Very fat rescue pony

A

ace123

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We took on a little section A rescue pony. She is FAT. She has a very large crest that is solid . Has previously had laminitus and can't be ridden. So made her a bare paddock for night time with 12hr soaked hay and in during the day with soaked hay. All sounds ok. She won't stay in paddock
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Its electric and on but she gets out and can't see how.
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She has decided she won't eat soaked hay either so tried a mussle which she gets off.
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She also gets stressed if stabled to long on her own.obviously she is being stabled with very small net of last years hay. We do take her for walks inhand but she goes lame if its to far and i do lunge her for a short time. Any suggestions on how to make this little mare shift a few pounds.
thanks
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I would be inclined to either keep her in until the crest softens (won't take long) because a hard crest is a sure sign for laminitis; or put her in a muzzle in a field with more grass.

When you say bare paddock, does it actually have any grass? A stressed paddock like that can be worse for lamis because the new shoots are so rich in fructans. It is better to put her on older grass with a muzzle.

It will take a while to lose the weight, but the crest should soften very quickly if you keep her on high fibre, low sugar, so nothing but hay and chaff and restricted grass turnout in a muzzle.

Also, as the owner of a 15.1hh who can limbo under electrib fence, always make sure (as I am sure you do) that you have three strands going across the top, middle and bottom of the post. George has also jumped the fence before, but he seems to have stopped all that these days
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Good luck
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Ooops, just read the bit about the muzzle!!

Ummm, can't suggest what to do about that - make sure it is on tight enough is the only thing. The shires one seems harder to remove than the greenguard, but G has a fly mask over the top so it is even harder for him!

George will not eat hay that has been soaked for longer than 20 minutes anymore. He did for a couple of weeks and then stuck his fingers up at me - he wouldn't eat it and then one night at the weekend, I put his hay into his hay bar, put him away and the little sausage went in pulled ALL of the hay out and flung it across his bed. He was having an equine tantrum! I now soak it for 20/30/40 minutes and then rinse it well. Hay is important to their diet, especially if they are on restricted grazing.
 
Thanks carrie1983. Her paddock is very sparse now, she is a little ganit. she will eat hay soaked for short while and manage to keep her in around 10hrs a day. Trying to be really careful as don't want her to get lami back.
 
Yes, I understand as my mare died from it 3 weeks ago, although it was infection/stress-induced.

I would prefer my lami horse was either on a bit of ground with absolutely no grass and no chance of any grass coming through, with hay and then in for like you say 10 hours or so. OR out in an unstressed paddock with older grass, for a restricted time. It's just that bare or nearly bare paddocks end up getting new grass shoots coming through which are higher in fructans (sugars), which are like poison to laminitics.

Talk to your vet about founderguard as well, because if she won't eat soaked hay then she may need that to help her digest the sugars, which is the problem for lamis.
 
carrie1983 sorry to hear about loosing your pony.
Mad think is that the rescue place had her on a very lush paddock even though they knew about the laminitus. The area i try to keep her in never seams to grow as its near the gate and alway bare. Only had her 7 weeks so not long to see a weight change. easier getting weight on a pony than getting it off .
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I completely agree. Don't worry too much about the weight, although obviously do worry about it, be concerned about the crest being hard. You want that to soften asap. If you want to leave her on that paddock and in for 10 hours I would give her hifi lite instead of hay. As a pony she'd probably be on 3kg hay a day and 1kg hifi lite. You'd need to replace the 3kg hay with 3kg hifi lite if she wouldn't eat it full stop. Or like I said, try founderguard
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Good luck.
 
It sounds like you're doing the best you can, if you can manage to keep her in the bare paddock you're doing well, those section A's could put Houdini to shame!

I would feed the Hi-Fi Lami stuff as it's designed to help the horse digest food and prevent laminitas, since she'll only be little it shouldn't cost to much as I imagine a bag would last more than a week. Hopefully the weight will start to come off soon, it takes so long to get weight off it's a total nightmare.

My girl is looking ok now but for a while before the grass came through she was rather lean and a girl on my yard (who's horse has cellulite on it's ass!) commented that I should be feeding her more as she was far too thin. I was sorely tempted to tell her a welfare officer would be far more concerned by her horse than my Arab whom you could see a little rib on! Rant over
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Silverspring - I have had this exact same problem. I have a thread about it in veterinary. Most of the other liveries are not really very knowledgeable at all and I take great offence when they tell me I am punishing my horse and near enough abusing him!! I could slap them!
 
Silverspring.. your right about her putting houdini to shame and that soo many people think that fat ponies are cute and cuddley..
Smoochy.. we don't have an areana.. shame as that would be a solution.
Will continue with what i'm doing and change stakes to 5ft one with 4 strands of fencing and see if that holds the little bugger.
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We had a little section 'A' who managed to get through three strands of barbed wire (on a livery yard). We had to pull up three fence stakes to get her back into the field, off the river bank. We think she rolled through, although she was uninjured, it is possible that your pony is putting up with the inital shock to roll on the lower strand and under the next one. Our little mare once got out of the field with someone walking past with a bucket of feed and no-one ever worked out how. Unfortuately our little mare foundered eventually, after getting hold of sheep feed, the sheep were in the next field and a 'kind' walker appeared to have been giving her a handful each day for a week.
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As the owner of an escapee shettie, I can sympathise. I had no idea how he was doing it and literally had to sit and watch, as the little sh*t was waiting for me to leave before escaping. All posts looked in place and after putting FIVE strands up, I knew that it was something pretty clever.

It was (little sh*t!). He was putting his head close to the floor (lowest strand was about 8 inches up), then suddenly charging through, flipping the entire fence clean over his back. The force of the flip meant that when the fence rotated back, the posts landed on the ground spike first, looking loose, but not actually lay down.

My advice is to put in some WOODEN posts, not fencing posts and have them no more than 10 feet apart, closer if you have enough. Currently my shettie has this set-up (well, the posts are metal, but you get the idea!) and he hasn't got out, yet!
 
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