The death of common sense!!

Wimbles

Wimbles

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Every year I hear the same stories about the same overweight horses and ponies. Muzzles, starvation paddocks etc etc..........

So why is it that most of these poor creatures are still being fed full working horse rations and rugged up to the eyeballs as we head towards the start of spring??

One of my thoroughbreds is looking pretty round so he has been reduced to one small feed a day to get his supplements in is in a lightweight rug, unclipped. He lives out with some of the others with ad lib hay in round bales so I always know he won't go without but I need to be sensible as we have a lot of land and the grass will soon be shooting through.

Sorry for my rant but I've just seen three separate posts on Facebook that have made me want to swear. Laminitis is a horrendous condition and causes so much suffering, I just wish people would realise that leaving a horse without a rug is not cruel but having one left in crippling pain through mismanagement is!

I also have a question. What do you think would be the best way to get this message across to people? Vets, publications? The seriousness just doesn't seem to be getting through and I strongly believe that more should be done.

And breathe!!
 
I overheard the Dengie feed rep tell someone last year that the only way to make sure her daughters pony didn't get lami was to feed it their Healthy Hoof feed. Utterly disgraceful. When feed companies are going round telling folk that what chance have you got?

People equate rugs and feeds with them being good owners/loving their horses. They have no idea how to look after a horse like a horse and not a human.

A pony at my friends yard is unclipped, in 3 rugs and on 2 feeds a day, it's very overweight and not in work. The owners have been making comments at my friend for the fact her TB in in one or no rugs and only gets a feed a day, apparently its not enough even though horse is in super condition and happy.

I agree more should be done but have no idea what.... :(
 
Totally agree with you! I think the issue is people don't see the long term effects of it either, my mare had acute laminitis and I honestly don't think she will ever be able to live out full time again she gets pulses very easily now even if everything else is managed fine! Also struggle with her being underweight now, can't give her anything that will help her gain weight just have to give her lots of fibre, keep her warm and hope she doesn't stress usually!
It's a nightmare really :o

I think vets etc should see every case as an individual. When I called the vet out to mine I just got - box rest, deep bed, here's some painkillers call me again if there's no improvement in 2 weeks then we might have to X-ray. Would be good if they could take the time to have a chat with you about how it happened and what you can do to prevent it or even a leaflet or something as I know vets are busy when on call.
They treat the pain but not the cause really!

And obviously if a vets called out to vaccinate etc a fat horse, a horse with loads of grass or a horse showing early signs they should have a chat with the owner about the risks.
 
It is amazing with the amount of information that people still can't spot a massively overweight horse. Still too many around so it looks 'normal' when people see fit racehorses or eventer they look 'thin'. But then the same with dogs/cats and people themselves - some crazy percentage of people are obese - but we see them every day so it doesn't look so odd to us.

One of mine could literally live on fresh air (he's a 16.2 irish - not a native x) the only way to keep him at a sensible weight through spring was to have him coming into spring looking pretty lean - and to do that the only way was to cut him down to a no fill rug (really only to keep mud off - he'd be fine in no rug) from begining of Feb onwards. He was already on virtually no hard feed !
 
If you know people personally there is a great BHS DVD they will send you for free (I have passed it round lots of my friends) or direct them to the link where they follow 2 rescue cases.
1) 20% underweight - fed slowly and built up over 3 months - totally fine, no long term consequenses. (looked to me like skeleton on legs!)
2) 20% overweight - took more than 12 months to get the weight off safely, had perminant damage to feet/ legs which will never recover, will always have to be managed carefully because of the damage done by the weight. (looked like a roundish cob in show condition to me - not one I'd have called to report at all)
 
I agree! I have one of those fat things that puts on a stone just eating a twig, he is on nothing but very rough limited grass, only light weight rain sheet if its tipping down as he doesnt have a field shelter, lives out 24/7 now with no extras, not even hay, and ive even found a keen girl to hack him out as much as possible until the boys are more experienced,
sadly he came to me grossly overweight, and im really struggling to get him to slim down, he was having a tiny feed of sloppy fast fibre when he was stabled at night only for vits, but really he needs the bare minimum, his companion suffers terribly with Lami problems and grass is the enemy but he is a perfect weight!
think it is all too easy to go to a feed merchant and see all this lovely smelling feed and want to give them some for the sake of giving them some, but in reality very few ponies need it!
 
Generalisation some folks think horses are human.

Horses are not worked as hard as they use to be(I am thinking more the at home horse). Humans are more spoilt too ie more money. Look at the human population Fat people Fat animals(dogs too).

Good marketing by the feed companies.
 
Really annoys me too. I have a very good doer who will be 24 in spring, had her 22yrs almost. Every year she is allowed to get very lean over winter, & over summer has unrestricted grazing on low quality large fields, & plenty of exercise. Never been muzzled or on restricted turnout. The other is 5 & 1/2, lives on fresh air, & luckily has little interest in food. On the same routine as above. Every year the same people start hinting about them looking lean, would the little one be tempted by rich haylage, shouldn't I give hard feed etc. By mid summer, same people have good doers either with laminitis, or on very restricted turnout to prevent it because their horses are too fat. (and that's not a dig at people who do make an effort over winter & still need to diet them in summer, just those I know in rl who cram food in to keep weight on an already fat horse all winter, then wonder why its obese in june)
 
Opposite end of the scale here. YO who can't see past COB :eek: so must be underfed at all times! Poor boy is now underweight. Yesterday when back lady said about him needing to be kept warm she said ' well he's a cob, he will be fine' I kinda exploded as said cob, my share horse, has a finer coat than the bloody TB she owns and no longer has any insulation left to keep his bones warm! Stalks off muttering :mad::o stupid people mutter mutter......
 
Also with regards to feed companies. If someone with relatively no experience as such were to go out and buy a bag of chaff , they would look on the back and see the feeding guides for the size of their horse. They are usually numerous large round scoops. Now I always never go buy the guides, if I were to give my boy 1 large scoop per dinner and breakfast, he'd be the size of a house! He simply gets a level small scoop which increases/ decreases at time of year as he needs a supplement.

Another one is incorrect marketing. For example we have a girl with an ancient laminitic pony at the yard. She rations everything but has decided to feed him happy hoof over the winter this year because is has the laminitic approved logo so she thinks its fine. This is absolutely nonsense! There is more mollasses in happy hoof than there is in dengie good doer or dengie un mollassed.

So I personally think people need to do their own research into feeding.


I remember when I got my boy as a youngster and I was quite naive about feeding. My instructor wanted more energy from him so said to add a cereal and soya oil to his feed. NEVER again. Not only was the barley in the mix putting on weight in him but I since found out soya oil does too! Needless to say I've owned him for 8 years now and I know what he can and can't get fed.
 
How a feed company can categorically state they product would stop lami is mind boggling :shocked:.

I feel it is not really the death of common sense but a lack of education tbh, combined with the 'know it all attitude' a lot of horse owners seem to have. You cannot teach the ignorant. They harp on about their overweight ponies/horse, but then dont have the forethought, like you said OP, to think in a few months time the spring grass will be sprung!

I am lucky in the position dee is not a lami suffering horse, however around this time of year i keep an eye on her weight and what im feeding. People also tend to forget about the fibre they add also, its all very well cutting down the compeition mix ;) but if you are going to feed the horse a bale of hay per day on top, whats the point?

The problem nowadays, is feed companies have made it easy for people to get feeding their horse very wrong. All bags that i have seen have the recommended amounts on the back that people take as forbaitem, but also there seems to be a mix for everything, and you arent really sure what is in said mixes. Some of the 'ash' content is so high, as are the sugar levels.

Why can we not just stick to forage only diets?

Then you get the other owners, who starve their horse so it wont get lami. Again, its just a fundemental lack of the basic rules of feeding. We need to remember how the horse hind gut and GI tract has evolved to work, and bear this is mind when formulating an appropriate feeding plan for the horse, remembering also to take into accoutn grass and hay intake.
 
Lots of people now rarely see a hard fit horse so it's not suprising they have trouble assessing condition.
Fatty is very slim ATM you can see his ribs but he's very heavily muscled and hard fit , I need now just to maintain that wieght until mid March when he starts his holiday , but I do feel the temptation to give him a bit more logically I know it's the wrong thing to do and that he be on a starvation strip by May but it's very tempting because I think we are sort of hard wired to feed.
 
I actually know someone who's kids pony is so fat in summer, a steward at a show told the mum even a lightweight kid shouldn't be riding a heavily in foal mare, & that it was a bit risky taking one that far gone out anywhere. It's actually a gelding. Still, every winter it has rich forage & feed, more than my mare got when she was hunting, because 'he loses weight in winter'. Then he spends June till Nov stabled for all but a few hours a day to prevent lami. Same thing every year.
 
Littlelegs said:
I actually know someone who's kids pony is so fat in summer, a steward at a show told the mum even a lightweight kid shouldn't be riding a heavily in foal mare, & that it was a bit risky taking one that far gone out anywhere. It's actually a gelding. Still, every winter it has rich forage & feed, more than my mare got when she was hunting, because 'he loses weight in winter'. Then he spends June till Nov stabled for all but a few hours a day to prevent lami. Same thing every year.
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TBF, i would probably call either BHS or WHW in this case, sounds like the woman needs educating as to the dangers of obesity
 
Trust me, she knows. Vet has told her, as has farrier. And he never actually gets worse than footy as she does take steps to prevent it by bringing in by June. Just bugs me it isn't necessary. She knows he doesn't need it in winter, she just hates seeing him not enjoying old hay & getting no feed. She is a bit of a feeder in general though, not just with the pony. It's not lack of knowledge, its more that she prefers to satisfy her desire to 'see him happy'.
 
Many owners feed what most would consider to be a sensible diet. You read the packaging and everything seems OK.

It's only when you look at the fine print can you appreciate the hidden nasties :mad:.

Added to that the lacksy daisy attitude of some vets and farriers towards hoof health.

You can often easily spot a hoof related dietary red flag with a sunk coronet/flared wall/stretched white line/pancake sole/bull nosed wall etc......

It angers me the amount of times I've heard an owner say their vet/farrier has said the hoof is fine....and then everyone is shocked when the horse crashes out into acute lami :(.
D'uh! The poor horse has had lami for months....no one noticed it until it became critical :mad:
 
Scarlett said:
I overheard the Dengie feed rep tell someone last year that the only way to make sure her daughters pony didn't get lami was to feed it their Healthy Hoof feed. Utterly disgraceful. .......

........... :(
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A lesson in life for everyone; "Never believe the person who's trying to sell you something". ;) Mostly, they're full of ***t.

Alec.
 
Delicious_D said:
How a feed company can categorically state they product would stop lami is mind boggling :shocked:.

I feel it is not really the death of common sense but a lack of education tbh, combined with the 'know it all attitude' a lot of horse owners seem to have. You cannot teach the ignorant. They harp on about their overweight ponies/horse, but then dont have the forethought, like you said OP, to think in a few months time the spring grass will be sprung.

The problem nowadays, is feed companies have made it easy for people to get feeding their horse very wrong. All bags that i have seen have the recommended amounts on the back that people take as forbaitem, but also there seems to be a mix for everything, and you arent really sure what is in said mixes. Some of the 'ash' content is so high, as are the sugar levels.

Why can we not just stick to forage only diets?

Then you get the other owners, who starve their horse so it wont get lami. Again, its just a fundemental lack of the basic rules of feeding. We need to remember how the horse hind gut and GI tract has evolved to work, and bear this is mind when formulating an appropriate feeding plan for the horse, remembering also to take into accoutn grass and hay intake.
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Absolutely agree.
My present YO keeps going on about how I should feed up Mister Jay. Yes, I agree, he does look thinish, but most of that is muscle loss from retiring. He is a sec D, prone to weight gain whilst looking at a blade of grass, he wears a rain sheet to keep the worst of the weather out, but I will not be feeding him up, as hopefully spring is round the corner. Plan ahead and hopefully he'll remain lami free!
 
I have a pony that looks at grass sideways and turns into a large brown balloon with feet. Until last autumn, I kept him at a livery yard where I had little control over his forage. He's never been given more than a tiny amount of Fast Fibre or similar, to carry his mineral supplement. Nevertheless, he would finish each winter fatter than he started, especially when haylage was put out instead of hay. Alarming! I did what I could to put him in restricted grazing as much as possible, but use of the starvation paddocks had to be shared out among all the pony owners in a similar situation. Even at the end of the Endurance season, when he was in excellent fitness, he still looked rounder than just about any other endurance horse.

This winter, he's moved to my new place. I have only 2 paddocks, which are both very poached by now and lacking in grass. He actually got a little thin over Christmas, and for the first time, isn't looking completely enormous. Because I've been injured, he's been off for several months, so I'm hopeful that introducing regular work again will soon see him at a fighting weight.

But keeping him here, has made me really understand the differences to keeping him on a yard, where I really couldn't control his food intake at all. It's not just about the hard feed; with some horses, the inappropriate types of grass in the pastures here are enough to cause trouble, even in winter. Oh, and he's unclipped and unrugged.
 
What amazes me is the difference in opinion on how much work the horse is doing. The amount of people I have heard say their horses need hard feed because they are in 'hard work' and feed accordingly yet hard work is defined 40 mins rides 5/6 days a week which to me is light/leisure work.

I have worked on yards with show jumpers who jump from the field with no extra feed (different country) or riding school ponies that do a few hours every day with minimal feed. I always thought hard work was eventer/racers/endurance at full fitness or equivilant.
 
The phrase I hate is when you mention your own horse is looking a little tubby and they say something like 'ah rather a bit fat than thin'. Well, no actually I'd rather a little lean as that will not cause any long term health problems!

It's just seen as a non-problem, which is completely the opposite to the truth of course. I dont think its fair to blame feed companies etc, you have to have your own common sense and intelligence, after all you are responsible for that animals health - not the feed companies!
 
I am afraid a lot of yard owners don't understand the basics of pasture management which is often the start of the problem. They have fields full of rye grass, they don't enforce poo picking and the just chain harrow which makes the pasture richer. Most hay and haylage is rye grass. That's where a good start could be made to help these animals. I also agree about over feeding. We were always taught no work no corn. When ours are hunting they are in medium work not hard work, so your happy hacker is in light work and probably doesn't need hard feed if being fed rye hay or haylage. So the cycle goes on. Even the BHS stage one teaches basic pasture management.
 
tallyho! said:
I received a compliment today "your filly's looking a bit thin"

Yay!!!!
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At this time of year thats just what you want to hear if you own a fatty , my fatty is pretty slim TBH but have finally shifted the dreaded shoulder fat pads hopefully his summer will be nicer this year.
On another point ( bit off thread ) but on forage only diets you do have to make sure a working horses does have access to enough protein.
 
Per the feeding instructions on the back of the bag. These are usually to get the vit and min content. So basically feeding much less is a waste of money and why I don't do bagged feeds.

And I'll say it again, balancers, creates more issues than solves. Don't be fooled by the coffee mug size.

Mine are back in light sheets too. They'd be without but I'm sorry this years mud is epic and I don't have that kind of time. There is a poor horse at my barn that has 600 grams of rugs on since October. Even now. You can't say anything because the horse colics at the drop of a hat. No way will that be on a day I suggest something. But couldn't tell you what he looks like as he hasn't had his rugs off on weeks. Yup that's right.

Tonight mine will be dining on a handful of beet with a sprinkle of oats to taste with the vits, mins, small flax, extra salt and mag. Not because they're fat, because they're good. Yup I do limit grazing during the day in spring and summer but they graze all night.

Terri
 
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