M shaped back - Is my horse getting fat?

I have an ASB mare, so she already will always look thinner than all the QH’s she shares her barn with, but I’ve been noticing that with the new barn people, she’s putting on weight, to the point that there is a dip in her back where her skin connects to her spine. Looking at her from the front or back, it’s a mild “M” shape.

Should I ask them to cut back on her Alfalfa? She’s getting half and half, I think they said 2lbs., 2x a day. I hope I understood them correctly. The other half is Bermuda. I have also been giving her a little bit, about 1/2 scoop, of the Tribute Kalm n Easy. She really likes that stuff and expects it at the end of a ride or lunge.

Compared to most horses on this forum, I suppose you would call her work load light. Her back just is starting to look like an “M” could fit over it… Do I worry too much?

Look up the Henneke body weight scoring system on-line. They have a useful protocol for evaluating several parts of the horse’s body to see if it is in fact over-weight overall. Look also at the fat at the tailhead, the crestiness of the neck, and the fat behind the elbow. Also, can you feel ribs? See ribs?

The droop of the belly per se isn’t a strong indicator, since horses can be pregnant or can be starving, with wormy bloat.

You could also post good conformation photos here for comment. These need to be taken with the horse standing up, side shot, with no distortion.

Horses can have very different builds across the back. A quarterhorse can build up a lot of back and hip muscle, and have a definite back and butt crease, without being obese. I haven’t seen enough ASBs to know what the range of build is for them, though they are certainly lankier and less muscled than quarterhorses.

IMO, you are right to be monitoring whether your horse is becoming obese or not. These days, some of the major health problems for horses are caused or exacerbated by overweight (just as in people), all the “metabolic syndrome” problems leading to laminitis and founder.

It is unclear from your post how much hay this horse is being fed. What is the actual weight of the hay? From your post, it sounds like your horse is getting four pounds of hay a day total, which is impossible, unless she is also on very good pasture for the bulk of her forage.

The baseline for hay for a horse is 20 lbs a day. You look at how they are doing on that and adjust upwards or downwards. For instance, my Paint mare gets 15 pounds of hay a day, and is still voluptuous. But I’ve had barn friends pour 25 or 30 lbs of hay a day into their OTTBs.

You are giving her a minimal amount of a packaged grain/feed; that would not have much impact on her weight one way or the other. Does the barn also feed a grain? Does it feed a supplement?

If you want to take more control of your horse’s diet, here’s what you need to know, and where to find out:

  1. How many pounds of hay does the horse get? Ask the BM. If the barn feeds by volume, not weight, if they give you a number of flakes, then take a luggage scale or fish scale along with a big bag (like a Costco bag) to the barn and weigh a few flakes to see what they weigh.

  2. What kind of hay does the barn feed? Ask the BM, look in the hay room.

  3. Does the barn have a hay analysis of the hay? Probably not. But you can look on-line for the average calories and nutrition of the kinds of hay the barn feeds.

  4. Does the horse have access to pasture that provides enough grass to be an addition to her diet profile?

  5. Does the barn feed a grain or ration balancer or supplements? Get the brand name, then look up the nutrition and calorie counts. You may need to e-mail the feed companies if this information is neither on the bag or the website. while you are at it, get the ingredients too, for your own interest.

  6. Get a reference book like Julia Getty’s “Feed your horse like a horse” for an explanation of calorie and nutrient requirements. Or some people like the web application “Feed X-L” that lets you calculate your horse’s diet.

Then you do the calculation and decide if there is a big over-run in calories in some area.

Alfalfa provides protein and other useful nutrients that grass hay can be short in. I’m not familiar with Bermuda hay, though. You don’t necessarily want to cut out all the alfalfa and just go on a low-quality grass hay. In the cooler climates where I live the grass hays can be high-sugar and low-protein, though I think it is different from warm-climate hays.

You can also find a local nutritionst via a feed store, feed mill, or university vet school, to talk things over with.

I realize none of this is the quick answer you were hoping for. But I think all owners, even those in boarding barns, should educate themselves on best practices in horse nutrition and really know what their horses are being fed. That makes it easier to knowledgably discuss your horse’s program with the BM, and head off problems before they start.

Scribbler: Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. I went to Amazon and looked up that book. Thought $60 was sort of high, but after reading the reviews, decided to buy it (instead of yet another bridle!). Finally bit on the “Get $70 off of an Amazon Visa card” promotion, so the OOP cost of the book came to zip. :smiley:

I will double check with staff on the hay weight and other things you mentioned. You’re right in that I have been depending on them too much.

The barn has been going through staff lately, it seems, and the one who just left, IMO, wasn’t feeding enough, often I would be there just a while after feeding and she’d have her bin empty already, so when the new folks came, I asked them to be sure she was getting enough and now there is always leftovers so I know she’s getting her full of hay. I had thought that was a good thing, buut…

And no, the barn does not feed supplements. We are on our own for that.

The book should be here this afternoon. Thanks!

[QUOTE=Sparrowette;8872160]
Scribbler: Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. I went to Amazon and looked up that book. Thought $60 was sort of high, but after reading the reviews, decided to buy it (instead of yet another bridle!). Finally bit on the “Get $70 off of an Amazon Visa card” promotion, so the OOP cost of the book came to zip. :smiley:

I will double check with staff on the hay weight and other things you mentioned. You’re right in that I have been depending on them too much.

The barn has been going through staff lately, it seems, and the one who just left, IMO, wasn’t feeding enough, often I would be there just a while after feeding and she’d have her bin empty already, so when the new folks came, I asked them to be sure she was getting enough and now there is always leftovers so I know she’s getting her full of hay. I had thought that was a good thing, buut…

And no, the barn does not feed supplements. We are on our own for that.

The book should be here this afternoon. Thanks![/QUOTE]

Hey, excellent luck on the book!

Some horses are leisurely eaters, or a bit anorexic. Like a lot of OTTBs. They need free choice hay, or hay in a hay bag, and it’s good to see a little left over hay to make sure they have enough. On the other hand, I’ve known people with OTTBs (we are in self board here) who toss a flake or two of excellent hay on the manure pile every day, which is bad management.

Some horses have big appetites or wolf their food down. My mare is that way. I can’t imagine that there would ever be left over hay unless you dropped a whole bale in her stall, and she ate nonstop for 6 hours and gave herself impaction colic. Hay nets are counter productive, since they make her so anxious her hay is escaping that she eats twice as fast, and the net is damp with saliva after. So she gets her rationed, weighed out hay spilt into 4 or 5 feedings (I have an electronic timer in my loft that drops 4 feedings in 24 hours).

I know that best practice is horses being able to continually browse, like in a moderately ok pasture. But IME, people who do free choice 24/7 hay with easy keeper horses in stalls end up with obese horses that founder. If you had an anorexic type horse that was also prone to ulcers and colic, that’s when free choice hay makes sense.

I looked at the Henneke body weight scoring system and I’m thinking she’s probably a 6 right now. Not so bad I guess, but I’m not used to seeing it on her. She’s always been on the Not FAT side. Not sure how you would describe anorexic. She Loves her food.

When I bought her, she was about a 2, so she has an issue there. First time the vet saw her was a couple days after I bought her, and I heard him say “Easy to get weight off, hard to put it back on.” My then barn owner was wonderful at helping her fill out, but I never saw the M. And back then, it was dangerous to ride her while hay was being tossed; in those minutes the entire goal was the hay.

There’s no pasture here. When she was very thin, I’d take her out on lead to areas by the road where people had lawn she could nibble. She was all business until her stomach started getting full, then, it was “OH!! There’s a car going by! Jump!” But only when she was full, not before! :winkgrin:

So the mare is conscious of the fact that hay might not always be there. She’s much better these days and understands that you don’t have to make a mad dash to your stall at feeding, and she will slow down when she starts to get full, but she does remain watchful.

At a 6, she’s not to the point where you would need to get weight off asap, but I definitely would not want the weight gain to continue.

We definitely need to know how much hay she’s being fed, as I’m also confused by how you wrote it :slight_smile:

Instead of 1/2 scoop of the Kalm n Easy, you’d be better off with 1lb of the Essential K ration balancer. Your feeding rate of the KnE is well below the minimal recommended rate, so by changing, you can get much more nutrition into her without really any extra calories.

We have a gelding that has always had an ‘m’ shaped back - we call it his ‘gutter’. He is probably a 6 - there is light padding through the ribs but ribs still visible. No fatty dock head or crest. He is not fat – but he is not skinny-minnie either. The way I see it, he has enough fat on his body to sustain him if he got very sick. He’s also older, which is a consideration. You don’t want an obese oldster but you also don’t want to be struggling to keep their weight on.

Some horses, like people, are predisposed to store fat in certain places and will bulk up in some places before others.

You are wise to notice, and be concerned. Can you increase her exercise ASAP, until you can get her diet tweaked? This is the ‘seasonal rise’ period in which if any horse has any IR tendencies (insulin resistance, aka metabolic/sugsyndrome), they are at increased risk of laminitis. Reducing dietary starch and sugar and increased exercise are both good ideas.

I wonder if someone is sneaking her some extra goodies??

[QUOTE=beowulf;8873058]
We have a gelding that has always had an ‘m’ shaped back - we call it his ‘gutter’. He is probably a 6 - there is light padding through the ribs but ribs still visible. No fatty dock head or crest. He is not fat – but he is not skinny-minnie either. The way I see it, he has enough fat on his body to sustain him if he got very sick. He’s also older, which is a consideration. You don’t want an obese oldster but you also don’t want to be struggling to keep their weight on.

Some horses, like people, are predisposed to store fat in certain places and will bulk up in some places before others.[/QUOTE]

My reading of the Henneke charts would say that visible ribs puts him lower than a 6?