Overweight pony. Turnout over night or stick to daytime?

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chops992

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Hi All,

Sorry this is a bit long, I'm just looking for some advice please.

My pony is a bit overweight around 20kg over according to tape. She is slowly loosing however ive been given the option to change her turnout to overnight and i dont know wether it would be a better option or not.

She currently goes out for 9 hours during the daytime then has a net over night with 2kg hay and 1kg straw. If she was to go out overnight it would be for 15 hours but she would then only need half kg of hay (or straw) I know the night time grass has less sugar however it's quite a few extra hours. She also has a small handful of happy hoof twice a day which I don't know wether it would have enough of the nutrients if she was just on grass and straw?

Thanks in advance
 
Night time grass has more stored sugar than daytime grass does. Very roughly this is how it works

2am to 10am the least amount of sugar because it’s used it all up and is best time for turnout.
10am to 4pm grass starts to store sugar for release at night time.
4pm to 2am grass uses the sugar to fuel growth gradually reducing down to zero by 2am.

If out for 15 hours overnight I would muzzle.
 
As HHD has said sugar levels are less overnight but highest in afternoon/evening. Even if they are out longer, I tend to find they just eat more in volume so it's a tricky one to balance.

If you could muzzle I'd turn out overnight but if not, I'd probably stick to day turn out.

I have mine out 24/7 ish currently but split his time between a bare paddock with soaked hay & straw and then turn out in a normal field in the mornings sometime up to early afternoon. Not always ideal going by sugar levels but sometimes you have to do what's practical and mine is coping well at the moment.

If you worried about vits & mins, the handful of feed won't be adding much - I feed a vit & min supplement for this very reason.
 
Is she muzzled during turnout? If so then either fine but more t/o better as will move around for longer and burn off more calories.
 
My two potential fatties do well with night turn out, in during the day. On this regime they essentially don't eat much when in, just sleep (by not much, I mean that one slice of small bale hay lasts each of them about 3 days - their choice not to eat much, I don't restrict to stop them). Which seems to keep their waistlines in fairly good check without me having to restrict or muzzle them
 
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