Fat ponies

I think it all depends on the standard of grazing that horses are on.

I remember when I was a child. Ponies lived out with no rugs, but they were never clipped, because they never lived on cattle grazing with rye grass and clover. They never got mud fever or rain scald because the grazing wasn't over grazed and liming and dung spreading happened. None of ours ever had laminitis, they were worked a lot in the summer, but not a lot in the winter as we were at school.

I blame a lot of these issues on stack em high yards with unsuitable grazing. I look at my current yard with over grazed paddocks that are full of clover and weed and never maintained properly. Yards when I was a child didn't exist. Horses were kept on farms and ground was properly looked after , but sadly things are different these days.
 
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carthorse said:
The other thing is how much room does your track system allow them? I understand the theory of it keeping them moving, but is it letting them have too much grass? Maybe the real fatties would be better off on a small patch that they grazed down to near bare earth, they may move less but they'd eat less too - at the end of the day I'd get thinner eating 1000 calories & burning off 100 than eating 2000 calories & burning off 200!
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I do agree with this, but I also want my horse to be a horse and live out in the herd with his friends. I don't think that it is much of a life for him to be confined to either a stable or a small section of field. I want him to live as natural as possible. That is why I choose to put a grazing muzzle on him so that he can live with his friends. Yes you can argue that he cannot interact with the horses in the most natural way because his face is covered and therefore he cannot mutually groom etc. but this is the compromise I had to make.
 
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sjp1 said:
I think it all depends on the standard of grazing that horses are on.

I remember when I was a child. Ponies lived out with no rugs, but they were never clipped, because they never lived on cattle grazing with rye grass and clover. They never got mud fever or rain scald because the grazing wasn't over grazed and liming and dung spreading happened. None of ours ever had laminitis, they were worked a lot in the summer, but not a lot in the winter as we were at school.

I blame a lot of these issues on stack em high yards with unsuitable grazing. I look at my current yard with over grazed paddocks that are full of clover and weed and never maintained properly. Yards when I was a child didn't exist. Horses were kept on farms and ground was properly looked after , but sadly things are different these days.
Click to expand...

I remember lots of very fat ponies as a child and many of them getting laminitis. It seemed to be a normal occurrence on my yard. I don't remember so many cases of mud fever, but at the riding school I went to the horses were hardly groomed or had their feet picked out anyway so they probably just didn't notice.

I think that horse care has come on a long way in the last 30 years and these days people take much better care of them. Fencing for example is much improved. As a child I remember barbed wire being everywhere - I don't think electric fencing had been invented so all fields were divided by wire.
 
I agree with you MP, but NL has already said she wont muzzle. I'd hope that by restricting the grazing & upping the exercise they'd lose enough weight that they could eventually go back out with the main herd.
 
Mary Poppins said:
I do agree with this, but I also want my horse to be a horse and live out in the herd with his friends. I don't think that it is much of a life for him to be confined to either a stable or a small section of field. I want him to live as natural as possible. That is why I choose to put a grazing muzzle on him so that he can live with his friends. Yes you can argue that he cannot interact with the horses in the most natural way because his face is covered and therefore he cannot mutually groom etc. but this is the compromise I had to make.
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You are lucky that Ben will wear one MP, I've had no choice to keep Belle either in a stable or on very limited grazing this year because no matter how I try I cannot keep a muzzle on her, I've lost count of the money I've spent and lost on different muzzles none of which can I keep on her for more than a few hours, so while in a perfect world we'd all like our horses to live as naturally as possible it doesn't always work out that way.
 
I would say the track should be so narrow that it is grazed down quickly. Ours worked best when it was not just narrow, but "C" shaped so that to get to the water from one arm of the "C" they had to walk all the way around to the other arm of the "C". This has kept Ziggy in good shape this summer.

Those of you who feed straw, is any old straw OK? I can't get oat straw around here.
 
Juney is clipped bald and oyt naked. She is tough and doesn't feel it. Also she needs desperately to loose some weight. Shes still muzzled and comes in at night. She does have a good sized net as she grazes straw and has coliced before and id rather she didnt graze it. I struggle working 45 hrs a week to exercise them both daily and juney manages well clipped and nakey. Rugs are available IF she needs them.

I hope the reports are right and we have a harsh winter. We need one
 
Dannii5691 said:
Juney is clipped bald and oyt naked. She is tough and doesn't feel it. Also she needs desperately to loose some weight. Shes still muzzled and comes in at night. She does have a good sized net as she grazes straw and has coliced before and id rather she didnt graze it. I struggle working 45 hrs a week to exercise them both daily and juney manages well clipped and nakey. Rugs are available IF she needs them.

I hope the reports are right and we have a harsh winter. We need one
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I haven't heard anything about weather predictions yet - I too am hoping for a cold one!
 
I'm sure they said similar last year and it just rained and rained....still we can live in hope! And I'll buy some more hay in - just in case! You never know, Storm might come out of winter looking like Kate Moss build wise....hahahaaa
 
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Thing is its all individual horses in individual situations. Yes ours is out on what was cow grass but its not been a dairy farm for xx years now it was a tb stud who needed good grazing.
It gets harrowed and rested/rotated.

My vet told me to increase the workload, not decrease the food. The nutrition course I did with a few off here advised not putting lami prones out on bare paddocks because stressed grass contains more sugar as its trying to grow. It didn't cover tracks but our field shelter is one end of the field and the water at the other, they have to move about.
If mine is a bit "nippy" she will have to walk about, any grass hopefully gets used as central heating. She isn't getting the straw, she isn't being let in the shelter.
I guess if you rug, rug a tog less than normal? Laminitus kills, being chilly doesn't.

Eta what does Faye and Lunan do that the others are not? You could up their workload? Depending on your set up, it sounds like you have 6 ponies? Can you run them as a herd everyday? I have done that in the school with four non shod. Just run them for twenty minutes if you can't work all four that day. Or ride and lead.
 
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Mary Poppins said:
I remember lots of very fat ponies as a child and many of them getting laminitis. It seemed to be a normal occurrence on my yard. I don't remember so many cases of mud fever, but at the riding school I went to the horses were hardly groomed or had their feet picked out anyway so they probably just didn't notice.

I think that horse care has come on a long way in the last 30 years and these days people take much better care of them. Fencing for example is much improved. As a child I remember barbed wire being everywhere - I don't think electric fencing had been invented so all fields were divided by wire.
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I think you are much younger than I am!!
 
With nine you are lucky not be with my vet. In their view any private owner with five or more horses is a hoader. You would be advised to reduce the numbers if you couldn't keep maintain the health of all of them. They really do clamp down on people.

You would be given a nutritional diet sheet and a weight loss plan. I know because mine was obese this time last year and I was mortified. I had four weeks to make a dent in her weight and it did kick me up the arse.
 
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