What would you feed this horse?

ihatework said:
She is 4, is she growing much? If so that could explain things, one of mine looked crap as an early 4yo, turned out he had grown 2 inches in 3 months!

If she were mine I'd firstly run a blood sample, including tape worm testing, and pramox her.

Feed wise, I'd either do a coolstance copra and Alfa oil with a cut/min supplement or I'd try pure feeds. I'd also add protein acid ease which is a pre& pro biotic plus an ant acid.
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Good advice. Here is a link to coolstance http://www.stanceequine.com/product-coolstance-copra

I would also agree with the poster who recommended a magnesium supplement.All the above you could gradually add to her feed while you are waiting for the vet results.
 
I had a very underweight TB who according to the vet I took her to today is rather, embarassingly overweight now. I find good quality haylage does the trick. Feed wise I have fed her Rowan and Barbary Readymash Extra (excellent but not good if horse stressy as high starch), Fast Fibre (need plenty of it and not always palatable to all horses) and Pure Feeds Pure Easy (excellent but not as quick working as the Readymash Extra).

I tried C&C - absolute rubbish. I would try and stick with adlib good quality forage and fibre based low sugar feeds such as Fast Fibre or the Pure Easy.
 
Top spec leisure time, Alfa a Oil, either micronised linseed or coolstance copra or even both if she can cope with them and speedibeet I like allen and page calm and condition too.
She needs a high fibre, high oil, low sugar and starch diet so never feed mixes or cereals like barley.
Even if she has ulcers they will be helped by getting rid of cereals and increasing fibre. Gastroguard is the usual preventative medicine for ulcers but it is expensive. All my Thoroughbreds have been fed a variation of this diet for the past 30 years all looked wonderful but soaked grass nuts and Dr green are usually the best methods to help out as grass is the best thing for weight gain. It is essential to keep the vitamin and mineral balance correct so hence the use of balancer and of course it takes time you shouldnt change feeds for months after establishing a diet to give the food a chance.

Have heard good things about outshine too for weight gain
 
My normally porky boy lost loads of weight after moving yards. He is a quirky stressy type and I was worried about sending him over the edge with feed. I tried a few but found the Readymash extra brilliant, fed with Hifi, Hifibre cubes and at his worse conditioning cubes too! Not in massive amounts though. He has lots of haylage and now, 6 months later is nearly the horse I had before the move. Its wierd as he tolerated the feed well and is now more chilled than before we moved.
 
Some horses simply can't put weight on off a fibre only diet. I ahve played with most feeds with my guy and the thing which was magic for him was oats and alfalfa along with a fully balanced supplement (not all are you need to do your homework and it needs to be specific for your situation). there are before and after pics of my guy on my profile.

Calories in need to be more than calories out.

My guy used to be stressy and insecure and grass affected he was switched to the oats diet last winter and I have a completly different horse this season so chilled and easy.
 
My pointy pony a few months ago:
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after trying different things and talking to a nutritionist he is now on adlib haylege, Alfa a oil, conditioning cubes, baileys no.1 cooked cereal meal, magox, brewers yeast, unmollassed sugar beet, linseed oil and garlic. 3 small feeds a day, (less than 2 1/2 level scoops per feed otherwise it is wasted as horse can't utilise it) and he is starting to look great! Really filling out along the top and quarters.
 
I would get bloods done and perhaps check via vet for ulcers. If All was in the normal range I would then try 3/4 feeds a day each:
1 x250 g build and glo by D&H
1/1.5 D&H Just Grass
1 Allen & page weight gain
1 measure of NAF pink
Powder and
1/2 scoop soaked alpha pellets.

We have a lot of racers out of training in various states of stress and condition as well as youngster for eventing and the above regime works on our most stressed out ones. You may need to do smaller portions initially to get her into it but then try to get the intake as above. Another good product is Succeed which you can add to the feed or paste
To horse daily. Contact Emma Hardy at Succeed. She is v helpful
 
As we are coming up to Xmas the easiest thing to do is look at feeding regime, and get a worm count, dentist and vet check after Xmas.

The highest calorie feed you can do is topspec balancer with their conditioning muslei stuff, made up to weight with baileys outshine, and a little bit of sugarbeet to dampen it down.

Either this or try pure feeds.

Try haylage as well if possible.
 
Ad lib hay/haylage.

Probably lucerne, definately linseed and a balancer Total Eclipse from Simple System.

Never any sugar or cereal, this will undo everything you are doing to put weight on this horse.

Plenty of exercise builds muscle, being stood in a field or stable wont.


Assuming there is nothing wrong with this horse other than it needs building up.
 
I agree with pale rider, no sugar or starch. Horses werent meant for high levels of that and a lot of the feeds include it in high levels. A fiberous diet is much healthier and you will see results quicker. I recommend ad lib hay not haylage as it can be too rich for some horses so goes right through them without doing anything. Then for hard feed fast fibre and linseed. Although fast fibre is low in calories the linseed is a weight gain. Go for micronised as its easily digestable as its high in fibre. I have been through so many feeds with my poor doer and this is the only thing that she has actually liked and stuck with and she looks great on it. Another thing I noticed with her is she keeps weight better if she isnt stabled. She sounds like your horse, gets stressed at the slightest change although Ive found spending lots of time walking out with her in hand and just generally building with has helped. She trusts me more now so hopefully knows what I am doing is best for her. Like someone suggested maybe look at how you manage. Also agree with getting bloods. Hope it all works out for you and you manage to get it sorted.
 
Your horse sounds quite similar to mine. I had a nightmare trying to keep weight on her last winter, but we seem to have sorted it now.

Last year mine was 4 and looked pretty good coming out of summer having been out 24/7, but when she started coming in over night she started to drop and despite upping the quantities of feed by the end of November she was starting to look like a hat rack.

We managed to get weight back on her at first by adding sunflower oil to her normal feed. We also weighed her haylage daily to make sure she got enough and made sure that she always had enough to have some left over in the morning. This was around 40lbs.

As her feeds were big and it wasn't really practical to split her feeds into smaller ones I looked at alternatives, and started feeding pure condition, I cut out the oil as this has oil included. I continued adding speedibeet though.

This along with making sure she was never cold and trying to manage her stress level meant we got her through the rest of winter looking a bit on the poor side but ok.

This winter we were prepared for a real battle. Especially as we had to go from being out 24/7 over summer to being in 24/7 due to foot issues rather than her usual in at night out in the day winter regime. In the first week she dropped really badly due to stress and we had to increase her haylage to over 50lbs a day.

Then I switched her to a "barefoot diet" and remarkably this put weight on her nicely, and she's kept it on. More recently she's changed stable and this has reduced her stressiness too which is brilliant.

She is currently fed a scoop of soaked speedibeet with micronised linseed, salt and pro-hoof suppliment. I use a little 50ml scoop to measure the linseed and she gets 3 of these in each feed. I could increase this if she wasn't holding weight, but for now (and she's working 5 or 6 days a week) it is doing the job. I was planning to try Coolstance Copra if she needed "more" but at the moment she's fine.

The pro-hoof is great, it gives her all her vits and minerals so she doesn't need a mix or balancer but it also has digestive aids, the linseed has lots of benefits as well as just putting weight on so I think it is better than adding sunflower oil.
 
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