Weight loss help

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Lucky788

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Looking for some feeding advice
15.2hh cob, currently weighing in at 632 should be 550!!
Routine is small feed of readigrass & fast fibre (handful of each) morning and evening for supplements, out in the day between 6/7am - 3/4pm on fairly good grazing
Had 6.5kg of hay each night, in light work ie only ridden at weekends, in lightweight rug and clipped but growing out... how can I get her to loose weight?! TIA
 
I've got my fatty on box rest with a poorly foot - without exercise she must have soaked hay otherwise I swear I can watch her expand in front of me.

Any chance of lunging in the evening to help burn a few calories off?
 
I was worried about soaking the hay as it’s been so cold? Could look at swapping for 1/2 hay & straw
We do have a floodlit school so I could go up some evenings to lunge or ride
 
Ditch the readigrass! Yes soak hay and perhaps a grazing muzzle if your grass is still good. But readigrass - and most other whole grass chaffs - can be as much as 12% sugar depending on harvest. Replace it with the lowest calorie chaff you can get. Anything marked as suitable by the laminitis trust will be a massive improvement.

You can feed soaked hay as long as it hasn't physically frozen - soak then pour a kettle of hot water over it. Or steam it if you can. You don't have to soak for hours to reduce calorie content - 2 - 4 hours will do. Even if you can only dip it in clean water (not old soak water!) it will help.
 
I’d speak to a feed nutritionist I used Saracen or Allen & Page. I’d look at diet, I know you want to aim for weight loss but you might want to consider feeding more!

I’ve got a very good do-er new forest at 13.2 she was about 405kg. She’s in no work, lives out rugged but not clipped. Ad-lib hay and gets 1000 grams fast fibre a day. She’s loosing weight nicely, all on advice of a feed nutritionist sometimes the less you feed doesn’t help achieve weight loss. Maybe something to thing about.
 
You can probably reduce the hay a little. If she is in from 3pm to 7am that's 16 hours. So I calculate 550 x 1.5% / 24 (hours) x 16 (hours) = 5.5kg hay overnight.
You could double net it if she gets through it too quickly.
I've been soaking hay since summer with no problems.
Ditto you could mix 50/50 hay and oat straw (but mine wouldn't eat the oat straw, even though she happily eats her bed!)
Cut the feed to the minimum possible, mine just gets a pinch of chaff and some balancer. When I really need her to drop weight she only gets the balancer.
I know some supplements need quite a bit of disguising, but have another look at your feed, can you cut anything out? (Be strict with yourself) Does she need breakfast and tea? Mine only has tea, I put her supplements in that feed.

Probably too late for this year but if she is in light work does she need to be clipped out? Mine just has a very low trace clip and goes out unrugged in all but the coldest / wettest weather. I check her carefully morning and night and she has been comfortably warm.
 
Thanks for all the advice :)
I can cut the readigrass out and just have fast fibre on its own to hide supplements.
I would normally clip again as she gets so hot but am rethinking a low chaser so I can leave rugs off sooner. I will also cut the hay down to 5.5kg and see how we get on, Ive also weight taped this morning so I can keep track of the weight loss
 
Don't take notice of the laminits trust stamp on feeds. It's doesn't mean it's low sugar and starch.
Feed companies pay to have this stamp so basically it doesn't mean any thing and can be on high sugar and starch feeds.
Ring Allen and Paige and they will advise.
Top spec zero is a good chaff if you need it.
Fast fibre is good.
Thunderbrooks is also good but is expensive.
 
I got a lot of weight off my fatty warmblood this summer by a combination of using a grazing muzzle and soaked hay. He also got worked harder.

Now he is fully clipped - was clipped again earlier this week and is in a light-medium rug (about 150g), has a handful of chaff and a cup of balancer twice a day and two large nets of hay when he comes in at night. He hasn't had as much work as I had hoped but is keeping the weight off. I check him at 10 each night (I keep my horses at home) and he is not cold. In previous years I think I have tended to overrug him but gave him less hay.

Maybe clip your horse again and keep him lightly rugged. I would also agree with cutting out the Readigrass.
 
The top picture is the start of October, the day I bought him. The bottom is the end of October. He was extremely fat as he'd been living out on grass 24/7. He went on a 'diet' as soon as he came home: for a month he had no grass and was turned out in the arena with hay/a rock salt lick and two others. The lack of grass was why the weight came off so you need to limit that hugely - at that point he was only being ridden twice a week and maybe on the walker twice a week.

fNRGCon.jpg


He's lacking some muscle but that will come back once he's back in regular work. He now gets around four hours on good grass each day. And he finally has a wither which means I can actually find a saddle to fit him without rolling off.
 
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My good doer has lost about 40kg in the last 6 weeks. She came out if summer a but chubbier than I'd like. Vet said she was fine but he wouldn't want her to still be that big in March! All we've done really is up the work. She is being worked daily for about 40 mins to an hour, long lining and schooling. And hand walked for 10 minutes as a separate exercise (we go twice a day). It's not high intensity work but it has been doggedly consistent and the weight has come off nicely. Still some more to go though.

We have to feed haylage as decent hay is impossible to get, she gets a set ish portion of that where the other horses are on adlib and I provide a couple of scoops of top chop zero so she has something to pick at when she rubs out of the haylage but she hardly touches it.

I do think work is key so if you can increase your workload do it.
 
Ditch half the hay for straw, ditch the readigrass and work it off. If it's capable of working, that really is the best thing for them.
 
Lots you can do by the sounds of it.
I’d be inclined to clip out and just keep a rain sheet on.
Soak the hay.

The 2 big things though are access to grass and exercise. You either need to get him on poor scrubby grazing and/or seriously up the workload
 
I bought an obese mare and got 100kg off her by feeding a small amount of unsoaked hay and huge trugs of plain oat straw chaff. She got colic from eating long straw. She was never without some kind of forage.
 
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