Reintroducing grass to laminitic types on box rest...

[MissSBird]

Poor D has damaged one of her ligaments and has now been on box rest for nearly two months. The good news is, however, that she is allowed to go out in a small grass paddock next Tuesday. Ideally this should become 24/7 turnout.

D is an extremely good doer - she's a fell pony who lives on fresh air. It is a daily battle to control her weight. For the two months she's been in she's been kept on a very low calorie diet of hay that has been soaked for 12 hours and some straw based chaff. She's done very well on this diet.

Whilst she has never had laminitus to my knowledge (a miracle in itself since she was morbidly obese when we got her), I am concerned that just throwing her out onto our good grazing is just asking for trouble.

I'm planning on turning her out for short amounts of time at first, then slowly increasing this time to allow her body to re-adjust to a higher calorie diet once more.

Am I being a bit overly paranoid about this? How long would you take to build up from nothing to 24 hours of grazing a day?

Thanks for all the advice!

 

[jenni999]

No, you're not being paranoid. Quite a few friends of mine have already been hit by laminitis this spring.

I would start with an hour or two if you can, and then just gradually build it up.

Get lots of electric tape and plastic posts so you can fence off a small area and just move it around as required.

 

[horsedreams]

we picked a small bucket of grass daily for one of ours that was on box rest for 3 months and gave it to her once a day to get her back ready to go out in the feild
we introduced it very slowly at first we hand grazed her twice a day for around 10- 15 mins when she was allowed out and built this up over the weeks and now she is safely back out at grass for a few hours (muzzled at the moment) but in at night

 

[Pasha]

It's like any change in diet - slow and steady is best over 7-10 days to avoide any tummy upset.

As others have suggested, hand-picked grass and hand grazing is a good start and then i'd start with a couple of hours and increase over a few days to half a day, then a full day

It's not only the change in diet, but the excersise will be tiring for her as well, so expect a very tired pony for a week or so

Hope it all goes well... my EMS, Lami prone boy has 2 weeks left of box rest following ligament surgery, but we've been hand walking for 15 mins twice a day for the past 2 weeks and he's been hand grazed the whole way through

 

[MissSBird]

I should have mentioned she's been getting hand grazed for 10 minutes every day, just to try and help keep her sane.

Thanks for the comments!