I am sure I will get tons of different opinions but just trying to get some ideas. I bought new big 12 yo Holsteiner mare (17hds and big boned) this summer. Since she arrived; To keep weight on her barn is having to feed her a lot of hay and grain, but she is finicky eater and I worry the large grain amount only makes it worse. Twice a day, she is getting 1 and 1/2 heeping full size feed scoop of low starch triple crown textured feed twice a day that barn uses for everyone and then a mix of timothy and alfalfa hay (about 4 big flakes - 2 of each hay) but she only real likes the alfalfa and wastes a lot of the timothy. She has option of turnout for up to half a day every day but she doesn’t really enjoy turn out and usually after an hour throws a fit and they have to bring her back into barn. She always has some hay in her stall for the mere fact she doesn’t usually eat it all. I figured out she likes toys so she has a couple in her stall that she likes to bang around. Previous owner said she has never liked a lot of turnout. When I first bought her we did 30 day course of ulcergard and started her on Gut-X, as she is bit grouchy and wanted to make sure her gut was good but 5 months later and I don’t think she is any different than when she first came. I am Starting her next week on smartpak aloe vera pellets and daily gold stress relief (clay) to see if that helps her appetite and weight at all, as some of my research said both have helped with appetite and weight. Wondering if maybe I should have the barn cut amount of grain some and then add some rice bran oil and/or some sort of hay pellets to her twice daily feed? Suggestions appreciated.
Can you get her straight alfalfa hay since she seems to like it?
How much work is she doing? Since she’s tall and big boned, that doesn’t sound like an unreasonable amount of feed to me. My 16.1 hand Thoroughbred eventer in work 5+ days/week gets that same amount of low starch, high calorie grain plus free choice Orchard/Alfalfa and he looks great.
Is she getting significantly more feed than similar horses in the barn?
throw away the scoop and get a scale to weigh the grain and record how much is fed when
The grain recommendations is by pounds not scoops
This actually isn’t much food, IME. My 5yo 16.2 TB in light work was getting 2 heaping scoops twice a day (12lb total) of TCS Gold which is significantly more calories/lb vs the low starch. Also, 4 big flakes 2x a day sounds like a good amount (though she’s not eating it) but it might be better to get an idea of weight vs flake. Flakes vary from person to person and bale to bale. In fact, I’d weigh your feed in your scoops as well to get an idea of what she’s actually getting. IIRC, the LS isn’t super dense so she may be eating less than you think.
Oil is the cheapest, highest calorie option if you’re looking to supplement. It’s messy though, can freeze, degrades plastic feed tubs, and some horses won’t eat it. You have to introduce it slowly. There are some dry fat options that can be less hassle, as well as things like Boost and Amplify.
I don’t think you are feeding a crazy volume. Will the barn allow you to bump her up? Switch her to straight alfalfa too if she’s wasting the grass hay anyway. Scope for ulcers if you can - sometimes omeprazole (GastroGard) alone won’t touch them, sometimes you need sucralfate or misoprostol or several rounds of treatment. That may solve your issue by itself.
TBH I am seeing the most improvement with my skinny guy after I switched him to 2 scoops 2x/day (12lbs) Purina Healthy Edge and stuffing as much hay into him as he will eat. He gets Uckele GUT and E as well. They get hay in turnout, hay in the stalls, and I feed him hay while I groom and tack up. I think he’s eating 30ish lbs of grass hay a day, on average. Upping the hay has let us slash everyone’s feed in half except Mr Skinny, who instead has actually started to gain weight.
I second the suggestion to reduce the Timothy and up the alfalfa if that’s an option since she prefers the alfalfa anyway. If it’s not an option, I’d look into adding a bagged forage (pelleted, cubed, chopped, shredded, whatever). In my experience, beet pulp seems to fatten one up faster than alfalfa when it comes to feeding the bagged forages, but I often do a mix of both (Unbeetable Forage Only has been a nice way to do this with just one product instead of two).
Forage is the #1 way to fatten them up and get them to maintain good condition in my experience. If she’s not cleaning up her hay, she’s probably not getting enough to meet her needs for weight or overall gut health.
My gelding is a pretty easy keeper but at this time of year when he has no pasture I keep him on his regular serving of ration balancer and just start pouring the various types of baled and bagged hay/forage to him. He gets Unbeetable Forage Only mixed with his ration balancer, chopped TC Premium Alfalfa Forage as a “side dish” with his brekkie, and around 20 pounds of Timothy/orchard hay a day (which he hoovers up until there is no sign of it). This keeps him round (but not TOO round) and content with life.
If she likes alfalfa, give her alfalfa. Luckily there are plenty of options when it comes to adding it to her diet.
I agree with all the suggestions to try just alfalfa hay if she prefers that. Additionally, think about having her gut looked into again, a lot of “picky” horses are just uncomfortable.
I have a very hard keeper mare who struggles with ulcers and gaining weight, some things that I feed to help with weight gain:
- beet pulp
- Alfalfa hay
- Cool Calories
- Muscle builder (I currently am using Finish Line Performance Builder) to help improve topline once weight reaches a good point
- Oil (although not my favorite)
- Higher fat grain like ProForce Fuel
- Rice bran
Sometimes you have to play with different things to see what they prefer. I’ve found high fat options like cool calories and oil have to be increased slowly for my horse to accept them. Rice bran is usually readily accepted, especially if you feed the pellets vs the meal. I love feeding beet pulp for the hind gut benefits, and the extra hydration with soaking it.
We need to know how big a scoop is before we can help. My somewhat hard keeper gelding gets 7 “scoops” of Triple Crown Senior daily. Each scoop is about a lb. So if your scoops are the same as my scoops, your mare is getting a lot less than my gelding.
Down here in NC we have a plant we call cockleburrs. I do not know its scientific name and most of the year it is a useless weed that takes up space. Most of the year the horses will not eat it even when there is no other plant to eat.
BUT when the burrs develop this plant turns into a plant that horses LOVE to eat, and their forelocks and manes become a solid mass of hair and burrs.
It puts weight on the horses after the burrs develop. My horses went into winter in much better condition when they could eat these plants than when I used Western Oats, alfalfa pellets and corn no matter how much I gave them of the concentrates.
It was my secret for putting a “finish” on the horses in the fall, and they survived the winter (out 24/7/365) in better weight.
Of course I had to remove all the burrs from their forelock and mane.
Add a fat supplement like Purina Amplify or something similar.
Wow, thanks everyone for all the great suggestions.
Also, for those asking, it is a 3 quart scoop that they use for measuring my horses grain. Just seems like a lot of grain to me and takes her a while to eat it compared to other horses I’ve had. The other two horses of similar size to her in our barn, barely eat any grain.
We use a 3 quart as well. My young horse eats 2 of those per meal. Another of mine eats 1/2 of those a meal, plus a RB. But I feed by weight, not volume.
Just like in humans, size =/= metabolism. Some horses can get fat on air, some need a lot more to hit baseline. Some horses do well on beet pulp and alfalfa, some do better on other sources. You’ll likely have to experiment a little.
The slow eating AND leaving hay is more of a concern to me than the volume of feed. Teeth and ulcers would be my first check - but also some horses just don’t like Triple Crown and do better on other feeds. Or other TC lines. She may just be a slow eater (not an issue if it’s normal for her), but the rest of her quirks sound like something is upsetting her.
TLDR, I’d worry less about the volume and start thinking about scoping for ulcers, as well as consider experimenting with different feeds (preferably with a different main ingredient or more calories per pound) and upping the hay she DOES like.
Good luck! Learning how to manage your new horse can be fun and/or frustrating!
This sounds like a horse that needs to be scoped. Take a look at what’s actually going on in the stomach. A month of ulcergard (what dose? 1/4 tube/day? Full tube/day?) doesn’t guarantee she’s ulcer free, and GutX is super hit & miss (mostly miss, ime.)
The reluctance to eat hay, the slow to eat grain, the lack of weight, on top of a recent move (huge changes in her life!) and turnout stress all suggests something brewing in her belly. Go LOOK. Treat what you see.
I absolutely wouldn’t cut what she IS eating. A horse that’s meh about grain and I’d rather not on hay is just not a horse that’s going to tuck into a hay pellet.
You need to scope. If she doesn’t have ulcers she might have hind gut ulcers. Definitely something wrong and causing pain.
4 flakes of hay is nothing for a 17 hand horse, especially in winter. I’d feed as much alfalfa as I could get her to eat. 1.5 scoops of grain really isn’t that much either for a horse that sized.
Yeah, agree with what everyone is saying – weigh the feed and the hay. “4 flakes” of hay could mean 10 lbs or 45 lbs of hay depending on the size of the flake.
I agree about straight alfalfa. As for grain, the TC Complete feeding recommendations is 6 lbs for a 1000-1100 lb horse, but I’m guessing your mare weighs more than that - plus needs weight. So probably should reevaluate the grain ration.
But - a horse that needs weight and doesn’t eat has something else going on. Ulcers or teeth should be considered.
If you had a voracious eater that amount doesn’t seem odd at all. The fretting in turnout, picking at forage, and needing weight screams scope for ulcers. I’d also use whatever hay is most palatable.
So, it’s probably not a lot of grain. If you look at the feeding directions on the bag it will tell you how many pounds a day the horse should be getting per their weight and activity level. While it does say per pound, I believe you can check the TC website and it will tell you how much 1 quart ways. (My barn similarly uses a 3-quart scoop, so I just do the match to convert)
These complete feeds like TC, usually a large portion is beet pulp or a forage-like material as they are meant to be a “complete” feed and therefore can be fed at a higher quantity. You may actually find that the suggested pounds for your sized horse is not enough! Also important to consider, some feeds are more dense than others. I believe TC is higher beet pulp so a scoop of this, versus a scoop of a pelleted feed is going to have a vastly different weight.
Now, once checking that your are meeting the pounds required, what could help is decreasing the size of each meal and giving a lunch or late dinner. What can happen is you poor a large quantity of feed and the horse cant absorb all the nutrients in the feed and it just goes through them. You want to insure the horse’s digestive system is healthy so that it properly breaks down the food and holds those nutrients. If you did a month of ulcer guard while very beneficial for curing ulcers, it can also deplete the organisms in the stomach that break down food. You may want to consider a pro-biotic to try and boost the horse’s system.
I’ve always had good luck with Renew Gold to put on weight. but +1 for scoping, and weighing the feed.
FWIW, my 17H WB mare eats about 32# of hay per day (2/3 grass, 1/3 alfalfa), plus her supplements in a low NSC feed. Some days she cleans up her hay faster and gets an extra flake of grass at night, so it’s not out of the ordinary for her to put away 35# or more.
I once cared for two mares in solo turnout. One mare hoovered her hay up ASAP, so I used to give them each half their turnout hay when I put them out, and the other half after chores were done, just before I left. This worked great for the hoover mare.
The other mare stopped finishing her hay. She picked through the first half and ate the choice pieces, then ignored the rest because she knew more hay was coming. I started giving her the entire ration at turnout. For a couple of days she picked the best bits out, and left the rest, getting upset when the hoover mare got more hay and she didn’t. It didn’t take long before she was eating all her turnout hay again.
It might be worth trying something similar with your mare. She knows more hay is coming and doesn’t feel the need to eat what she has. She’ll probably eat less for a few days until she realizes this is the new normal.
As far as grain goes, I would see if the barn would add something I bought to her feed, and get some EquiJewel if they will. A pound or 3/4 in each feed can make a big difference.
Agree with the comments that ulcers need to be considered and dealt with, potentially.
Other option is to switch to a higher calorie denser food. One of my favourites is trimax (Purina) or Tribute Ultra or Tribute Resolve. High calorie, high fat and will help pack the weight on.
