I’m not sure what to do. I bought an older horse, 19, last year. He is fully my dream horse and his personality is amazing. He is supposed to be used for my therapy practice and light trail riding. As soon as I got him, his health started to slowly decline. He is thin and has muscle wasting due to PPID. We have started him on the meds. My biggest issue is that all of his teeth have expired. He has basically no grinding capability and has choked 5 times now. We have him completely switched to a soaked senior feed, but I don’t know how I am going to manage his feed routine. The vet said three-five times a day would be best but I can only do twice a day. I am away from the farm from 7am-6pm and I have to be in bed by 10pm so I can get up the next morning to feed him before leaving. I’d Leo to be able to find some sort of slow feeder for soaked or soft forage. I found one that caters to slow feeding hay pellets but he can’t chew the pellets. I could leave out soaked alfalfa cubes but his pasture mate would steal it and he gets super stressed being left alone in a stall. How has anyone else handled the no teeth feeding routine? At this point I am worried that if I can’t figure out our food issues I am going to have to put him to sleep. There are no rescues anywhere near me and no one will buy him with this intensive of a routine. I don’t want to do that though because he is still so full of life and seems really happy and energetic. All things considered he really doesn’t seem like he is ready for the end, I just can’t handle feeding that often and can’t feed 6 lbs of grain at each feeding (according to the instructions).
He can’t chew soaked and soupy alfalfa pellets?
There is a senior horse where I board and he has no teeth left. He gets 1.5 scoops (3 quart scoops) of soaked soupy senior feed in AM and PM and another large bucket of soaked alfalfa pellets AM/PM poured into a trough for him to munch on throughout the day/night. He cannot graze at all, obviously. He is supplemented with Cool Calories also.
He looks ok. Can you make an individual pasture turnout situation for him?
Can you hire a neighbor to feed lunch?
Based on your schedule, you can at least give breakfast, dinner, and night check. Three is better than two!
Could you set up some round pen panels to create a stall or small pen to be able to feed him individually? A senior with essentially no grinding surface where I board was managed by being fed in a round pen set up next to his regular pasture with his friends. He would panic being solo in the barn in a stall to eat, so instead he would go in the round pen every morning and return him at night to hang out with his friends. I believe he got around 15 lbs. of hay cubes in addition to senior feed split between two feedings (that’s what the barn owners schedule allowed).
You can get three meals in at least. 6AM/6PM/night check 9:30 PM.
Soak pellets or cubes for the other horse like they are getting something special.
Or stall at night or during the day so he can munch all day on his soaked feed.
The hard call comes when you’ve done what you can reasonably and consistently do to meet the horse’s needs. Look at ideas people offer here and see if anything could work, or be tweaked to work before you give up.
Can you split the turnout, or create a smaller area within the larger area where your horse could spend either the day or the night separately with the extra feed?
If the other horse will share, perhaps rigging up a feeder that opens midday would be possible. Even if the other horse eats some of the soaked food, yours will get something more than the nothing he gets now. You could have the shared feed be just soaked forage, and add the high calorie feeds to his solo meals. If the other horse won’t share, maybe two separate feeders that open at the same time?
I’ve been hanging a haynet in my senior’s shelter so he can nibble while hiding from the sun and bugs. I know his pasture mate shares it, but mine gets more than nothing because it’s there. That halted weight loss and allowed for a little gain a couple of weeks.
Would freezing the soaked feed into a giant ice cube be an option? You’d need a heated bucket in the winter.
I got three older horses through a rescue, and all of them ended up toothless eventually. When they were at home, it was easy because my husband was home to separate them for the two that were toothless at the time to have sole access to their soft food. For the youngest of the three, he was boarded when he no longer had opposing molars. He was given soft food twice a day and had sole access to it.
I think feeding two or three times a day is sufficient. My guys also had alfalfa, which they could gum sufficiently to eat the soft parts, and I didn’t mind wasting the rest. My mare choked twice on senior feed, but I believe it was because she was such a glutton and ate way too fast. We didn’t soak the senior feed; maybe that would have helped with the mare, but none of them liked it soaked and they would just pick at it. Dry, they would eat it all. Since that was where nearly all their nutrition was coming from, we went with what they would eat.
Rebecca
I agree that three meals a day can work. He just needs time and space to eat it all.
I had a mare that ate aggressively and I bought a 15-gallon Fortex feed tub so that the feed was very thinly spread out. That way she could not take huge mouthfuls of the senior feed. She never choked again.
I also second the idea about putting a smaller pen in or near her turnout buddy in paddock. I used this approach when the same mare was recovering from colic surgery years earlier. She was satisfied that her friend was nearby.
If feed needs to be soaked, make room in your fridge or buy a fridge just for feed. You can soak feed in batches, put it in the fridge and go out and dump feed and go.
I put my old mare down at age 28 and not because she was toothless. Figure out a schedule that works and follow it.
Beet pulp will expand if placed directly in the fridge with water added. No need to leave it on the counter
If you can only do 2x just do that. Up his feed; it’s not ideal (ulcers) but you could start him on some preventative meds for it. Mine gets 8 lbs of grain and 2lbs of hay pellet at night in the summer time. It’s a LOT but he would actually gladly eat more if I gave it to him. He doesn’t eat well in the AM so it’s all in one meal. Do I love it? No. But it works and he’s as happy as a grumpy chestnut gelding can be.
my toothless wonder did fine on 3 mush meals a day - breakfast, when I got home from work and night check. He did pick at grass during the day with the others to keep himself busy (mine graze year round, even winter they go out to paw for part of the day)
My last pony was so mad–he lived in Colorado for years, where there is never enough grass, and then after I moved him to South Carolina where the grass was lush year round, he had no opposing molars and just quidded it. Poor boy.
Rebecca
Are you sure he’s only 19? That seems quite young to already have no teeth left. My oldest is 28 and has almost all of his.
For a timed feeder, could you set it up to dump into a tub with a bit of water in it, so it can soak after dumping in? This assumes he wouldn’t drain the water first or choke trying to eat it before it soaks. I hear the Unbeetable pellets soak really quickly.
I also have a horse on all soaked feed. My horse is separated, and with an automatic feeder that is made to use soaked feed, I go out 2 times a day and my horse is fed 10 times a day. I have been using this system for many years.
That age seems very young to be toothless. I fed one who had no molars, three x a day: soaked beet pulp, orchard pellets, alfalfa pellets, rice bran and soaked senior feed in a muck bucket. The choke is likely due to rushing. Two a day is really not enough. Separate, refrigerate feed, do three.
Can you share the name of this feeder?
