Standing in with no food

oldie48

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Sorry, I was at a vet lecture on ulcers, when they quoted the headlines from the research.


And I have been to more than one lecture on ulcers.


I think it might have been Richard Hepburn, at Wellington Equestrian centre – link to his advice here - https://www.bwequinevets.co.uk/187/equine-gastric-ulcers-explained-specialist/
If you google his name, he has also done an interesting podcast on ulcers, where he explains the forage daytime more important than night time http://www.horsehour.co.uk/2016/12/19/gastric-ulcers-explained/


I **think** it was a study that left a group of horses with out forage for 12 hours at night, and second group 12 hours day time, and scooped regularly, and those left without daytime got ulcers a lot faster. The net conclusion the vet presented was if feeding restricted forage for weight reasons, give two thirds of forage ration day time, and 1/3 at night. Which I thought fascinating!
Thansk for that, it suggests that what I am doing is OK.
 

Tarragon

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I have two ponies and I always bring them both in when I want to ride and the one I am not riding has to wait until I get back. This way, if I am riding the fitter and slimmer one, the fatter one benefits by being without for a couple of hours, and if I am riding the fatter one I can choose to give the slimmer one a bit extra.
Works both ways!
 

bubsqueaks

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Many thanks flying high for the links - interesting reading of the 1st link - 2nd link states page no longer there.
So based on research a horse will eat less between 11pm - 7am so as well as the sugar content being lower in the grass overnight added in that they habitually dont eat much over those hours it is absolutely vital to put our good doers out overnight.
Very interesting.
 

AdorableAlice

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Just reading this thread and I think it really confirms that all horses are different!!! Different personalities, different temperaments can lead to different behaviours! I think its like people when feeding small children - some are really good eaters and put on weight easily or are good with different foods, and some arent - they struggle to take bottles or dont feel like eating at the right times, but they are humans with the same digestive system but they are all different - just like horses!

I think its up to us as owners to take board as much correct information as possible and do your research to educate yourself but then also be sensible in applying that to your horse and your situation, keeping an eye on responses from them and adjusting accordingly!

I've never had a horse that was just so chill about his food - takes his time and eats what he wants, when he wants, whether its grain or forage - but I just go with it & when I needed a bit more weight on him, I split up his feeds and feed him in his individual turn out so he can eat at his own pace! You could give him a bale of hay & he will only eat what he wants where as my other horse would eat until he explodes... and probably make himself very ill or die!!!

This is so very true, but some owners think all horses are the same and in a perfect world the horses would self regulate, trickle feeding themselves and be fit for purpose at all times. Obviously this is not the case and we have to factor in breed, level of fitness, job of the horse, temperament and age etc to achieve what we want from the horse and when we want it.

The horse I gave the routine for earlier on in the thread, would, if given haylage to travel with, choke. She is so excited when going out and so greedy, she would grab mouthfuls and gulp it down. I prefer not to deal with choke on the lorry. I always have bagged haylage or soaked hay in the lorry but rarely feed in transit. I do before leaving a venue if I have been there a long time, but this would be outside the lorry with the head lower than the shoulders.

It is very much a case of knowing your horse, knowing your expectations of the horse and managing it. My best horse would only ever eat half of his breakfast, regardless of whether he was at home or away. Then, when he had either hacked out from home or competed away from home, he would come back into his stable and clear the rest of his feed. He was never left without fibre and had to have a choice of haylage, meadow hay and seed hay. He would pick at what he fancied, never greedy, never got himself too full, never finished a haynet and never hungry. He remains the same in retirement, but will now finish most of his breakfast before wandering out of his field shelter.

If I kept my 3 other horses like that they would all be dead by now. The 2 mares would eat mouldy hay or straw if given the chance hungry or not. Both would gorge on straw and having had a pony die from straw impaction, I am very wary of giving access to straw to greedy feeders. The pair of them are dustbins and must have been labradors in a previous life.
 

Cat91

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So based on research a horse will eat less between 11pm - 7am so as well as the sugar content being lower in the grass overnight added in that they habitually dont eat much over those hours it is absolutely vital to put our good doers out overnight.

I recently went to a 2 part vet lecture on laminitis and weight management/equine obesity and apparently the theory that it's better to turn horses out overnight rather than in the day time has been debunked. It's not about the grass itself, it's about the amount of time they spend on the grass and how much they consume. A horse out in the day for 8 hours is going to consume significantly less than a horse out on grass overnight for 15 hours. But then it's all relative to the individual horse. I know some horses who would eat twice as much in 3 hours as other horses out for 8....
 

flying_high

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Many thanks flying high for the links - interesting reading of the 1st link - 2nd link states page no longer there.
So based on research a horse will eat less between 11pm - 7am so as well as the sugar content being lower in the grass overnight added in that they habitually dont eat much over those hours it is absolutely vital to put our good doers out overnight.
Very interesting.

Try this link. Or google Richard Hepburn Podcast
 

flying_high

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In a lot of professional yards Ive worked in horses are 'done up' by 5pm and not seen again until 8am the next morning. They havent all gone down with ulcers or other problems....

ANd the reasoning for that, is horses sleep some of the night, and produce less stomach acid at night, so can go longer overnight without forage than is safe in day time.
 

flying_high

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I recently went to a 2 part vet lecture on laminitis and weight management/equine obesity and apparently the theory that it's better to turn horses out overnight rather than in the day time has been debunked. It's not about the grass itself, it's about the amount of time they spend on the grass and how much they consume. A horse out in the day for 8 hours is going to consume significantly less than a horse out on grass overnight for 15 hours. But then it's all relative to the individual horse. I know some horses who would eat twice as much in 3 hours as other horses out for 8....

Surely is a mix of both. Grass contains more sugar in the morning / in the day time than over night. But number of hours, and amount of grass available is also important to consider. Of course you cant expect a laminitic risk horse to go out for 15 hours safely on lots of grass because it is over night. But if turning same horse out in same environment, for 3-4 hours. Night timing would be lower sugar than day time.
 

tallyho!

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In a lot of professional yards Ive worked in horses are 'done up' by 5pm and not seen again until 8am the next morning. They havent all gone down with ulcers or other problems....
I might be mis reading your post... do you mean that none of them have gone down with ulcers or that not all of them have... If they've not all got ulcers, how many have?
 

Tiddlypom

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In a lot of professional yards Ive worked in horses are 'done up' by 5pm and not seen again until 8am the next morning. They havent all gone down with ulcers or other problems....
And that’s not going to be a problem, is it, as long as the horses are given enough forage to last through to 8am? Unless, of course, one colics at 5.30pm and isn’t found til the next morning...
 

tristar

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Thansk for that, it suggests that what I am doing is OK.
i feed mine hay at least 4 times during the day, small amounts to avoid long gaps, or use small holed haynets, slow feeders or put on small areas of grass, i give the most in the evening, and have observed that they seem to go very dopey as it becomes dark and tend be sleeping at lot, if checked on over door tend to be startled which would indicate they are 3 parts in the land of nod therefore getting good quality rest time bodily they are relaxed and the digestive system is resting also, all feeds and hay are consumed immediately, no waste

the metabolism slows with age, or seems to, maintenance of good health replaces the need to lay down bone etc., any sign of fatness is dealt with immediately by lowering feed intake slightly and increasing work,

i think a rigid feeding routine is helpful to the digestive system which anticipates food and produces acid at regular intervals
 

flying_high

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i think a rigid feeding routine is helpful to the digestive system which anticipates food and produces acid at regular intervals

No, research shows that horses (unlike people and dogs) produce stomach acid continually, not just when they have food to digest. Though less stomach acid is produced at night. The digestive system of horses doesn't switch acid on in an anticipatory way. Though feeding at rigid times may settle horses mentally, or not feeding at rigid time may result in less time conscious horses.
 

flying_high

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I might be mis reading your post... do you mean that none of them have gone down with ulcers or that not all of them have... If they've not all got ulcers, how many have?

Unless you scope a horse there is no way to be certain whether it has ulcers or not at any given point in time, so will never know.
 
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Pearlsasinger

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You are lucky. OH's horse had lived out all his life until OH bought him and would eat until he exploded!


Well, she might have been self-regulating prior to her home before us. She was at a well-known RS with a good reputation for a while, so I very much doubt that she had been kept standing in with nothing to nibble on there. She had spent her early years in Continental Europe, having been bred in Germany, so I guess she had ad-lib forage in barns over winter there.
But she learned with us that she would never be left with nothing to eat, even if she wasn't thrilled with the menu;).
We have never had a horse that didn't learn to self -regulate, even the Welshx mare who had truly been kept short of food as a youngster. I bought her at rising 4 from her breeder who had bought her back from the home she sold her to, she was so concerned. That mare was very, very proud of her food, even hay when I first got her, she was dangerous to be in the stable with when first brought in. Eventually she would bring us hay over the stable door and want to share it.
I think it could be because we have never 'rationed' forage and for years we used straw beds, so they always had something to nibble on, even if the hay was finished.
 

Leo Walker

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I got my Draft mare to drop well over 100kg (difficult to tell exactly, because she was off the weight-tape scale when I got her) by giving her ad-lib forage in the form of a measured amount of hay/lage (depending on which her companion needed) and the rest of her ration made up of plain oat straw chaff. She could choose whether to eat the chaff or not. Actually when I first got her (she was obese then), she was bedded on straw but she ate so much of her bed that she got impaction colic, so I swapped to chaff. The only bucket feed she got was soaked grass nuts/haycos with supplements and only ever a small amount of that. At no point did she ever not have the option to eat something, she was already showing ulcer-type symptoms and I certainly didn't want to make that worse.

There are plenty of alternatives to leaving a horse standing in with nothing to eat for hours and it is good practice to use them. We don't use haynets for safety reasons, so needed to find a different way to limit intake.

I've done similar with something not in work. Restricted access to grass as much as possible, low calorie haylage vut with straw, huge buckets of straw chaff and a small feed with a decent mineral balancer. This is for a horse with no off switch. He managed to find the off switch when the only option was chopped straw though and would only eat it when he was genuinely hungry.

The current pony is out unmuzzled on very poor grazing in the day time, muzzled and out on old gone to seed but insanely long grass overnight. She comes in and has a haynet before she goes on to the long grass. Shes 0.5 over what she should be on a 1-9 condition score, but that was mainly due to no work while I had health problems.

Its not easy managing good doers and I'd really prefer mine out on a carpark away from any and all grass, but theres always options and you dont have to starve them or having them being incredibly frustrated with tiny holed haynets.
 

Pearlsasinger

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In a lot of professional yards Ive worked in horses are 'done up' by 5pm and not seen again until 8am the next morning. They havent all gone down with ulcers or other problems....


Perhaps they have had enough forage to last the night!

It's not about when they get their last hay, it's about whether what they get is finished in a couple of hours, :eek:or lasts the night:p
 

stormox

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Sorry - dont know how to quote
- tally-ho, i have never heard of any horses getting ulcers on the yards Ive worked in. Tiddly pom, in most of the yards they got 1 haynet or armful at about 4.30 and I expect it was all gone by 7pm. Next lot of hay at soon after 8am.
This was standard routine in most hunter/jumper yards in the 60s 70s 80s
 

Leo Walker

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Surely is a mix of both. Grass contains more sugar in the morning / in the day time than over night. But number of hours, and amount of grass available is also important to consider. Of course you cant expect a laminitic risk horse to go out for 15 hours safely on lots of grass because it is over night. But if turning same horse out in same environment, for 3-4 hours. Night timing would be lower sugar than day time.

Spillers just linked to some research on this which was interesting reading

activity at grass
 

Pearlsasinger

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Sorry - dont know how to quote
- tally-ho, i have never heard of any horses getting ulcers on the yards Ive worked in. Tiddly pom, in most of the yards they got 1 haynet or armful at about 4.30 and I expect it was all gone by 7pm. Next lot of hay at soon after 8am.
This was standard routine in most hunter/jumper yards in the 60s 70s 80s


And how many horses were scoped for ulcers in the 60s, 70s and 80s? I obviously have never met the horses you worked with but I have known plenty of 'highly strung' hunters, which could well have been exhibiting ulcer symptoms, looking back.
 

ILuvCowparsely

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Had a thought earlier today. The most common school of thought seems to be that horses should at no point be without forage. Stabled horses should have ad lib hay otherwise risk of ulcers etc.

But then I thought, sometimes I hack out for four hours at a time. My horse doesn't get to eat on a hack. How is not eating in a stable for four hours any different to not eating on a hack for four hours?

Other than the boredom, can standing in for a few hours with no food really be that detrimental? Or actually, for those fatty ponies on the brink of lami, could a few hours stood in each day with no food actually be beneficial?
My boy last year stood in for 4 hours without food, as he had a huge crest and is at laminitis risk and before I switched to turmaric had to come in, but this year he hasn't as he is on 2 scoops of it (small ones).. Also I don't give adlib hay for a number of reasons. Never had issues, and like you said would often go without food for 3 hours when doing a sponsored ride.

At the moment the yard horses are out on good grazing, soon to move to top where grass is over knee high. At the moment the horses are having 2 or 3 sections only for the night from %pm - 7am when breakfast served. Many horses have 1/2 to 1 section still left in their haynets in the morning. If they haven, well so be it, damned if you do damned if you don't
 

tallyho!

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Unless you scope a horse there is no way to be certain whether it has ulcers or not at any given point in time, so will never know.
Having seen a few horses scoped, there are tell-tale signs but it sounds like you’re an expert so I need say no more.
 

tristar

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No, research shows that horses (unlike people and dogs) produce stomach acid continually, not just when they have food to digest. Though less stomach acid is produced at night. The digestive system of horses doesn't switch acid on in an anticipatory way. Though feeding at rigid times

may settle horses mentally, or not feeding at rigid time may result in less time conscious horses.

yes well i know that!

they produce acid most of the time, but in response to set feeding times i believe the body anticipates and prepares itself in the same way it knows its night so the body switches off.
 

Micky

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It’s the easiest thing in the world to give horses enough forage to last the night
I see my horses for the last time between between eleven and midnight .
But all but one get the forage to last till morning much earlier .
You could enough forage in the stable to last twenty four hours if you wanted too
I’m in bed myself at 10pm..I watch his weight due to cushings despite greedy soaked nets, I’m sure he’s eaten all 2 nets by midnight..🙄🙈
 

Micky

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To start with our horses do NOT come in at 4.00pm, unless the weather is atrocious. They get their last hay top-up about 11.00pm and they get enough to last until the first check in the morning. They get enough to have some left, so we know that it is enough. If their hay ration is too small to last the night they have a tug of plain oat straw chaff, because we use shavings rather than straw bedding, which in past times, they would have been able to nibble on when their hay was finished.
Hence why I said winter...it is atrocious here on the 1518 feet above sea level peat knee deep paddocks..seriously biting winds sideways hail snow or rain..ours here are sometimes in earlier..free to come and go as they please but generally IN at 4 for bed as it’s can be so cold..and mine is a 21 yr old cushings horse who doesn’t appreciate in any shape or form bad weather! That’s why I asked...mine is on shavings or I would have no bed at all all the next day..no grass mainly mud...thanks to peat soil..
 

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We give our fat mini shetlands who are serious laminitis risks straw chop while they're in (topspec chop zero) and it must be pretty horrible because they would almost rather eat their bedding than eat the chop (and these are very greedy ponies). But it at least it gives them a bit of interest and if their tummies are rumbling they've got something to munch. I would never leave a horse stabled overnight with nothing for the majority of that time as some people have mentioned - but to be fair it is much much more difficult to manage a fat native or a horse with metabolic issues. My big horses get as much hay as they can eat, not netted just fed loose, it's good quality young hay and they get feeds on top of that and they never get too fat. But the shetlands are a different ball game altogether so I do sympathise with people with fat natives!
 
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