Fat horse
My little Samwise has become quite the porker. And I didn't even notice it for a long time. My horses currently live an hour away from me on my parent's farm (their facilities are far superior to anything I can find here) and so Sam doesn't get much work. If I'm lucky, I ride him once a week. But I haven't been lucky since october, so it's more like once a month. Anyway, I knew he had picked up weight, but I didn't think it was so much as to make me worry about it. Until I put a weight tape on him during the Christmas holiday. And now my 15 hand Appy weighs about 1100 pounds! When he was fit, he weighed 900. Yeah, a bit of a difference.
So, we've done the obvious thing and reduced his feed, but I'm still worried. Before I put him on a diet he as getting a total of 4 cups of plain oats each day, two to four flakes of grass hay and pasture for 8-12 hours every day. Now, he's down to 2 cups of oats a day and 1 flake of hay at night, plus pasture. Being winter, the pasture is poor, but at least it is roughage and fiber for him. I'm worried that this reduction won't actually do any good at all because what he really needs is ride time. But I can't provide that and my attempts to get people out to ride him have failed miserably. So, there may be further reductions ahead. And that makes me worry that he won't get enough fiber. A horse should be able to graze almost all day to keep his gut working as normally as possible. I'm worried that I'm going to have to back down his food so much that he's going to get a shortage of fiber and roughage. So, those of you with horses that are more like air ferns...what do you do?
So, we've done the obvious thing and reduced his feed, but I'm still worried. Before I put him on a diet he as getting a total of 4 cups of plain oats each day, two to four flakes of grass hay and pasture for 8-12 hours every day. Now, he's down to 2 cups of oats a day and 1 flake of hay at night, plus pasture. Being winter, the pasture is poor, but at least it is roughage and fiber for him. I'm worried that this reduction won't actually do any good at all because what he really needs is ride time. But I can't provide that and my attempts to get people out to ride him have failed miserably. So, there may be further reductions ahead. And that makes me worry that he won't get enough fiber. A horse should be able to graze almost all day to keep his gut working as normally as possible. I'm worried that I'm going to have to back down his food so much that he's going to get a shortage of fiber and roughage. So, those of you with horses that are more like air ferns...what do you do?