what to feed a retired poor doer?

[Jericho]

My horsey is 12 yrs old 16.1hhh gelding who has been diagnosed with navicular 'syndrome' and all attempts at remedial shoeing arent helping to make him any sounder so I am just going to retire him over the winter, maybe take his shoes off once we have sorted out his collapsed heels and just give him time. Meanwhile OH has finally agreed I can get another horse to ride but I have to cut costs.

Now this should be fairly easy as retired boy is at the moment having TopSpec Comp Balancer and Outshine, possibly the 2 most expensive feeds there are! He looks great but probably doesnt need all that and am planning to just rug well in winter with lots of hay and a token feed with vits / mins and his MSM/ devils claw and biotin and probably a bit of sugarbeet. He wont be ridden obviosuly so not worried about revving him up so could feed him barley or something else heating.

So the challenge is what can I feed him that still gives him all the nutrients he needs and quite high calorie content to keep him nicely covered (he is a bit of a poor doer!) and is cheap?

Many thanks

 

[Finlib]

Look for a high protein feed .With my poor doer I look for around 12%( I am assuming there is no laminitis issue here ) Normal basic feed is I think around 7%
The feed merchant I use do an own brand which is £3 cheaper than one of the named makes .
I also use speedibeat which he really likes plus a basic supplement if you feel he actually needs it.
I start increasing his feed in october before he starts to loose any weight as I find it harder to put it backon than to hold it

 

[htlmales]

I had a "poor doer" - always looked good but a bit thin, with the right food he would cover up and shine like a new penny, any excercise at all and you could see the weight come off him but no signs of anything untoward.
I finally pushed my vet to get to the bottom of it and we did a few tests and we went from

"He looks pretty good and his condition is great, some horses just lose weight, youll be throwing money away"
to
"these are some of the worse ulcers I have seen, and the interlumen worm burden wont be helping but im not surprised he has it considering the hind gut damage from stomach acid"

Without getting him scoped we never would have known, he has always been well behaved no cribbing or windsucking or any of the signs you might expect

He is a very big lad and we could go through a bag of top spec and a bag of baileys in about 10 days - he is now getting bigger on nothing but haynets, chaffed hay with a bit of oil and about 1kilo of saracen re-leve a day.

I had tried just about every feed on the market, from simple system to show and shine and all the "experts" on the yard said I was wasting money going for a gastroscope "nothing wrong with him he looks well" - So why is he shedding weight like this then?

Please consider getting scoped its not cheap but its easy and its turned my boy around and he is getting bigger on fresh air now (and a £14.00 bag of food lasts about 3 to 4 weeks)

maybe consider vet fee insurance first if you do see ulcers its not cheap to fix

If scoping is out of the question you might try minimising the chances of ulcers by

1 make eating easy - put haynets everywhere each corner of stable hay on top of acid makes a barrier
2 stop riding for a month or so, keep excitiment down
3 feed saracen releve or rice bran
4 dont feed soaked food for a while - it seems to displace stomach acid upward
5 little and often

ps we were dyed in the wool soaked speedibeet and grassnut feeders (it works for the arab) but try a little experiment for yourself -
1 soak some food
2 get a bucket with a few inches of water in
3 drop some dry chaff into the bucket (it should float)
4 drop a handfull of soaked food into the bucket (My guess is that it will drop to the botom of the bucket and displace the water upward, observe how much chewing occurs with soaked food - chewing = saliva, saliva nutralises acid
5 now go look at pictures of horses stomachs and see why all that would not be a good thing (horses stomachs are a pretty poor design)

http://www.thehorse.com/images/content/0304/stomachdiagram.jpg

displaced acid = damage = poor absorbtion = weight loss etc etc

good luck

pps sorry if this seems a bit "sucky eggy" but it came as news to me and a yard full of lifelong horse owners (I guess we knew it but trust feed companies to help not hinder and all fall into the same trap)

 

[UKa]

Good quality hay/ haylage...better still GRASS?!

Maybe a handfulf of non-heating stuff with a broad spec vit supplement...

Mine is in best condition through

Whenever I changed hard feed in mine it did not make so much difference but I can tell if she is not getting enough hay or grass...