Non-Heating Feed For Adding Weight?

[sasquatch]

My gelding has managed really well on just haylage this winter, however now is starting to drop more weight and loose his condition.

He's a 15yo cob, no health problems etc he is just in more work now than he has been for most of winter (does at least 5 days a week - over winter was doing between 3-5)

He is very energetic and both me and his sharers have tried to hold off a hard feed as much as possible as until recently he had been losing weight as expected with being in more work (he was fat when he came in after summer) and energy wise he was getting more than enough from haylage.

He's fine with plain (nothing added) chaff and mollychaff, Alfalfa absolutely fizzed him up and made him very hard to handle when he was given a chaff with it. When he's had a hard feed in the past, it has just been chaff without anything added.

any ideas?

 

[splashgirl45]

I use fast fibre for putting on and maintaining weight...its easy to prepare, just add double the amount of water and leave for 1 min then mix with your chaff...my mare is very fussy and doesn't like speedybeet but she loves fast fibre..

 

[AdorableAlice]

Veteran Vitality is effective. Fast Fibre has less feed value but worth trying before the VV. You could also just put a mug of linseed into the feed you are using already or Equi Jewel.

 

[ashlingm]

Oil! Will give him calories without making him fizzy as it's slow release energy. Perhaps just mix it with a bit of speedibeet to make it tasty. Speedibeet has little or no sugar so wont him him go mental

I use equijewel for our hunters - its amazing for putting condition on ... and fast! It does need to be mixed with something (speedibeet, again, would work) as it isn't very palatable on it's own.

 

[silv]

Another vote for EquiJewel, it is fabulous stuff, I feed it mixed with some speedibeet, it also gives them amazing coats.