How to get weight of our fell pony???

[tikkitti]

I agree our welsh b was a great pony heenpugh up jumping up to being a JC pony in Bsja, was on PC teams, games and jumping, and he could hold his own in the show ring and in his older days he became a 1st pony type. Although he still had his quirky personality and he loved the attention from children and of course mints I think if a little jockey confident enough they will learn lots from the right welsh b, well in my case it was either learn or keep falling off to which i chose to learn to hang on and keep my heels down (as I still remember it being shouted at me as if it were yesterday and im 36 now

 

[Jessey]

In studies it was proven that horses can cram something like 9 hours of grazing into 3 hours when restrictions are removed during the grazing period so there was actually no benefit unless they are brought off the grass for the time without the muzzle.

I would agree about getting her off the haylage, my mare is a good doer (thought not native) and when I had her on adlib haylage (started at Xmas due to a cough) she not only went nutty but went from a BSC of 2.5 to 3.5 in about 6 weeks with no other changes. She's now back on hay, half free access and half in a small holed, double net to ensure it lasts. Our grass is coming through now, my track looks bare but I know that's just because they stuff it down because the rested areas are now green again.

Edited: this study wasn't specifically about muzzles, but the removal of grazing restriction by what ever means.

 

[MrC]

In studies it was proven that horses can cram something like 9 hours of grazing into 3 hours when muzzles are put on/off during the grazing period so there was actually no benefit unless they are brought off the grass for the time without the muzzle.

I would agree about getting her off the haylage, my mare is a good doer (thought not native) and when I had her on adlib haylage (started at Xmas due to a cough) she not only went nutty but went from a BSC of 2.5 to 3.5 in about 6 weeks with no other changes. She's now back on hay, half free access and half in a small holed, double net to ensure it lasts. Our grass is coming through now, my track looks bare but I know that's just because they stuff it down because the rested areas are now green again.

Which studies? Only interested as it was the vet who said to let Her have some time without the muzzle so we did, I did find it a very useful and effective method of restriction even when the others were having hay in the field she couldn't gorge on it. i had one of the shires soft basket types, I put sheepskin on it myself but we had to cable tie it to a field safe head collar as the wee midden discovered after about four weeks how to get it off.

 

[Jessey]

Its was a study done I think by Edinburgh uni, they talked about it on their equine nutrition course. I will go have a look for the reference. I used one in the past, but didn't find it seemed to help much with that horse and as mine live out 24/7, and I worry about leaving them on 24/7 for 6 months or more I haven't tried again, I definitely would if I couldn't control weight by other means

 

[MrC]

Its was a study done I think by Edinburgh uni, they talked about it on their equine nutrition course. I will go have a look for the reference. I used one in the past, but didn't find it seemed to help much with that horse and as mine live out 24/7, and I worry about leaving them on 24/7 for 6 months or more I haven't tried again, I definitely would if I couldn't control weight by other means

Cheers

More info for my BF brain folder. Hoping if I have another horse after the beastie to be able to keep it BF and compete so all this is useful as stored knowledge

 

[Jessey]

It was Dr Joanne Murray's (DICK) course on equine nutrition, its a free course and worth doing when its next available. I can't find the full info, I may have it at home on my laptop still but not sure, but I did find this;

"Although considerably lower, total daily intakes were recorded in another study, which suggested that ponies can ingest more than 30 per cent and up to 41 per cent of their daily dry matter intake (DMI) within a three-hour turnout period"

in this article;
http://www.vetsonline.com/publicati...3/pasture-and-laminitis-truth-or-fiction.html

 

[newforest]

Yes I did this course and basically if you restrict a pony, it just stuffs it back in 3 hours. It was talking about the nutritional needs and mentioned most horses are kept on unsuitable grazing-too much, too rich etc.

I don't plan on muzzling mine. My plans (subject to change) are to allow the cob free access to grazing for x hours per day. But to remove her off the grass totally and feed a % of her bodyweight in soaked double netted hay-allowing for the hours out. The hay is just to satisfy her need to chew, its had its nutrition washed out. She gets the nutritional needs met from the grass. The excess she doesn't need I use up by working her. She has been off the green stuff for two months and dropped weight significantly.

If you swap haylage to hay you really need to be soaking it for any weight loss. Hay is in some cases richer than your grazing. The farmers use their best fields for hay and its summer grass you are feeding in effect.

I do wonder if 24/7 turnout is a thing of the past for some of us. Winters are so mild that the thin skinned tbs are wintering out fine.

 

[joellie]

I don't plan on muzzling mine. My plans (subject to change) are to allow the cob free access to grazing for x hours per day. But to remove her off the grass totally and feed a % of her bodyweight in soaked double netted hay-allowing for the hours out.

This is what I am hoping to do, I was going to keep them out at night and bring them in during the day with soaked hay,probably from about 10am til 4pm and I will use somewhere between these hours to ride.

 

[Native Lover]

As the owner of two Fells I feel your pain.... my Lunan never gets fat because his rider works him quite hard 4-5 times a week to keep him fit not fat and ready to compete...But my other mare Eva never stops eating. I got seriously told off at a show last season for her being to fat... this winter I haven't rugged her and she has lived out 24/7 and has lost 50kgs in weight over the winter and I am determined she wont be putting it back on during the spring and summer.... It is a case of being cruel to be kind I may end up with a muzzle on Eva yet has I don't have stables to bring them in off the grass. I want Eva fitter for showing this year too. will be lunging her as well as riding and lots of hacking out.

 

[Mary Poppins]

Unless you have a good doer it is difficult to understand how much weight they can gain on such little food.

On the the advice of my vet, I fully clipped my horse all winter and turned him out in a rainsheet. He lived out overnight and came in for a small haynet for a few hours everyday and got no other food. I rode him everyday for an hour and we did a combination of flatwork, dressage, jumping, and charging round the fields. He wasn't enormous when the vet gave me his advice, but the vet was concerned about the strain on his joints (as he is a very big horse) and the obvious risks of laminitis come spring and gave me a 50kg weight loss target. I had already dropped 100kg off his weight over the previous year.

I clipped him 4 times in total and gave his last clip in January. For the last few weeks he has been out completely naked and this week I added his grazing muzzle for all his field time (approx. 18 hours per day). We have excellent grazing and although his current field isn't full of lush grass it is starting to grow and look green again.

The result is that I now have a very healthy, fit horse who is at his target weight of under 550kg. He used to weigh near to 700kg. He feels amazing to ride and is much lighter on his feet and more agile. For the first time ever I don't want him to lose weight, but I certainly don't want him to gain weight either.

Was fully clipping and turning out in a rainsheet cruel? Was it too drastic? I really don't think that it was. He was never cold. I checked him in the most dreadful weather in the middle of the night a few times and not once did I see him shiver or feel cold at all. It can be difficult to be on a yard where everyone else is putting on heavyweight rugs, feeding huge bucket feeds and piles of hay and my horse gets absolutely nothing, but a responsible owner has to look at horse in front of them and make an individual assessment of how they should be cared for. I posted about my vets advice at the time and got a huge amount of negative comments about 'freezing off the fat' as my vet so delicately described it, and I think that it much more cruel to allow a horse to become overweight. Horses have a completely different metabolic system to humans which is really interested to read about. They heat their bodies from the inside out and as long as they have access to constant forage they will light the internal furnace and provide the heat that they need.