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.