Evaluating your Current Feeding Program.

Before you can design an effective feeding program, you have to analyze your current feeding schedule and your horses dietary needs.

I have an aged (21 year old) gelding in light work.  He is 16hh and a Thoroughbred cross.  He is the poster-child for "hard-keeper" and eats an enormous amount of daily food.  For example, currently he is on 10 pounds of grass hay, 3 pounds of hay pellets and a pound of bran at breakfast and 10 pounds of grass hay, 3 pounds of beet pulp (soaked in 2 liters of water), a pound of Senior feed, and a pound of C.O.B - plus Millennium Gold, Selenium (our hay is deficient), Vitamin E, Cosequin, and hoof supplements with free-choice mineral block and plenty of fresh water.   All this, and he is still too thin!

Clearly, while he isn't being starved, his dietary needs are not being met. Out of concern for his lack of condition, we had his teeth floated.  The vet said they were a little rough but nothing that should have prevented him from adequately masticating his hay.  This is borne out by the fact that he EATS his hay, and by the fact that as he has aged we have been having his teeth checked at his twice-annual vet checkups.  Nevertheless, we floated them and hoped it would help him put some weight on.

It has been more than a month, and he is still happily chomping away at his food, and not gaining an ounce. 

Looking at his exercise, we can see that he isn't overworked, being lightly ridden four times a week.  Less and he gets a little stall-crazy- more and we worry that we would cause injury or more weight loss.  We can't ramp up his exercise routing, and really start training until we get the calories under control.  Ideally, he would be putting on weight and we would feel the need to exercise it off.  He has some mild arthritis in his rear pasterns, so frequent exercise is good for him, keeps him limber and loosens him up.  Currently his mild exercise is walk-trot some canter work for up to half an hour four times per week.  He gets twenty minutes of warm up and twenty minutes of cool down, and tops half an hour of actual work.  So we'll say he's getting four hours per week of mild work.

The hay situation isn't great, he is allergic to timothy and the grass hay is filling but not that nutritious. 

Proposed adjustments:

6 pounds grass hay am/pm
3 pounds hay pellets am/pm
3 pounds beet pulp am/pm
1 pound bran am/pm
supplements

After a month, we'll see how this adjustment has affected his weight.

Evaluating the Condition of Your Horse

The basic tool for evaluating the condition of your horse is the Henneke Body Condition Score which allows you to evaluate your horse using six areas and assign a numerical rating for overall condition.  The overall rating should fall between 4 and 7 but we should all be aiming for a 5. 

The beauty of this system may be that your horse is thin over his withers, or fat over his tail, but the overall score falls neatly within the acceptable range.  This keeps a single element which may be affected by conformation flaws (such as a mutton-withered horse) from throwing off the evaluation of the entire animal.

Of course there are different levels of fitness as well, and my advice in this series of blogs is going to be geared toward the non-competitive rider just trying to keep the horse in reasonable shape and conditioned for 1/2 hours workouts two or three times per week.

To start we have to determine the condition of our horse as of TODAY.  Mine is thin - again - and I scored him at about a 4.  He is a 21-year-old TB cross and tends to shed weight at any opportunity.

The need to fatten him up is complicated by his feed allergies, he can't have timothy hay, which is the most common hay around here.  I had his teeth floated and he still isn't putting weight on so it's time to rejigger the exercise-feed combination.

Post your horses age, breeding, condition score and workload and we'll work on getting feed and exercise programs for all of us!

Fireworks Safety and your horse.

We board out, and twice a year (thank you, New Year's and Independence Day) we have issues with fireworks and injury.  This past New Years celebration saw my horse with a damaged hock that rapidly got infected, we really thought he could be at the end due to his age.  Fortunately, twice daily antibiotics and some really good wound care cleared it up, but not without some ugly scarring.

How can you protect your horse from yahoos with fireworks?  My new rule is to close him into his inspected and well-bedded stall overnight.  Usually he has free access from inside to outside whenever he likes but that injury January 1 really scared us!

Some friends who board at a different barn patrol their property line to discourage fireworks, with the police on speed-dial since setting them off is illegal here.

I recommend a well-inspected enclosure, plenty of hay, and full water buckets.  If your horse is spooky you may want to put cotton wool in the ears to block sound.  I don't know about Ace, I think woozy horses can be more of a problem that clear-headed ones! 

Get there early and check carefully for new wounds before you turnout, also check turn outs for firework debris!

Happy Fourth!

Pony Club!

I encourage everyone to get involved in a service organization.  Pony Club, 4-H, Horsemasters, all these are examples of horse-related clubs designed to improve horsemanship and horse management skills.

I am a former Pony Clubber and am happy to support local Pony Clubs and Horsemasters groups.  We don't have a local 4-H but I would support that too if it were around. 

Giving youngsters the opportunities to grow as horse lovers is priceless.  Get out there and be involved!

Summer Schooling Shows

I encourage everyone to get out to the local schooling shows.  These shows are low-stress, and usually low-cost, ways to practice grooming, showmanship, sportsmanship; and they are a great way to meet like-minded enthusiasts.

Before you go spending hundreds on classes at your recognized shows, practice showing at the schooling shows.  This is how you will learn that your horse doesn't like braids, and will rub them out at every opportunity!  Much better to buy the Sleazy neck wrap BEFORE you shell out for the professional braid job.

Also, this is how you will discover that your docile little Dobbin turns into Diablo the Horse in the show-ring. I have seen quiet schoolmasters turn into fire-breathing dragons in the show ring.  The horse who NEVER refuses will suddenly turn into the Artful Dodger...and so on...

Making these discoveries at $5-$10 per class is much better than making them at $50 plus association memberships and fees.  Figure out your horses show issues cheaply, and then work on them BEFORE you visit the big name recognized shows.

Your horse, your blood pressure, and your pocketbook will all benefit.

Trail Ride = Fun Times

It's always fun to get out of the arena and onto the trail.  Especially with an old campaigner like my gelding.  He never twitches an ear, dogs, kids, bikes, whatever, he just struts along. 

Just enough fizz to keep you interested, but never dangerous.  I love my trail buddy.  

Sorry for the long gap - it was a crazy winter!

We struggled with injury, weather, and barn drama this winter!

Not only did I not lose the weight I wanted, my horse lost over 100 pounds because he didn't like the new barn.  I had to stop riding (obviously, since he was dropping weight) and I had to deal with barn drama!

I am glad all that is behind us now.  We love our new barn and he has put back on all the weight he lost.

Onward!