What do you think?

[PinkGlamourGurl]

About fleur's diet in general.

She's out from half 6/7 am til around 5pm on a small, basically bare paddock. Still grass on it, but short grass. She comes in at 5pm does about 20/30minutes work, nothing strenuous mainly just a bit of schooling/hacking.

She has about half a scoop of applechaff and half a scoop of nuts, scoop(not the big ones! the diddy ones!) of seaweed and occasionally red cell. Then she gets 2 slices of a hay a night.

She's a real good doer and well I've always tried to keep on top of her weight cos of laminitis risk etc.

Do you think thats sufficient?

[Pink's lady]

It sounds like a bit too much bucket feed and not enough fibre.

2 slices of hay a night is really not nearly enough - that will take her an hour or so to eat - that's 13hrs without food. :eek:

I would cut the feeding down to nothing other than a handful of low energy chaff (apple chaff is crap - coated in molassas) and give her at least twice the amount of hay, in a very small holed haynet. And probably mix two leaves of good straw in with the hay too so she's got something to eat most of the night.

In the field, as long as she has something to eat (i.e spends most of the time grazing) she won't need extra.

[Roofio]

does she have hay leftover in the morning? i'd be inclined to drop the nuts and up the hay, and maybe add a general multivitamin or lo cal balancer instead :)

ETA - cross posted with PL ;)

[PinkGlamourGurl]

She cant have a haynet :o Mr physio man says its bad for her back.

What kind of straw?

[Pink's lady]

She might just have to have a haynet. Spending 13hrs not eatting is really really not good for them and outweighs being bad for her back. You could put half on the floor and half in a double holed small net. And tie it as low as possible.

Oat straw would be best but good quality barely straw (the normal stuff) would do, as long as it's mixed with the hay. Kalli got pretty much adlib half hay, half straw when she was in with lami.

OR you could ask around for some really poor quality hay. I did that for Kalli too - the farmer had had such a terrible year for hay he had LOTS of rubbish hay. Plus it was cheaper. A huge round bale of crap hay would last you at least a month.

[mogadoga]

Im another for more hay. And id scrap the spplechaff. Id feed dengie hi fi lite, good do-er or healthy hooves, and no nuts or anything xx

[PinkGlamourGurl]

:o Shame I've just bought more of it haha. Oh well.

[Bebe]

I'm not a fan of haynets either but I do use them if I have to restrict hay for weight reasons, which generally happens towards the end of most winters these days. I use the smallest holes I can find and hang them as low as possible without it being dangerous (the small holes mean you can get away with them being lower as hooves can't fit in them).

Soaking hay can reduce the sugar content and enable you to feed more but it's a real chore to soak lots of hay for long enough in winter, small holed hets are easier.

I did try feeding a small amount of straw to bulk out the hay but my mare thinks straw = bed and won't touch it. On the plus side I felt less bad about her not having as much to eat as I figured that if she was truly hungry she'd eat the straw (it was nice quality). It worked well for a friends pony though.

[shandy84]

Try a feeding bucket for the hay it can be on the floor but she'll have to "graze" it. I certainly wouldn't feed applechaff far too much sugar, you should put her on something a little more basic