My sweet mare is older and has lost some teeth. So she needs soaked grain, which she hates and will no longer eat… She does reasonably well on green grass, and I wonder if there is somewhere she would be able to graze year round on nutritionally dense grasses.
Maybe somewhere just off the gulf coast? Kentucky? Here in Oklahoma the winters are too cold, and to some degree the summer is too hot for the grass to do really well. It doesn’t get any better further north.
Hawaii. Really don’t think you’ll find grazing year round anywhere in usa.
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Irrigated fields in California? ? Interesting question!
Mine graze all but Mid-Dec through March- early April, no one who can eat grass gets more than a RB those months. I do retirees and have a lot of tricks for getting grain in them. Does she choke? I prefer feeding on the ground if they choke. I also find that experimenting with grain and mixing it up a lot is very helpful. Some oldies seem to revel in frequent changes. Many don’t have teeth but can do fine on a variety of feed options for a long time if teeth are the only issue. Seniors are a lot of trial and error and close attention but I love pampering them! Blanketing can really help seniors in off months, I blanket them to comfort which is often heavily for seniors, while keeping them out so they can move as much as possible (good for old arthritis).
I find lots of seniors don’t like soaked food. It is what it is, feed on the ground and experiment with getting calories in.
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Many parts of California IF the pastures are irrigated and managed well. My current boarding barn has grass year round because they irrigate, but I wouldn’t necessary call it “nutritionally dense” because aside from watering and the occasional mowing, not much maintenance (re-seeding, etc.) takes place.
There will be a trade-off there.
If you have grass growing most of the year, it probably will be humid and hot in the summers, which can be hard on old horses also.
Florida is one place I hear they can have grass year around, but they would still need to be supplemented some, their grass not that nutritious in the smaller volume older horses would eat.
Someone here kept two very ancient horses without any teeth doing fine for some years on a free choice super nice big alfalfa bale and senior feed.
Sure, they quidded much of the alfalfa, but still ate enough to help, along with the senior feed they didn’t waste chewing on it and dunking every mouthful in the water buckets.
Also try to find what height they prefer to eat, some rather not reach way down, but only half way down, so put their feed there.
There are studies that show if horses eat across from each other, they tend to eat more.
That is something you could try, see if feeding together, separated and how to separate to entice them to eat would work best for your horse/s.
With old horses, you have to keep trying to get them to eat, if they are not good eaters, for whatever reason, any one way you can figure.
Maybe some of the suggestions here will help you.
Yes she chokes, and my barn owner is tired of the mess of uneaten wet food, trying to get her cushing meds and liquid e into her etc. I no longer own my own land, or i’d bring her home and do it myself. Maybe I can make it easier on the barn owner to buy some time while I figure out how to proceed, so I really appreciate any other tips to help her. I’ve been thinking it may be best to put her down while she’s happy and feeling pretty good, than wait until fall when she starts to lose condition. And it breaks my heart.
I would first try making the feed more palatable. I like trying different flavorings…packets of Instsnt Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal (bought in bulk at Sam’s), pancake syrup, fenugreek toss with carrot bits, apple bits, etc.
it isn’t wrong to put her down if she won’t eat but I would try some stuff first. Hugs to you.
Oatmeal is one we haven’t tried, thanks. But yeah, we’ve been working on making food more appealing since the fall.
A big enough pasture, one that doesn’t get overgrazed durign the summer, will have lots of “standing hay” forage to keep her busy from Nov - Apr., and then you just have to focus on supplementing (rather than trying to get all of her forage and nutrition from grain mashes). Even in cold central Iowa, it’s well into November that grass is still producing sugars, and my pastures keep a fair amount of green stuff mixed among the dormant grass all winter. I know the sugars get washed out over time, but it’s usually January before my horses get interested in the nice green hay that I offer them. The tell me loud and clear that they’d rather be out grazing (and they’re not losing weight).
So rather than looking at distant locations (I’d have a hard time sending an elderly, high-maintenance horse to somewhere that I couldn’t check on her), you could try to find a big pasture that the owners would agree to leave tall at end of season?
But: it’s not the worst thing to be thinking that she can have this summer and fall, and then make a decision about letting her go before winter sets in. That’s what I did with my geriatric gelding whose teeth were shot and he started dropping weight no matter how much grain I got into him. It wasn’t urgent but Vet agreed that the coming witner would probably be hard on him. Better to be proactive than to find him down in a snowdrift and now it’s an emergency call. Yes, it was heartbreaking, but I don’t second guess it.
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My first guess would be Florida, South Texas (Rio Grande Valley, maybe as far north as Victoria), and Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Possibly also the far southern parts of Alabama and Louisiana.
In all these places it would take someone with the land and the interest in establishing and maintaining enough pasturage, maybe an acre and a half, to support an aged horse with poor dentition. How much would this cost? Less in the East than in the West as the East gets a lot more rain. How much are you willing to pay to have this done? Remembering, too, that older horses have other issues as well.
It would appear that this is not a horse you can just put out and pasture and that means cost to somebody. Who will that someone be?
G.
I’m in Central FL. We have more grass than we know what to do with.
Let me clarify, I would not send her away. As a snowbird, I would go with her.
Ocala. While frosts will turn our winter grass brown, it grows all year long and I do mow even in the winter - not every week like summer, but yes…
I’ve seen horses do fine on pasture year round except for some supplemental hay in Dec Jan Feb in the PNW if the pasture is large and well drained. But the nonstop very cold rain is hard on vulnerable horses, so wouldn’t really suggest in your case.
North Carolina. Seriously. My pastures have perennial Bermuda from May to Nov. Then the annual Winter Rye grass comes in for the whole winter (it is actually sown in late Sept, early Oct.). Not only is it year round grazing for the horses, but it is year round green lawns and fields for people to look at.
Yes, we do get some snow, but it melts within 3 days and the winter rye is there waiting to be eaten. People think I am crazy when I talk about mowing in January, but it is true.
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Here, in North Florida, we have grass year round but like pasture anywhere it requires maintenance (reg mowing, feeding, etc,) to keep it good.
As far as the choking, are you putting her feed tub on the ground? It helped my old, toothless pony.
Feed on the ground? Are you talking about wet mash on the ground? Or dry grain? How does feeding from the ground help?
Put the feed tub on the ground (I would think wet mash). The natural feeding position makes it easier and slower for the horse to swallow as strange as that seems.
