Turning out a clipped horse with no rug to lose weight ?

If he's still not losing weight, he's either taking in too many calories or not expending enough. You know what they say - work him longer, faster, higher.
 
Brilliant post from Windrain.

Management (productive management) is the key here.

I've had 'fatties' most of my horse owning life. They key to keeping them slim and healthy is to keep them fit and healthy. It's tricky over the summer months, but get the balance right through the winter, and you'll be rewarded for the whole year.

With my last horse I had him exercised twice a week by a really great young apprentice jockey during the winter, and I did the work at the weekend.

He was clipped out, rugged (to the eyeballs at times), fed appropriately and stabled overnight. He came out of winter looking like a lean, mean, riding machine. I was lucky that I could pay someone to ride him in the week who would work him properly (to include proper 'working' fast work).

There are no corners to cut in keeping horses.
 
You gave me advice Amymay about weight loss for my rotund section d and I now have someone working her hard properly during the week, she comes out of the school blowing and sweating and is already working much better with real drive in the school. She is clipped but I wouldn't leave her out naked, she's in at night but I try to keep her at least a rug under the yard norm for the day or night, tonight when others are in full neck stables she has her fleece std neck on, just warm, not hot, seems to be starting to work.
 
I have a retired welsh a- as you can imagine its a constant battle to keep the weight off. I can't ride him or lunge him, so what I do is long rein him in the school, use a muzzle all throughout summer, and feed soaked hay and minimal feed year round. I have never needed to freeze him- in fact he is fully clipped due to skin problems and is rugged up due to his arthritis- to get him to lose weight... and if you can actually work your horse properly then things should be easier.
 
best cure for fatties (I have a now retired 21 yo Exmoor who came to me extremely obese at 14, with fat pads-now gone) is to put them in a paddock with youngsters. He had a yearling to deal with a few years ago and now a 3yo :D He's on hill grazing, muzzled for part of the time and out with two younger boys. When he's in, he has soaked hay (I had it analysed at 13% WSC), never rugged-although I will if I think he needs it as he gets older.

Whats he turned out with OP? he sounds like he could do with a pain-in-the-backside young gelding :D
 
I totally understand your dilemma managing a good doer living out is very difficult if you have good grazing.

If he has put on weight despite having a full clip and not being rugged and your grazing is good enough to support poorer doers during the winter he is probably not going to loose weight using this method unless we have a very cold winter. Unfortunately he needs less grass than his field mates and probably more exercise. My pony is similar and had to be muzzled until the end of December last year and he was out without a rug and had a bib and belly clip he did not loose weight he just did not get any fatter.

I think the problem you have with a full clip is the risk of rain scald if it is very wet if you don't rug.

It is important that they get enough fibre for their digestion but if you are worried if he is muzzled that won't get enough fibre to keep him warm that indicates that you are worried about him being cold and if you are worried about him being cold then why are you are not worried about him getting cold due to not being rugged.

I don't know if your horses get hay in the field or not later on but if they do then you may have issues then as you will need to get your horses weight down enough before they start getting hay or the other horses are going to need more hay to keep them in good condition and that is going to be too much for your horse.

MPop said:
Yes, I did take his muzzle off when I first clipped him in September. I was worried that he wasn't getting enough to eat to keep himself warm when he was clipped, but in hindsight I wish that I had kept it on. However, while he has put on a tiny bit since then (perhaps 10kg on the weight tape) this has not been hugely significant. We seemed to reach a stable weight over the summer where he wouldn't put on any more weight, but he wouldn't lose it either.

I will think about putting the muzzle back on, but as the weather has turned very cold and wet, I want him to 'fire up' that internal furnace and get the forage inside his body. I worry that he won't get enough food to keep himself warm.

Thank you all for being so welcoming by the way. I expected to have eggs thrown at me!
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What people are missing is that horses evolved those thick coats to live on wild exposed moors with nothing decent to eat all winter, not sheltered livery paddocks :)
 
cptrayes said:
and if I'm a bit porky I will deliberately under dress for a football match.
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Does it really work that quickly?

My big horse is retired through injury so cannot be exercised. He too needs to lose weight and lives out without rugs during the winter. He does have good natural shelter from the hedges in my field as well as a field shelter. I have been thinking of giving him a low trace clip (sweats during the warm weather) and seeing how he goes over this winter.

I don't ever want to see him over heat again! I really think a lot of horses have far too many rugs on them.
 
When I met Fat he was fat, hunting, and very fat , after illness and treatment with steroids I think at his heaviest he was 760 kilos , he's a 16.1 ID
I have not had a fat type since I had a Shetland when I was child so I had to get on and learn .
What I learned .
Grass is dynamite for Fatty strictly restricting grazing is essential , over time and reading threads on here I made a sort of track system it's not a true track but is a sort of crooked Y leading along the edges of several fields it has a lot of hedge and a shed ( luckily ) doing this was my breakthrough .
I have learnt how to work him better over time he's needs lots of slow work hacking but key is short bursts of intense work we use lunging , work up a steep bank and jumping grids to do this .
At first we got him working twice a day usually a hack in the morning and another sort of work in the afternoon
Fatty lost ,over nearly three years , two hundred kilos .
He's been tested for EMS several times and for Cushing the tests are always negative it seems impossible that he does not have EMS but there you go.
He takes a lot of time to manage .
We strictly manage forage when he's not hunting , he's given chopped straw which he hates and strictly rationed 'lite ' Haylege but he's feed some high quality protein even out of the hunting season ( micronised linseed ) because one thing I have learnt that I needed to build bulk of healthy muscle the more muscle bulk and definition he gets the easier he is to manage .
If Fatty was not hunting ( he'll do two days a week this season ) he would be a nightmare to manage he does long days and is unrecognisable from the fat lump I started with , he's full of hell now where he was very very lazy ( although this was in part driven by the heart problem he had when he arrived ).
You have to learn how to keep the horse happy while during it's reducing diet I learnt to do lots of different thing through the day through the day so he was always moving to a different place . The track at night , turnout in the school , the stable , tied up on the yard ( he's nosy so he like this ) so he was standing about feeling hungry as little as possible.
Funnily now he's not as greedy as he was he has forage all the time he's stabled during the hunting season and his life is much better .
I learnt I had to take him to the vets and weigh him I do this at least four times a year .
In summer he gains weight and goes up to about 600 or 620 kilos and in winter at his leanest between mid December and mid march he goes down to around 550 .
Each season I get better muscle definition and he looks more and more an athlete all be it an ID athlete this year the fat pads on his shoulders have almost gone they used to be huge now when he's newly clipped you can see a shallow layer of fat where the huge rolls used to be .
I have two saddles for him one for the summer and one for the winter .
I wish you luck with your horses diet / work programme I thought I would never get Fatty slim but I did .
 
cptrayes said:
What people are missing is that horses evolved those thick coats to live on wild exposed moors with nothing decent to eat all winter, not sheltered livery paddocks :)
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really? there's more to keeping warm than a shaggy coat-body shape, head shape, size, grease production (different in say my Exmoors than my Lusitanos), ability to get as much out of rough grazing which includes adaptions in jaw shape, caecum size etc etc. I agree with you in principle but there's good reasons why say, the arab stallions turned out on Exmoor didnt survive for very long.
 
Reducing horse's rations in order for them to use up more calories than they are eating is hardly 'starving' it. At the moment the horse is getting fatter because it is consuming more calories than it needs and so it is laying those excess calories down as fat. I have absolutely no problem with leaving a horse out unrugged if it is unclipped. But I have a huge problem with messing with its heating regulation by removing all its fur and then leaving it out in the winter without a rug. I still maintain that is cruel. However, the owner of the horse that sparked this discussion has stated that the horse has not once been left out clipped and unrugged and so we are talking about a hypothetical situation.

Maybe some people who live further south have nice sheltered paddocks, but many don't. We are on top of a hill here and the wind is bitter. Our unclipped youngsters are currently out in medium weights at night and naked during the day if it is not raining or too cold and windy.
 
I have clipped to help control weight in the past, but only a low trace clip at most. I would never fully clip a horse and leave it exposed to the elements, it is totally unnecessary and with correct work and diet even my hairy unclipped native will lose weight.
Plenty of weighed low calorie forage, a good supplement and setting up a track system if work can't be given has worked for every overweight horse I've managed.
 
Inthesticks said:
I have to say, my own opinion is you are only considering options that suit you, ie clipping out and no rug unless wet/cold

To reduce the weight of a horse, reduce it calories, ie his grazing, yet you do not want to do this for 2 reasons

1. he will miss his friends in a 'fatty' paddock... no room to move... answer: make it large enough and don't you think he will miss his friends for a lot longer being on box rest for lami?

2. You dont want to leave this yard, and 'you have to make the most of what you have and adapt' answer: if you care for your horse and cant reduce his grazing to an acceptable level at your current yard, you need to move him

Obviously the easy answer for you is freeze the fat off because it suits you and you don't have to move yards or reduce his grazing like 90% of experienced owners of good doers, yes... really... some other people are experienced in dealing with good doers too..

Too me you do not sound experienced enough to challenge your terrible vets advice, which we all have had to do over the years, they can be wrong as other people have said and you have to know when to follow advice and when to ask for a second opinion
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I agree with this. If you really want to shift the weight you need to really up his exercise and if this isn't possible, really restrict his food intake. Yes horses need access to forage to keep warm and keep his gut healthy, but he is still obviously getting too much from the field he is in or he wouldn't be gaining weight!
 
I can't imagine how fat a horse must be to warrant a full clip and turning out unrugged over winter. Surely this problem should have been addressed before the animal got this overweight?
 
#There are ways and means to loose weight and this is not one of them,FFS. I have a good doer and I would never under rug her to get rid of the weight. As some of the others have said she has soaked hay and plenty of exercise. So what do we do next make an over weight person go out with next to nothing on Some people are beyond words...................
 
I vaguely remember reading an article/book that stated it is the actual process of breaking down food that creates heat for the horse not the food itself, unlike humans.
 
blazingsaddles said:
I vaguely remember reading an article/book that stated it is the actual process of breaking down food that creates heat for the horse not the food itself, unlike humans.
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It's got to be both, surely?.The process of cells using energy supplied in the blood by the digestion of food also creates heat, doesn't it? It's not that horses don't create heat with digested food, it's that humans don't create heat in the quantity a horse does by breaking down fibre in the gut.

That's why I would prefer, given the choice of only the two options, to leave a horse with less rugging and more food than to muzzle it and rug it.
 
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