Suggestions for pony weight gain please

[peanut]

Can anyone help with getting weight on an elderly Section A with poor teeth please? She has energy and appears healthy/bright but came out of the winter looking poor and has not gained any summer weight which is unusual for her.

Night and morning she happily tucks into a huge bucket of fast fibre, speedi-beet, micronised linseed and a general multi-vitamin supplement. There's grass but it's not long enough for easy grazing because of her teeth. She shares hay with a field companion twice a day.

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions before I have to go down vet/blood test route. She's quite fussy and dislikes oil in liquid form.

 

[ester]

copra?
or if not I'd consider exchanging the fast fibre soaked grass nuts, as the FF is bulk without many calories really.

 

[be positive]

I would replace the FF with something that has a higher feed value, my preferred grass replacer is soaked grassnuts which should be enough to help her gain the weight, the alternative is to send her here to eat my grass!!

 

[Fransurrey]

If she's stabled, you could put a bucket of Readigrass or Graze On in with her. Otherwise, that is looking pretty much what I fed my elderly shetland although I fed veteran vitality, not fast fibre and sorry to say, he was just coming to the end of his life. He came out of a winter looking poor for the first time and died of colic in April. I never investigated it, but as he'd had a mild colic a few weeks previous, we think he had pedunculated lipomas or similar.

 

[peanut]

Some one else mentioned grass nuts to me so I will look into this, thank you.

Fransurrey, I'm so sorry to hear about your shetland. My pony is 19 which isn't that old for a welshy and apart from the awful teeth (a common problem in a tiny mouth) she has never had a day's sickness in her life so I'm hoping it's not the end of the road just yet.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

I swear by Veteran Vitality for my natives and Equerry Conditioning Mash for my bigger horses.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

We used to feed our elderly cob, who lived to be 31, on soaked grassnuts mixed with speedibeet and dried grass chaff with linseed, to maintain her weight.

 

[peanut]

Thank you for the replies. I'll give the grass nuts a try.

 

[spugs]

Copra is great

 

[Fransurrey]

Some one else mentioned grass nuts to me so I will look into this, thank you.

Fransurrey, I'm so sorry to hear about your shetland. My pony is 19 which isn't that old for a welshy and apart from the awful teeth (a common problem in a tiny mouth) she has never had a day's sickness in her life so I'm hoping it's not the end of the road just yet.

Sorry, my post wasn't clear. That was in 2009! He was never sick, either, before that sudden colic bout. I had the vet booked for 3 days later to have a check up an discuss pts, but the old boy beat me to it. Hope grass nuts help your girl.