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Feeding Mustang weanling-yearling colt

But if they’ve only gotten (for example) 50% of their copper and protein needs for the first year of their life, it’s not like you can give them 50% more for the 2nd year to make up the difference.

You can’t undo whatever damage or “damage” a nutritionally deficient diet caused while growing - the growing is in the past.

You feed the horse you have in front of you, feed the growing left to be done (if any).

A FEC is a great place to start. You’d be surprised how low worm counts can be on previously feral horses, given their lifestyle and not eating close to where they have plopped their manure. Infective strongyle larva travel up and down forage, not traveling (much) horizontally

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Not really, but that’s why I included being on a feedlot as a reason for a FEC (which you cut off). Either way, its a cheap test and a potential cause for his pot bellied appearance.

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I have dewormed him and will be sending a fecal out soon.

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No, but we aren’t talking about a 2 year old. This horse is 6-8 months. It’s still actively growing by leaps and bounds.

Also, these horses aren’t feral. They are kept in feed lots. It’s likely her horse was born in a lot. It’s spent it’s whole life confined with some round bales and a bunch of other horses.

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Just to clarify, when I said feral I basically just meant unhandled - no routine care or training. I don’t put reservation horses in the same category as BLM horses, the breeding/genetics and environment is vastly different.

OP, we’re still waiting on pictures! I’ve seen some really nice horses that came from the reservations. I’m glad to hear you’re getting him healthy and on the right track!

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He was wild born, unsure how long he’s been at the lot but not long, I’d guess weeks to
a month at most.

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Any idea how to post pictures? I can’t seem to figure it out! He’s supposed to be from Warm Springs but is a Rez horse not the HMA. I’m not sure how different they are except that BLM doesn’t manage them. He’s quite the smart lil guy and super quiet! He took to handling within a couple days and was never once flighty, just backed away with eyes on me. Now he’s in my pocket all the time and picks up new things everyday with very limted handling.

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If you’re on a phone, when you hit the reply button, hit this button:

and you can upload photos. If on a computer, there’s a button at the top of the reply window with the same function but I can’t recall what it looks like :joy: I mostly post from my phone. There should be a tutorial in the Technical Help forum if you can’t find it.

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Excellent thank you!
Here he is with who I think is his momma


And here with I think his sire, he was the oldest stud



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What did you use, and when? That will affect when you can do a FEC

The age was just an example. You still can’t double the protein if they only got half of what they needed in the first 6 months, it doesn’t work like that. You feed the horse you have now, what they need now. More protein just makes expensive, ammonia-filled urine, it doesn’t go back and fill in the gaps

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No one is talking about protein? And no one has suggested you can somehow magically cure the earlier nutritional holes. But you can make sure that this foal has everything it needs during the growth it’s going through now.

You are kind of acting as though feeding this horse a vitamin and mineral supplement will be dire to its long term health. Best case, it fills in the nutritional holes it more than likely has. Worst case, the horse excretes the vitamins and minerals. The majority of supplements are not going to be critically high in selenium, and these companies plan for the fact that they are used across the country. It’s why in some places, you actually have to feed selenium on top of a vitamin/mineral supplement.

Feed companies spend decades and a ton of money formulating their feed for horses. They formulated ultium growth, mare and foal, etc for these babies so they have what they need to grow up healthy. Ideally we feed foals this food, because it’s targeted for them. If you get a particularly thrifty foal, then you reassess and change the diet.

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And I’m sorry if I am coming off as rude. It’s just that foal nutrition is a hill I am willing to die on. I’ve seen too many horses who have grown up with poor nutrition because people thought what they were doing was ‘good enough’ and I’ve dealt with those after effects. I’ve dealt with horses who are blind because no one thought to make sure they had the right food as a foal.

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I used Safegaurd pellets but he didn’t like them yet so unlikely he got his full dose. That was shortly after I got him.

I really think he’s at a good spot but will be monitoring him closely. The RB has feeding instructions for his age and size that meets all nutritional needs including vitamin mineral when fed to the correct amount. If I find he doesn’t do well I’ll reassess and add calories or switch entirely. Don’t anyone worry, he’s not going to be missing anything.

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Yes, feed the horse you have now. If I misread the intent of your first comment, my apologies. It doesn’t matter if they came from a nutritionally deficient start, which is really the basis of where I’m coming from. Feed what you have, the nutritional requirements are the same for a 6 month old who came from a great start, and who came from a poor start. That’s all I’m trying to say (maybe poorly)

No, actually, I’m not. I will say that the typical v/m supplement out there provides so little of everything that they aren’t going to fill in more than the smallest gap. 14mg (if that) copper is hardly anything. So while a typical v/m is not anything I would suggest, it’s also not the worst thing. But I will always actively suggest against it unless a forage analysis shows that it does a good enough job.

We have to consider that a foal’s nutrient requirements are similar to his adult self, but starting from a place of maybe 1/2 to 2/3 the forage his adult self would be eating. That’s why the feeding rate of a ration balancer is higher for a foal/yearling, than his adult self.

Water-soluble yes, fat-soluble no. But the typical v/m supplement doesn’t have enough of much of anything to make a difference either way. And as you say, the Se content is usually so low it doesn’t matter either way either.

And yet, there is still Omolene 300 which is 30%-ish NSC, and it has been pretty well proven that high starch diets, especially long term, are linked to DOD issues.

Tribute Essential K is a ration balancer, with foal feeding rates, but that the 3lb rate they have for an average foal, they are pushing the boundary of toxic levels of Vitamin A. They have been questioned by vets and nutritionists, and they don’t care :woman_shrugging: :grimacing:

We can’t implicitly trust them, we have to do some of our own homework too.

As you can see, so am I LOL! I don’t see you as rude, we’re after the same goal, probably more alike than it seems by our conversation :slight_smile:

It all comes down to - feed the horse in front of you, regardless of the background. Run some blood work to see what you can see - Vitamin E, selenium, and a few other things, to see if the current diet should get things where they need to be, or if you need to be more aggressive in the short-term if something is low enough

I will always recommend starting with a ration balancer for foals who are currently in good weight on a forage-only diet. For most, that’s all the extra calories they need, barring maybe a few 1000 extra during some growth spurts.

I’ve seen too many fat foals because the owner wanted a Foal/Growth feed, and were intent on feeding 6-7lb because that’s what they label said, OR, the foals are in good weight but they’re only feeding 2lb of that foal/growth feed because any more makes them fat. Neither of those is appropriate.

Yeah, that’s a problem, so a FEC asap is a good idea. Even if he ate them all, if you didn’t use a double dose, by weight, then it was likely useless anyway, due to high, widespread resistance. Acclimate him to paste deworming (some are tasty enough they can be put in the feed but foals can be iffy enough about hard feed that may not work well either).

Safeguard/Panacur (fenbendazole) and Strongid (pyrantel pamoate) need to be double-dosed to kill ascarids. But strongyle resistance is high.

Ivermectin is needed for bots and strongyles

Double pyrantel kills tapeworms

By the Fall of their first year, Equimax is a good idea to kill bots, tapeworms, and strongyles

Microsoft Word - AAEPParasiteControlGuidelines.docx

If you want to cut to the chase, scroll down to “Considerations for foals, weanling, yearlings”

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Thank you for that info! I’ll take a fecal in to work (I’m a vet tech but we see small animals and poultry however our lab can/ will run anything I want) and get him accustomed to paste. He lets me handle his face quite easily so I think it’ll be pretty easy. He got his first turn out today and my two had quite a run haha he caught up after easily as I hoped :heart:

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Don’t have an opinion on what you should feed him but he is sooo cute. Have fun with him.

Susan

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I know they are fine for some, especially if they are one of those youngsters who never seems to need more than good hay provides.

My comment was because OP’s youngster is ribby with a large belly and can most likely benefit from the extra calories a specific feed would give.

I tried my young horse on a RB when we had good pasture last year as he was gaining more than I wanted and ended up going with the Strategy when he started to lose weight once the grass declined in late fall.

He is on a RB again and so far doing fine but he isn’t growing anything like Op’s will. All that to say that just because they say you can feed it, it may not be the best for every horses needs at this particular stage of life.

My vet was certainly right and my guy wasn’t underweight at all.

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She said

He is in a good weight but is more belly than topline.

The pictures don’t show an underweight foal at all, he just needs a better distribution of that weight.

The fact that he’s now “eating orchard and alfalfa free choice and quite a lot of it,” is going to make a big difference, as I bet he wasn’t getting that much, or that quality, where he was

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Those pictures are over a week old too. Here’s some from today shows how he’s doing just on.the little bit of senior complete and taco(only about 2 lbs per day, if he even ate it) with the hay. He looks better already


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He’s cute as a button. That looks like a wormy belly.

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