Hot hot hot OTTB horse..... Need help with feed.....

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Maggielynn213;8520710]
She is just coming off of 3 months of turnout. Unfortunately I can’t back off on schooling. She gets a max of 20 minutes per schooling because she is going out twice a day. She behaves much better with it like that, trying to bring her down to once day turns extremely dangerous.[/QUOTE]

Does this mean that she’s in her stall for the rest of the day?

Because if so - that’s your real problem.

If not, I don’t fully understand “she is going out twice a day” - meaning she needs to be worked twice a day to be calm?

Without knowing the turnout situation, I can’t advise yet. I will say that I have always been prepared to euthanize my TB mare if I ever had to put her on any kind of extended stall rest (e.g. beyond a week). She would be unsafe.

[SLW]

[QUOTE=Maggielynn213;8520649]
I have a 6 year old ottb mare who is underweight and extremely hot. I have had her on 3lbs of safe choice senior and 1.5lbs of envision in the mornings and 3lbs of safe choice senior in the evenings and free choice alfalfa during the day with free choice orchard hay and grass in at night. She gets ridden everyday twice a day, a lighter workout in the morning and a hard workout in the afternoon. I am looking to change her grain because she is off the walls with energy. I can’t have productive rides with her because she is soooo strong and full of energy that unless we are cantering circles, she is prancing side ways, rearing, and doing anything she can to move. She is still a bit underweight so I need something that will keep her gaining weight but not give her the ridiculous amount of energy she currently has. She is suppose to be shown to a potential buyer in march and I am currently desperate to do anything I can to calm her down. I am willing to spend $$$$$ on types of feed for her if necessary. Any advice would be great!!![/QUOTE]

You have only mentioned the feed the horse is getting and not the total care- like is she stall boarded or partial stall. You only say she is fresh off of 3 months of full time turnout.

If full time turnout isn’t an option due to the weather or barn situation why not have her turned out during the day. That way in between rides she isn’t sitting in a stall anticipating the next time she is allowed to leave the stall. In 50 years of riding and being around horses I have only known 1 horse that absolutely preferred to remain in a stall over any type of turnout.

If she is ulcer prone then I would keep a flake of alfalfa in her diet and free choice grass hay.

I wasn’t familiar with Envision so I looked up the ingredients. It has a 15% protein which is adding to the energy level. It also has beet pulp in it which I love to use as a way get bloom on a horse without added protein or energy. I would try plain beet pulp- hydrated in water- added to her twice daily grain meals and remove the Envision. Beet pulp is also available with molasses on it which some horses prefer over plain beet pulp.

[Minerva]

@SuzieQNutter;8520828

They can live on grassy hay. They will die if only fed on lucerne hay with no grass to eat.

Is your lucerne/alfalfa different than what we have here in the states? I’m curious because in California most horses are fed alfalfa exclusively since its what we have available out here, and a lot of the western people don’t feed any grain or supplements with it. The horses go their whole lives on it without keeling over.

[TrailRides4Fun]

I currently feed a forage only diet, with a meal of soaked timothy/alfalfa cubes,
PM feeding, and a grass/alfalfa mix hay in the stall at night.
My horses are on all day turn out, and they tend to keep busy,
looking and nibbling all day long, on what they find in the pasture
(even in winter months, unless we have snow).
If it snows, I put out some grass hay for them to eat.
They are ridden 2-4x per week, about 50 minutes each ride (+~).
I actually try to avoid any grain if I can provide enough for them on forage only diet.

[netg]

I have a very hot (14 this year) gelding who has been just on the thin side of perfect his whole life. For the first time ever, he is a good weight.

In his case, it’s because even with free feed he wouldn’t eat most of the day, instead burning off calories he wasn’t eating. In the last few months he finally put on weight because my trainer put up a small hole hay net. He takes this as entertainment, and spends much more time eating than he used to. He also spends a lot of time outside and runs a LOT. Runs until he is soaking wet and dripping with foam between his hind legs. He takes joy in it - it’s not anything wrong, not a problem, just fun and expending energy. The fact the adrenaline gets going makes it a bit more extreme than it would be otherwise, too - my other three horses like to run, but don’t get the adrenaline so they stop much more quickly.

He was injured once - stepped on the clip of his shoe - and did not break a walk and was very quiet on stall rest for several months. He had a reason to contain that energy, so he did. (He may have recovered faster, but I had a bedridden mystery illness, and he wasn’t testing his hoof on his own - he waited for me to encourage trotting to notice it felt better.)

My guy gets less than a flake of alfalfa, and only enough grain to balance out the missing nutrients from the grass he gets free fed(which we have tested.) You have to look at all possible physical issues including magnesium deficiency, but then you have to learn to handle a high energy horse. Growing up our horses were stalled and on alfalfa only. Our mellow quarter horses. I wouldn’t do the same to my TB. In fact, I built a horse facility specific to keeping him happy and comfortable and allowing him to be out all the time with access to a stall and a turnout with plenty of area to gallop.

If you are going to push this horse on a set timeline, you are better giving it full turnout and no riding and selling it as let down off the track rather than pushing and blowing her mind now. They are special and wonderful horses, but not for everyone, and she is worth more NOT retrained than she is mind blown from too much pressure.

[cyberbay]

Are all Senior feeds the same? Is Purina Senior a good one?

[skipollo]

Do you have a video of her being ridden?

[TrailRides4Fun]

[QUOTE=cyberbay;8521346]
Are all Senior feeds the same? Is Purina Senior a good one?[/QUOTE]
Purina Senior actually has about half the amount of Fat that
Triple Crown Senior feed has.
I switched my old horse from Purina Senior, to the TC Senior Feed
bc the Purina was not keeping the weight on him.
TC is a much better quality of feed, imo.
TC is also a ‘fixed formula’ feed, so the company does not
vary its ingredients from batch to batch.
All batches are consistently made.
Overall, I prefer TC feed products to most others that I’ve used.

[Maggielynn213]

[QUOTE=S1969;8520902]
Does this mean that she’s in her stall for the rest of the day?

Because if so - that’s your real problem.

If not, I don’t fully understand “she is going out twice a day” - meaning she needs to be worked twice a day to be calm?

Without knowing the turnout situation, I can’t advise yet. I will say that I have always been prepared to euthanize my TB mare if I ever had to put her on any kind of extended stall rest (e.g. beyond a week). She would be unsafe.[/QUOTE]

She is stalled during the day and in turnout at night. When I say “she is going out twice a day”, I mean I am riding her twice a day.

For turnout, it is her and her best friend, a 2 y/o quarter horse filly and they run around and play together every night. Unfortunately, my barn offers only 1 acre paddocks for turnout so they don’t have as much room as I would like, but it is better than nothing.

[yourcolorfuladdictio]

So horses don’t get hot from protein, ever. They excrete excess protein in their urine, they can, however, get hot from the sugar content in alfalfa (as not all alfalfas are made the same). Things that do make a horse hot include “immediate energy sources” like corn, oats, wheat, barley, rye, and molasses (or other sugar). Just like people, if we load up on pasta we run around like two-year-olds then crash and burn.

Some horses have food sensitivities that can make them hot like corn, oats, alfalfa, wheat, barley, soy, or grass hay.

The most common cause of a hot skinny, but otherwise healthy, horse is performance feed. You are simply supplying more readily available energy for your horse than your horse burns exercising. Try choosing a low nsc food high in slow burning/high calorie fats. The less readily available energy the horse has the less she will burn running and playing or misbehaving, meaning she won’t continue to stay skinny.

A calorie dense and nutrient dense feed may be a good option for this mare. While mine was sorting herself I had her on Progressive Grass balancer, a fat supplement, alfalfa pellets and beet pulp at every meal. I also upped her Omega 3 and Vitamin E consumption to help with overall wellness as she was on poor quality grass hay.

I would definitely consider Purina Senior Active Age as well, it is a concentrate so you aren’t having to feed large volumes to get the proper nutrition. It is also high in fat and protein and much lower in NSC. Due to the NC hay struggle I supplement a few odds and ends but otherwise the horse has finally started looking like a warmblood.

[Onetrickpuppy]

[QUOTE=Maggielynn213;8520704]
If tractor supply has it, I can get it. Unfortunately we don’t have many options of places to buy feed where I am. The safe choice senior has a max of 20% for NSC (max 14 for starch and 6 for sugar).[/QUOTE]

Try Renew Gold. Our TS began to carry it after numerous requests and can hardly keep it in stock. Good luck and I hope you find something that helps her.

[S1969]

[QUOTE=Maggielynn213;8521434]
She is stalled during the day and in turnout at night. When I say “she is going out twice a day”, I mean I am riding her twice a day.

For turnout, it is her and her best friend, a 2 y/o quarter horse filly and they run around and play together every night. Unfortunately, my barn offers only 1 acre paddocks for turnout so they don’t have as much room as I would like, but it is better than nothing.[/QUOTE]

OK, then yes, I’d address feed.

I’d probably pull her off everything but the grass hay for the moment…maybe for a week or so…and see if her behavior changes. Some horses don’t tolerate alfalfa very well and people describe their behavior as “hot” or “crazy”. My mare never had that issue, but it seems common enough that it’s worth a try to remove it. Other people have said their horses react poorly to soy products (very common in commercial grains).

So…maybe just hay for a week and look for behavior changes?

Then, there are lots of different ways to get calories into an underweight horse also - beet pulp, oil, etc. If you find something that works but she still needs weight - you have choices.

Whatever you do - try to do only one thing at a time so you can really pinpoint if there is something in her diet that doesn’t work for her. No sense in having to figure it out again in the future.

[BoyleHeightsKid]

[QUOTE=TrailRides4Fun;8521375]
Purina Senior actually has about half the amount of Fat that
Triple Crown Senior feed has.
I switched my old horse from Purina Senior, to the TC Senior Feed
bc the Purina was not keeping the weight on him.
TC is a much better quality of feed, imo.
TC is also a ‘fixed formula’ feed, so the company does not
vary its ingredients from batch to batch.
All batches are consistently made.
Overall, I prefer TC feed products to most others that I’ve used.[/QUOTE]This… but OP is not going to be able to get TC Senior at TSC. She will have access to Dumor, Nutrena, Blue Seal and Purina. Blue Seal wins in that line up hands down.

OP get her off the SafeChoice and switch to the Sentinel Perfomance LS (BlueSeal) and keep the Envision. Replace some(not all) of the alfalfa with a nice grass hay. If you need a little of an extra boost Omega Horseshine (also available at TSC) has done way more for my boy that rice bran ever did. Beet pulp can also do wonders for the horse that needs to gain and stay sane. Do not… I repeat do not try Dumor’s crappy rendition of Omega Horseshine(Ultrashine). It might be cheaper but pales in comparison to it’s much better counterpart. Trust me, I’ve tried them all trying to save a buck, and it never paid off.

Trust me on this… and yourcolorfuladdiction is right, protein does not make horses hot. Starch and sugar does.

[Palm_Beach]

I had a horse that would get hot if fed alfalfa, not sure why. Even just one flake - he would get spooky, sweated like crazy, and lathered up. Right back to normal when he was not fed alfalfa.

I agree with looking at a timothy hay, and second the switch to a lower sugar/starch feed. And add a fat supplement. When adding a fat supplement, read the label carefully - some “fat” supplements are less than 50% fat and full of other stuff that might not be good for your situation. You can go to smartpak’s website and do a comparison of various weight gain supplements.

[kookicat]

I’ve had quite a few TBs (currently have 5!) and the best thing I’ve found for putting on weight is a forage based diet. As much good quality hay as they’ll eat, sugar beet, and oil. (I use up to a cup a day of plain veggie oil.)

[Mia_Sorella]

My hot, stressy OTTB mare does the best on 24/7 turnout with free choice grass hay. She gets 1 daily meal of a high fat/fibre feed mixed with a little crimped oats, beet pulp, flax seed and a vit/min supplement. She stall walks so badly that she just walks off the calories if I try to keep her stalled…even if she is getting two good sized meals. What is your mare like in her stall?

Also consider that her misbehaviour under saddle could be anxiety/herdbound related, especially if she only has one pasture mate.

[kashmere]

duuuhhh. Posted about turnout only to see it answered a few posts above. Sorry!

[nu2u]

So you are trying to work her after she has been in the stall for a while…that could be the issue right there. Some horses just need to be out much more than a typical day(night) and she has probably had enough of being in the stall by the time you get her to work. Not ruling out feed as an issue but the timing/stalling is likely also an issue.

[cutter99]

Not all TSC stores have access to Blue Seal products. Usually just those in the Northeast.

[dexhol]

[QUOTE=Palm Beach;8521735]
I had a horse that would get hot if fed alfalfa, not sure why. Even just one flake - he would get spooky, sweated like crazy, and lathered up. Right back to normal when he was not fed alfalfa.

I agree with looking at a timothy hay, and second the switch to a lower sugar/starch feed. And add a fat supplement. When adding a fat supplement, read the label carefully - some “fat” supplements are less than 50% fat and full of other stuff that might not be good for your situation. You can go to smartpak’s website and do a comparison of various weight gain supplements.[/QUOTE]

We had a couple OTTB’s that would go nutso on alfalfa too, even a small amount. One gelding went from being fairly quiet to virtually unrideable and quite aggressive on the ground. Off the alfalfa, back to his old self.