Feeding a Young, Green Pony

[Wanderosa]

Fancy large pony gelding, coming 6. There’s some TB in his bloodlines and he’s built more like a small horse than a pony. Needs to add about 50-75 lbs of lean muscle to fill out. Obviously, this is going to be a multi-year process of careful training and diet. This is a full lease situation for now.

In speaking to the owners of the barn where we would board, it sounds like they feed everyone TC Senior, beet pulp, rice bran, and a little flax seed. Hay is high quality but appears to be fed only while horses are stalled. Basically, concentrates would be upped if a calorie deficit occurred. I suggested maybe adding a small amount of alfalfa pellets or cubes and some oil instead of beet pulp or additional grain if the pony does turn out to need more calories. This is how the barns where I have worked in the past 5 years and the barn where my leased horse lives all feed. BO and hunter/jumper trainer both told me that the latter diet would make the pony too hot.

I’m just going to let it go because I don’t own the pony and likely neither way is 100% right for every horse. But because I’m curious and bored sitting here at home -what is the current thinking on diet for developing young horses? What are you feeding? I’m wondering if it isn’t somewhat discipline specific, at least in this area. The show hunter barns seem to feed basically as they when I was a kid 30+ years ago whereas the eventing/dressage/show jumpers seem to have backed way off on grain and feed a lot more forage foodstuffs and oils.

[Scribbler]

Good luck getting any barn to feed anything outside of their normal routine because special diets are more difficult, more expensive, and of course they already have a reason to think their way is best. And oil is super messy.

Can you get the hay analyzed? Eyeballing it tells you nothing about what the per cents of protein and carbs are or what the mineral balance is.

You can’t go wrong getting a good ration balancer or a vitamin mineral supplement if he already gets a daily mash. He won’t be getting enough vitamins and minerals from the volume of senior feed they will be feeding him because that’s meant to be fed in huge quantity to toothless oldies.

If he is underweight he should be on an all you can hay plan. Once he is in work you may want to up his protein either via a triamino supplement or alfalfa hay. Again the barn is unlikely to buy you special hay so you may find supplements work better for your situation.

[Wanderosa]

@Scribbler

Good luck getting any barn to feed anything outside of their normal routine because special diets are more difficult, more expensive, and of course they already have a reason to think their way is best. And oil is super messy.

Can you get the hay analyzed? Eyeballing it tells you nothing about what the per cents of protein and carbs are or what the mineral balance is.

You can’t go wrong getting a good ration balancer or a vitamin mineral supplement if he already gets a daily mash. He won’t be getting enough vitamins and minerals from the volume of senior feed they will be feeding him because that’s meant to be fed in huge quantity to toothless oldies.

If he is underweight he should be on an all you can hay plan. Once he is in work you may want to up his protein either via a triamino supplement or alfalfa hay. Again the barn is unlikely to buy you special hay so you may find supplements work better for your situation.

Good info, thanks! I asked the BO if they had any objections to me providing my own concentrates/supplements if needed. They indicated that was ok. (They feed one of their own bagged, chopped forage.) Agree that the oil can get messy. I was an early adaptor of oil as a supplement due to having full blood draft horses. You used to have to try to neatly pour a slug from a Costco gallon jar. The dressage barn I fed for last year had pump tops on their oils made it so much easier. I’m honestly a little judgey towards any barn that doesn’t rinse the feed buckets and tubs after each feed. This is Virginia. A little residue from textured feed left over and you’ll have 1000s of extra flies swarming in the summer.

They may have their hay analyzed. I’ll check into it. Am I totally off regarding the alfalfa pellets? I know the perception in the past was that it would make horses nuts. Heck, I grew up with that perception! My understanding was that it was now regarded as a less heating way of adding calories. A lot of the non-hunter barns feed a little to the easy keepers as a vehicle for top-dressing supplements.

[Heinz_57]

What is the pony’s current diet, since it sounds like this is a barn you would be moving him to, not what he’s currently getting?

I can tell you that my coming 5yo large pony would turn into an absolute blimp if he got TC Sr, beet pulp, ride bran and flax seed. :lol: He gets low quality grass hay, and a quality vit/min (VT blend from Custom Equine Nutrition) mixed into a scant quart of a forage-based pellet. And he’s still a little tubby right now.

If it’s muscle he needs, working within their current offerings … maybe just a smallish amount of beet pulp with a quality vitamin mixed in that has a good amino acid profile? My pony really packed on a topline once I got the aminos dialed in. If that doesn’t get him up to par you could always have them add some flax for extra fat calories. I doubt a pony is ever going to be getting the recommended amount of TC Sr, so you’d need to add a vit/min to meet the daily requirements either way.

[Wanderosa]

@Heinz 57

What is the pony’s current diet, since it sounds like this is a barn you would be moving him to, not what he’s currently getting?

I can tell you that my coming 5yo large pony would turn into an absolute blimp if he got TC Sr, beet pulp, ride bran and flax seed. :lol: He gets low quality grass hay, and a quality vit/min (VT blend from Custom Equine Nutrition) mixed into a scant quart of a forage-based pellet. And he’s still a little tubby right now.

If it’s muscle he needs, working within their current offerings … maybe just a smallish amount of beet pulp with a quality vitamin mixed in that has a good amino acid profile? My pony really packed on a topline once I got the aminos dialed in. If that doesn’t get him up to par you could always have them add some flax for extra fat calories. I doubt a pony is ever going to be getting the recommended amount of TC Sr, so you’d need to add a vit/min to meet the daily requirements either way.

He’s on the lanky side even without much exercise over the winter. Body type reminds me of Teddy O’Connor. As stupid as this sounds, I don’t know what he’s eating now. I’m guessing just hay and a vitamin/mineral supplement. The breeder is in a transistion period due to some life changes. This little guy was well started but has been hanging around with not much to do since. I didn’t get into particulars initially because it seemed like such a longshot it would work. But after hauling him over and trying him, we were impressed that his brain matches his looks. I could never come close to affording something this quality otherwise. I’ll discuss with the breeder in detail what she’s been doing up to now.

Your feed program is basically what I was thinking was appropriate. It’s been so long since I’ve had to come up with a feed schedule for a young horse. My ex husband referred to me as the ‘last refuge of the aged equine’. LOL.

[ABookworm]

@Heinz 57

What is the pony’s current diet, since it sounds like this is a barn you would be moving him to, not what he’s currently getting?

I can tell you that my coming 5yo large pony would turn into an absolute blimp if he got TC Sr, beet pulp, ride bran and flax seed. :lol: He gets low quality grass hay, and a quality vit/min (VT blend from Custom Equine Nutrition) mixed into a scant quart of a forage-based pellet. And he’s still a little tubby right now.

If it’s muscle he needs, working within their current offerings … maybe just a smallish amount of beet pulp with a quality vitamin mixed in that has a good amino acid profile? My pony really packed on a topline once I got the aminos dialed in. If that doesn’t get him up to par you could always have them add some flax for extra fat calories. I doubt a pony is ever going to be getting the recommended amount of TC Sr, so you’d need to add a vit/min to meet the daily requirements either way.

I 100% agree with this. My young large pony blew up on just a small amount of TC Senior so I now use TC Ration Balancer 30%. If the barn is getting TC Senior they might be willing to do the RB. My mare gets just 1lb a day which covers all her nutritional needs and keeps her in decent weight. If the pony needs more calories you can always add the TC Senior. My senior small pony is on the RB with a few ounces of Senior to keep his weight.

If they can’t get the RB then I would inquire about Triple Crown Lite. It’s another solid feed for easy keepers. The Triple Crown feeds are fantastic and pretty all inclusive nutritionally. For a pony you probably only need to feed 1-2lbs of Lite a day with 2lbs being at the top “needs to keep weight” level.

If the pony needs to stay on TC Senior then I would keep it at a very low amount and add a multivitamin. I’ve used California Trace with success and only stopped because I moved to the TCRB and it doesn’t need much in terms of supplementing. The VT Blend above is a solid choice also.

As for the beet pulp I think it’s situational dependent on feeding it or not. All my horses (2 ponies and one horse) get 8 ounces of soaked beet pulp with hay cubes around noon to give them extra water. We live in Florida and I worry about them not getting enough water with the extreme heat.

I would cut the rice bran. Neither of my ponies tolerated that. It was good to bring the one up to a solid weight but just made them look round.

All my horses are on flax seed successfully and with no issues. Like everything else it’s all going to be dependent on how much is fed and what the quality is but this is an item I wouldn’t worry about as much as everything else.

Sorry, had one more thought. Editing this to add, if you wanted my feed program for my large pony I would be happy to share it with you! She also looks like a small horse as opposed to a pony so feeding her has been interesting.

[candyappy]

Sadly what others feed may not be the right program for the pony you are looking at. What feeding works is based on the individual. They only get hay when stalled? How long are they stalled? Are they on grass the rest of the time or just turned out to wander around? How long?

The bulk of any horses diet should be good quality forage ( hay). You make up the deficit in other feed sources if hay alone doesn’t cut it. A young horse who needs weight and is in work should have hay available most of the time. Sounds like the feed the barn offers would be fine. It is just the lack of forage that concerns me.

[S1969]

@Wanderosa

Hay is high quality but appears to be fed only while horses are stalled. Basically, concentrates would be upped if a calorie deficit occurred.

How long are horses stalled?

It’s really hard to say whether this diet is good or bad because we don’t know if it’s 20lbs of TCS + flax and 6 lbs of hay, or 20 lbs of hay and 6 lbs of TCS. I agree that the pony may not get a full ration of the senior if he ends up getting too heavy. But I think I’d be more concerned about possible lack of hay during the day.

[Wanderosa]

To clarify: 1) I believe around 8 hours of turn out. 2) There is grazing available in the turn out fields. No round bales over the winter that I have seen but it’s entirely possible that they are throwing squares out there. I’ve never been around in the early am when the horses go out. I’ll ask.