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HMH Reality Check said:
Trost District said:
I would switch up his grain. 4 pounds per day is nothing when you weigh over 1000. He should be eating closer to double that if he's doing work and needs to put on weight. Dry pellets with 14 to 16% protein would probably be a good choice. In my opinion, timothy hay is awesome. All my animals love it. At my house, my horses just have hay, grain if they need it, and free choice minerals. The hay can be bermuda, prairie, mixed, or crab grass, which they also seem to really like. One problem that I see with a lot of the performance horses of my area is people trying to feed too many different things. Supplements help, but when they're eating 5 different supplements plus their hay and grain, the gut sometimes decides enough is enough and gets burnt up. Even with my beef show calves, who need to be huge and burly, all they ever get other than their hay, grain, and minerals is an appetite stimulant and cold rinses with the hose. A lady that I know plays polo professionally, and all her horses get is a mix of ground alfalfa and whole corn plus pasture in summer and hay in winter. They look fantastic. Half of them are ottbs and there's never a rib in sight on them. Plus, they have plenty of energy and love the feed.
My arab is 875 lbs. 14.1hh. 2 pounds of grain is plenty. He doesn't not need to out on weight either. You can't see his ribs, he's in great shape. I just want him to be a bit chunkier for winter. It's not necessary though. My guy isn't a high proformace show horse. Yes, I ride everyday but 80 percent if the time it's bareback in the field. He gets so bored of the arena, as do I.
I think he looks good. I wasn't saying he's skinny. You had said you wanted him to be chunkier, and being chunkier means putting on extra weight. Also, I dont consider the style of riding to matter when it comes to how much. I can do my pole bending practice bareback and bridleless with one of my mares and her have a pretty good workout. We never ride in an arena to practice. It's all done with homemade poles and old metal barrels in the pasture. 2 pounds grain is barely a snack to anything over 500 pounds. I used the polo lady's horses as an example because I think hers look really impressive, not because I thought yours looks bad. I think your horse looks in great shape. He's not thin, but he's not obese. I like how he looks. If a pleasure horse is being ridden every day, it would still need extra to pack on additional pounds. Increasing the efficiency of the digestive system can sometimes harm it when it's already doing a good job processing feed, and yours is clearly doing fine as he is. He would probably need a little more grain in winter since they have to burn calories to keep warm, but I wouldn't add something new to his feed when he already looks good. |
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Yeah I think a lot of the comments here were coming from the point of view that your horse was too thin and you wanted him to gain weight before winter/he needed to gain weight before winter if he wanted to do well. Your horse looks perfectly average in weight, and if he were mine I would just make sure he gets a few extra flakes of hay a day, and was blanketed well. He also really doesn't look like he has a hay belly, which is something you mentioned in an earlier reply I believe? |
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I dont know too too much about supplements for super harsh winters but I do know of some people who use agrobs feed for their horses (one of which is a 22 year old AA mare). They live in the Netherlands so it does get very cold there and she seems to stay a good weight. I know that when I was a volunteer at a stable they had a lot of older horses there that were all fed agrobs feed as well and alph alpha cubes were probably the best. I dont know if I was spelling agrobs correctly. If you'd like, they have posted a video on how they actually feed their horses in the winter to keep their weight in the right place that i could send you a link to. |
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