skinny TB

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stace1

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suggestions please, im thinking of giving my mare, some kind of oil in her feeds to ty and up her weight and condition, she has a lovely healthy coat but lacks the weight she needs.

shes on 2 feeds a day with conditioning cubes, chop, speedibeet
and is fed on hay, doesnt have access to grass in winter months.

ive been searching and there are so many types of supplements/ oils you can give??
 
How much are you feeding at each feed? If the feed is too large then she will just be passing a lot of it and not using it.

I was taught that for every 100lb of live body weight, you should feed 2 - 2 1/2lb of TOTAL feed during a 24 hour time span. This is for the average horse in average work. And that the feed should be roughly the volume of a rugby ball.

Could you maybe add in another feed, and take out some grain and add more oil? As per this kinda thing:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/resources/livestock/horses/ag558-7.html


And here - its says to add alfalfa as it adds like 300cals per LB to their feed
http://www.horses-and-horse-information.com/articles/0702nogain.shtml
 
Maybe try different feeds. When we had our oldies we fed them on a mix of stud cubes and high fibre cubes along with sugar beet - we had to soak them for them as they didn't have much in the way of teeth! lol

It did keep the weight on very well though. I have also found Allen & Page's Old Faithful is great at keeping weight on oldies and can't see why you couldn't feed that to any horse - I would imagine it has a fair few oils etc in it to keep weight on. Either that or Allen & Page Weight Gain - we fed that to an underweight 4 yo we got and it worked wonders on him.

As for supplementing with oil - linseed oil is good for coats and would I imagine, like any oil helps keep some weight on. We have fed just normal vegetable oil in the past though - cheaper that linseed but can't say I noticed much difference in weight!
 
charnwood milling linseed meal has be a god send for me-2 mugs a day and i have a round,shiny TB! not bulky and very calorie dense so wont make the feeds huge.

i upped it from 1 1/2 to 2 mugs when winter set in and just that small increase made a huge difference.

costs approx £40 delivered and lasts 3 months roughly so good value too!
 
What brand of feeds are you feeding? and how much. It's hard for people to advise you without knowing exactlywhat she's being fed.

As for the hay... is she getting as much as she can eat or is she without hay for any length of time... I know it adds up in winter but she really should have free access to forrage.

there are various oils you can feed to help with weight but I would want to try and get her feeding on the right track before adding any volume of oil to her diet.
 
If you are feeding to much this isn't going to work for her, too much fibre etc does the opposite.
Alfalfa original I think has got to be the best for weight, condition and has a lot of oil in it, I think your doing the right thing with the conditioning cubes also Baileys outshine, it is a supplement thats supposed to be great.
 
tHAnks

she has one of the big round scoops of spillers conditioning cubes, 2 sccops of speedi beet, and 4 heafty and fulls of chop, twice a day.

she has quite a bit of hay, but is probs without about 2hrs a day, when out once eaten??

waas thinking of maybe putting her onto haylage too ??
 
Which chop are you using? I would swap it for something higher calorie such as alfa-a oil.

Also look at the D.E/kg of the feed you are using (essentially this is the amount of energy the feed contains). If you can find a conditioning cube/mix with a higher DE it has more calories and may be worth a swap.

Thirdly, it would almost certainly help to feed her in three or four smaller feeds rather than two bigger ones, although this may not be possible.

Is her hay ad lib? Ideally she shouldn't be left without hay at all, or you could swap her onto haylage. It may be worth weighing the amount you give her so you can see how much she's actually consuming - she should eat 2.5-3% of her bodyweight a day to gain weight and she may not be eating enough. Are her teeth OK?

You say she doesn't have access to grass over the winter - does she get turnout or is she in 24/7? I used to work at a yard with no turnout over the winter and a lot of the TB types would lose their appetite, and their condition as a result, if they didn't get sufficient exercise.

Finally, you could try adding a top dressing to her feed, such as Saracen Equi Jewel, Baileys Outshine, or some Linseed meal. Haven't tried any of these myself but others have found them effective.
 
When mum and I first got our TB gelding he was severely underweight, but everytime we put a bit on him he went psychotic. After many different feed changes and trips to the emergency room, we finally found a feed called vintage victory. It put the weight on and kept it on without giving him excess energy. Good luck! I know how hard it is to put/keep weight on a TB!!
 
A good blob of Supermarket (I use Tesco) Vegetable Oil in the feed alongside Pink Powder worked for my boy. He was on a feed of speedibeet, Bailey's No.4 and HiFi but now he is up to weight is just ticking along on a token feed of Fast Fibre.
Ad lib good quality hay/haylage is essential for weightgain so I would up your hay so that she has a little left in the morning and have some available in the field too.
 
TBH thats a HELL of a lot of food for a horse to eat in one go! I'd want to split the same amount over three feeds... can someone pop a feed over the door at lunchtime or late night?

Swapping onto haylage fed add lib would undoubtedly help.
 
That is FAR too much feed in her twice daily meals!
An average horses stomach is about the size of a rugby ball.
Horses are trickle feeders so normally food is digested in the stomach for about 45-60 minutes. With the amount of food you are giving her in the meals, that food will be in her stomach for about 20 minutes before it is forced on through the digestive system and therefore it is not being properly digested hence the lack of weight gain.

I would suggest cut down the meals, but give them more often and you will start to see more of a result hopefully.
 
As the owner of a previously skinny Arab I have found this strategy most successful (4 winters of trial and error and she's finally carry weight in February!)

Rugs: Keep em warm, my girl wears a Dress Circle Sherpa under her 350g Rambo Ultimate. The sherpa is elastic round the neck (no draughts!) and covers her belly too!

Feed: Conditioning cubes are great but I would use a fibre/oil based beat rather than sugar beat. You want something that is slow release.

Grass nuts: And this is the key to my success (having tried the above 2 in different ways the past 3 winters) if the horse doesn't get grass feed grass cubes. It really pile the pounds one
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hope that helps!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Change the speedi beet to alfabeet - it does much more for weight gain.


[/ QUOTE ] Speedibeet actually contains MORE calories than Alfabeet. Alfabeet only has 10.5 MJDE/kg whilst Speedibeet has 12.4 MJDE/kg. Alfabeet does contain more protein than Speedibeet, which is useful in some cases, but as this horse is already on conditioning cubes lack of protein is unlikely to be a problem.

Personally, I would be looking to change the horse onto haylage, giving enough overnight so that there is a little left in the morning and available any time the horse is in the stable. If this is not possible, then the suggestion of grass nuts is a good one - put a tub of soaked grass nuts (or a grass chaff such as Readigrass or Graze On) in the stable overnight to be eaten alongside the hay.
 
I'd reduce the chaff or change it for a higher calorie chaff but only if fizzing isn't a problem. I'm about to try the linseed mealwith mine, after a lot of recommendation on forum for the same problem, in the meantime, adding linseed and veg oil upps the calories.
 
My TBxWB was on the very skinny side when we first got him, we put him on TopSpec which did nothing for him but then put him on Baileys Conditioning Cubes and Blue Chip Original and a little bit of Dengie Original which has worked wonders for him! I would also say make sure he has a constant supply of hay
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