Help me feed a toothless pony *with issues*

[Calvincrowe]

I am borrowing an elderly pony mare to keep my senior retiree company (while my search for a retirement boarder grinds on…). She has no/few teeth left, quids any and all hays and grass, has Cushings but refuses any form of the medication. In fact, the owner had her on it (Prascend) for a few months and she went from healthy looking in terms of weight to a rack of bones. Vet told her to stop the meds. (Is that the famed ‘pergolide veil’??). She has been recently dewormed, up to date on vax, and loves to graze on grass (I think she gets some down based on fewer quids in the field).

This pony is hungry! I am currently feeding her soaked beet pulp twice a day along with a low NSC pellet soaked, rice bran and vitamins. She refuses to eat soaked hay pellets and alfalfa pellets-- just will not, no way, nope. My next move is giving her a higher calorie senior feed, soaked, but I’m worried about sugars with her Cushings underlying everything. Skinny or not, laminitis is a concern, yes?

So…feed gurus, help me find a feed plan for this sweet old lady! How much would you put in front of her in each meal? I really can’t do more than twice a day given my work schedule. She gets it in the morning, then turned out on pasture with my gelding (who wears a muzzle and must be rationed on grass time), then fed again in the evening with free choice pasture for her at night.

Thank you-- I’ve never dealt with a ‘soaked food only’ senior! And sorry for the rambling thoughts!

[NaturallyHappy]

I have one…but no PPID or IR with her, thankfully. We feed her Purina Equine Senior at the rate for horses who aren’t eating forage. We don’t have to soak it, and we feed 4times a day. I wonder what your pony weighs…. This mare also has a hay net so she has access to hay- but can’t get much at a time. She put on weight quickly.

[2DogsFarm]

My mini toyed with laminitis about 5yrs ago.
I’d been feeding all my horses whole oats as grain & it was fine for his first 3 yrs with me (got him as a 2yo), then Not.
Vet suggested TC Sr & he’s been on that since.
He slimmed down on a ration of 1 cup twice a day & has stayed sound.
Flare-ups only when I’m fine tuning when his muzzle goes back on in Spring & he recovers quickly.
My horse is now 20 & a couple years ago he came out of Winter ribbier than I like.
Same vet suggested adding the TC Sr to his feed. It worked, he gets 1 cup added to his 2 cups whole oats twice a day & is in good weight year-round.

You could try soaking it for your pony & hope she’d like it.
The pellets aren’t rockhard, so she might be able to eat it dry. It’s semisoft & sticky from the molasses added - odd for a low-sugar feed - but softer to chew.

[Marla_000]

BTW-i had good luck w/ the Smart Pituitary pellets from Smartpak for my late gelding who could not tolerate prascend/pergolide.
Also I’m rehabbing one now that lost a slew of weight, and she LOVES Triple Crown Senior Gold.
It has higher fat than the regular senior.

[Displaced_Yankee]

@Calvincrowe

This pony is hungry! I am currently feeding her soaked beet pulp twice a day along with a low NSC pellet soaked, rice bran and vitamins. She refuses to eat soaked hay pellets and alfalfa pellets-- just will not, no way, nope. My next move is giving her a higher calorie senior feed, soaked, but I’m worried about sugars with her Cushings underlying everything. Skinny or not, laminitis is a concern, yes?

Since she eats soaked beet pulp, could you try ‘cutting in’ some some soaked alfalfa pellets/hay pellets? Say 7/8 beet pulp to 1/8 hay pellets to start and increase it if she is cleaning up? Mixed in really well.

By other idea is chopped forage. Back in Maine we called it Denje. Lucerne Farms makes a few chopped forage options, as does Standlee.

We also have a 28 y/o, Cushings mare, but with teeth. She was doing well on a Prascend, a balancer and alfalfa until it got hot and she went on a hunger strike. The vet had us stop all Prascend, convert her to a senior feed and whatever hay she would eat. Essentially the vet said she was going to starve or colic before she became laminitic.

She has improved and we are working on switching her back to alfalfa, less Timothy and less senior feed. We have also started her back on half a Prascend keeping a close eye on her appetite.

[Bonnie2]

I would try increasing her current ration a little each day until she isn’t finishing it, then back down a bit. You could also increase the rice bran a bit since that has the most calories. Good luck!

[cayuse]

Can you add in a third meal in the eve? My old timer who refuses soaked stuff can eat Triple Crown Grass forage really well, it’s chopped quite fine and is soft, have you tried anything like that?
Also, Poulin makes a forage extender called Mini Bites that soaks to a mash, it’s pellets (no hay texture at all) and has a flavoring added. My minis go nuts for that and think it’s candy.

[crthunder]

My first horse had few teeth the last few years and also did not like hay cubes or pellets of any kind. What he ate:
AM speedi-beet and fibre-beet mash with equine senior.
LUNCH equine senior
PM equine senior
Night Mash same as AM
I used speedi-beet and fibre-beet bc he could not even chew the bigger beet pulp shreds soaked. The fibre-beet is a beet pulp/hay combo.

For sugar/PPID/IR you will want to measure the pounds of senior feed and other feed and calculate how much NSC is actually being eaten. It may be less than you think when you look at the entire diet. Yay math
Becky (math teacher by day)

[SusanO]

My Cushings pony that we THINK is mid twenties is starting to lose grinding surface on his teeth. His weight is good but I think his inability to chew his hay well is contributing to poopy butt. I had some really premium Idaho OG hay that he loved and he seemed to chew it pretty well. It might have been too rich for him but did not set off a laminitic episode. That hay is gone and even pretty soft OG hay is more chewing than he wants to do. He does have pickiness from Prascend sometimes but he is all for alfalfa in any shape or form. I may try adding some soaked hay pellets to his diet but it is hot as hell here and soaked food goes bad really quickly if they don’t eat it. He won’t eat beet pulp so that is not a solution. And none of mine would ever eat that chopped hay in a bag, no matter the brand. Soaked hay cubes are another idea, especially if they are part alfalfa. But then again, if they are not eaten quickly they go bad in an hour or so. I am not going to take him off hay at this point but would like to add another form od fiber that is easier to chew.

[Jarpur]

Not exactly the same situation, but I’ve got a 26 year old, diagnosed this spring with PPID (but he’s not IR).

It’s been tough finding a way to consistently get the Prascend down him, and it’s affected his appetite, plus he’s not a fan of soaked feed (and our weather is too hot to leave soaked feed around un-eaten). However, I’ve found that he will eat Purina RepleniMash with a dose of dissolved Prascend mixed in. I feed it first in the morning, he slurps it down and asks for more food, and I’ve also had success mixing his other food in with the mash.

At first, I mixed the RepleniMash with water, but currently I’m using Guinness Draft Stout as the liquid (dissolve the Prascend tablet in a very small amount first, then mix that with a larger amount, then use that to hydrate the mash).

Perhaps the pony will eat other feed with the mash added, or with beer added (or both). Also, if it would be possible to feed her second meal after you get home from work, then another late at night, that could help (I feed 3x daily, and fed my tooth-lacking mid 30s horse 5x daily).

[RMJacobs]

I had a large pony who was probably in his 30s when his teeth wore down so he had no opposing chewing surfaces (came to me through a rescue, so I don’t know how old he was when I got him–supposedly in mid teens back then). He got Purina Senior and Strategy, plus Standlee alfalfa to play around with. For the last two years of his life, we were in South Carolina, so he was on pasture all the time, but just quidded the grass. He still seemed to enjoy grazing even though he wasn’t getting any nutrition out of it. I would take him for short walks outside his pasture, and he’d be so excited to get to different grass (which was the same as what was in his pasture). The BO had to keep moving him from pasture to pasture so she could move a horse with teeth in to clean up all the grass he didn’t keep trimmed to a reasonable level.

He developed Cushing’s around the time that I moved him to SC–he was thin when he came off the trailer, but had looked fine when I’d left him in Colorado a month before. I didn’t ask the BO to change his feed because it was all he would eat. He would colic on soaked beet pulp and didn’t like soaked pellets of any kind. The BO had a degree in equine nutrition, and she agreed we should feed him what he would eat. He was on compounded pergolide capsules once he had the Cushing’s diagnosis.

He was cheerful and interested in everything around him until the day he died.

Rebecca

[JB]

If you can get Triple Crown Sr Gold, it’s the lowest NSC + highest cal/lb feed I know of - 1800 cal/lb.

At some point, they get to eat what they’ll eat, regardless of what’s “ideal” for their issues.

Smart Pituitary or anything with chastetree berry, or anything aimed at supporting PPID, may help manage symptoms, just don’t assume it’s managing the disease

My 34yo PPID horse eats, currently, Nutrena SafeChoice Sr, which was recently upgraded with some “taste improvement” to help the old guys, and he’s been happy with it for the longest, by far, out of allllll the things I’ve had him on over the last year or so.

[luvmyhackney]

If you can help it, stay off any soy.

Some ponies/horses are extremely sensitive to it. My pony does really well on soaked beet, soaked alfalfa cubes, California trace, and a handful of whatever he finds tasty at the moment. He can eay hay but that is coming to a close soon. If he ever refuses to eat his food, I can add a couple of handfuls of Ultium Gastric Care and he gobbles it up.

Try to find his guilty pleasure food and add a little.

[Alterwho]

Stabul 1 from Chewy, it’s made for IR horses and is a complete feed. And maybe some EO3 oil? Or Haystack Special Blend pellets.

https://haystackfeeds.com/horse-products/special-blend-pellets/

https://www.chewy.com/stabul-1-equine-diets-fenugreek-low/dp/227245

[Pico_Banana]

I have 2 PPID horses. One only needs half a prascend, which she’s never had a problem with. The other really struggled with the Pergolide veil. I finally got him over it with APF and a very slow taper up by 1/4 pill at a time, going a week at each dose. And he didn’t like the APF so that was fun, too.

I feed them both Triple Crown Senior. About 6 lbs each daily. I figure the NSC isn’t bad and since they both are hard keepers, I’m happy with something they will eat. They both also get Timothy alfalfa cubes.

[Bogey2]

My old picky one gets sentinel sr and nutrena empower. The sentinel is an extruded pellet so breaks down easier and I don’t worry about choke.

[Jarpur]

I forgot to mention that I also feed a scoop of the Horse Appetite Support Supplement from Santa Cruz Animal Health, and that also helps my horse eat, along with the Purina mash and the Guinness.

I did try the APF – it worked for about a month.

[bingbingbing]

Note: I didn’t read the replies. But my old girl will not eat her hay pellets unless there is grain involved. She is fed four times a day. Soaked timothy pellets and TC Senior Gold. She is 29 and aside from not the best topline, she looks great.

[Calvincrowe]

Great advice, thanks all! To update: I increased the Special Blend (low nsc pellet) and tossed in a handful of alfalfa pellets yesterday. Then, the genius move of the day, I fed her in a clean muck bucket! Bingo! More room to fit her head, she can lick it all up! Woot! She also spent all night out on grass, which thankfully my gelding didn’t seem to mind. I’m hitting the feed store Wednesday to peruse the senior feed for one I can A)afford to feed at volume and B) meets her needs.

What was tried and failed before, with her owner: hay pellets, soaked, she refuses. chopped hay (can’t eat, just quids), hay of any kind, just quids. So…we are left with soaked beet pulp, soaked pelleted grains, small amounts of alfalfa pellets and rice bran. I am committed to getting some weight back on her before my new boarders arrive in September and she returns to her loving owner (who has also faced this struggle, we are sharing what works and doesn’t!)

[SusanO]

Sometimes my pony would not want to clean up his feed or would eat a little bit of it and walk off despite me rinsing out his feed tub (plastic - he hates rubber tubs) almost every day. But if he found somebody else’s food in the serving bucket he would chow down on it even though it was the same thing I was feeding him. Somehow when he wasn’t supposed to be eating something it tasted really good. So sometimes I let him eat his food out of that bucket instead of his tub.