run him on the thin side. Please don't worry about scaremongering! As it happens, I am aware of the risks and management of laminitus but someone else might not be and it is always worth checking.

Apart from his neck, he's doing really well - loads of energy and feeling really well in himself :)
 
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