Riding straight after feeding?

[JackSprats_Mom]

Posting this here as I want endurance riders to weigh in.

So the old line of thinking was never ride your horse straight after feeding, let him stand about an hour or he’ll colic (there was also the thought never let your horse drink too much after working out).

However I think endurance riders have debunked this myth as they try and get food/water into their horses whenever possible.

However my old skool brain is still having second thoughts…can someone please tell me its ok to feed then ride, my horse won’t die!!!

My horse is mainly on forage based diet ie out at grass 24/7 then her feed is beet pulp and stratergy gx (about 3lbs) with some rice bran and timothy pellets.

[analise]

I grabbed my horse up right after his breakfast (while he was still eating the hay that came with his grain, OMG he was so offended) to ride last Thursday. Didn’t seem to be any worse for wear.

[Lieselotte]

In Endurance you can’t get around the fact that you need to ride right after you feed… Obviously you have to educate yourself about the finer points if you want to compete successfully but in general, this myth is debunked.
I’ve never had a problem in five years and have not seen many colics at rides. The very few that do happen, may have happened at home anyway and/or may have completely different underlying causes.
Don’t worry about this. Ride and feed!

[candysgirl]

My horse frequently gets his dinner and I pull him out of his stall and ride immediately after he finishes.

At rides, he gets fed his main breakfast a couple hours before the start, but I give him another helping as I’m tacking up. He gets more feed at holds as well.

He seems none the worse for the wear.

[ehwaz]

Pretty sure endurance riders have disproved this. One possible rational I could think of for the myth is not to feed the horse and then do high intensity (anaerobic) exercise right away . Endurance hasn’t disproved this as you stay in the aerobic zone most of the time.

At rides, my horse has learned that when I tighten her girth, its time to grab as much food as possible very quickly. I have a picture of us leave a check with about 1/2 a flake in her mouth.

[kalidascope]

It depends on how much you are feeding, and how hard/fast you will be riding.

No problems with hay and/or a small hard feed (say a pound or two) then going for a hack or some lower-level dressage school. However I would expect less than ideal results from feeding say an event horse a large hard-feed then immediately galloping or cross country schooling. Endurance riders ride at slower speeds and do not, as far as I can tell, feed heavy grain meals.

[melody1]

I’ve ridden after feeding more times than I can count. Usually it is impractical for me to wait terribly long after a meal to ride if I’m going to work or sleep on time. By the time my horse is groomed, tacked, warmed up, and working, enough time has passed so that I don’t give it a second thought.

I’ve worked for numerous trainers of upper level sport horses, and it is customary to begin riding after breakfast, and depending on the horse and difficulty of work, to throw in an extra scoop of feed after the ride as well. The most strict, detailed, meticulous feeding plans I’ve seen have been in all-around, lower level, public boarding barns FWIW.

[garlicbunny]

That is great news! I usually feed our horses about a cup of grain before a ride and the rest after a ride. When my hubby rides though we mostly walk so I am thrilled that I can feed the total lb of TC 30% before the ride!

[JackSprats_Mom]

Thank you!

[Appsolute]

I PREFER to have some hay in my horse’s belly when I ride. Something to soak up that acid that would otherwise get sloshed around in work. Mine is often half way into her grass hay / alfalfa meal when I take her out to ride.

I feed “grain” (well not really grain, ration balancer and rice bran) after our rides, but at 2 pounds a feeding, she could probably have that before a ride as well.

I have heard vets recommend a bit of alfalfa before riding as an ulcer prevention method. Knock on wood, I have never had a horse colic.

[BigHorseLittleHorse]

By and large, endurance riders do not feed huge amounts of grain – most of what I see at holds are complete feeds and/or beet pulp mashes. I’m not sure I would feed pounds and pounds of sweet feed and then go ride, but you should be fine with a mash, a complete/pelleted feed, or a smaller grain serving.

[sorrelfilly721]

My pony stands at the trailer and eats hay for hours before we show. All my ponies have done this all my life and never had problems. I don’t know that I’d do it if feeding a bunch of grain (heavier in the gut), but hay is not a problem.

[gothedistance]

[QUOTE=JackSprats Mom;7288083]
Posting this here as I want endurance riders to weigh in. So the old line of thinking was never ride your horse straight after feeding, let him stand about an hour or he’ll colic (there was also the thought never let your horse drink too much after working out).However I think endurance riders have debunked this myth as they try and get food/water into their horses whenever possible.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that withhold crap was the old “Black Beauty” myth. Totally debunked. It is bad bad bad for the horse’s mobile gut to have food or water withheld. Bad. Unless the horse in question is a Thoroughbred heading into the starting gate for a race within the next 15 minutes. Then you will want to wait with the food and water until after the race.

Then again…at one 50 mile endurance ride (I was running in the top 10) right after the final check (6 miles from the finish line) I let my guy go into his “cruise down the road” racing trot, passed 4 riders on the trail (we were blazing along) then hit a big stomach high creek where we met the top 3rd and 4th, both drinking. My guy gulped down as much water as he could, his eyes on those other two as they left the creek and headed up the road for the final 3 miles. He tore outta that creek and got in a dead out race with the 3rd place horse. We blasted down that road, probably one of the fastest I’ve ever raced, for the full 3 miles. We beat the other horse by only seconds, and people were scattering out of the way at the finish because we couldn’t have stopped to save our souls.

So… let’s revisit that. Eat eat eat, fly down the trail at a racing trot passing horses, gulp gulp gulp cold creek water as much as he could fill up on, then galloping off immediately like his hair was on fire, racing dead out against another horse for 3 freak’n unreal full miles, heart pounding, stretched out, ears flat to the head, after having already traveled 47 miles in the past 6 hours… and coming in 3rd overall. And still bright eyed, bouncing, and happy to chow down again for the rest of the evening. (Him, not me. I was sore and exhausted! All I wanted to do was collapse.)

So…[QUOTE=JackSprats Mom;7288083] my old skool brain is still having second thoughts…can someone please tell me its ok to feed then ride, my horse won’t die!!![/QUOTE]
Sure. Here ya go: “It is OK to feed then ride. Your horse won’t die”.

There. Do you feel better?

[Fillabeana]

I have ranch horses. Some rides are a couple of hours, some are all day.
My horses live in front of free choice grazing or hay.
When I am using them regularly, I give them a bucket of cubes (‘complete feed’ cubes, but the horses like them as well as grain and they make great treats). I go out to catch my horse and Mr. Fillabeana’s horse for the day, I have cubes in my pocket, everybody gets some but everybody wants to come in and get saddled, because then they get a WHOLE bunch more as I saddle them. ‘Oh, oh, pick ME, pick ME!’, even though they’re working HARD.
After saddling, they go in the trailer where there’s some prime hay to eat from the net for a half hour or hour while we go, and then a drink before we start. Or, if we’re leaving from home, no prime hay.

Later in the day, you can feel the horses getting antsy for feed. So we make arrangements to let the horses eat/graze a bit as we’re going along. You CAN teach a horse to graze while walking, some of them will do it at a trot. Then at lunchtime, they graze on hobbles or eat from nets at the trailer while we eat lunch. It works great.
My TB I think is very ulcer-prone, though I haven’t had problems with him in a while. He used to get this antsy/frantic feeling when he needed to eat. He’s not nearly so antsy/frantic when he needs to eat now, because he knows I’ll ‘hear’ him and make arrangements for him to eat when we can (sometimes the cows are cranky and you just can’t right now).

ETA:
I see you’re in WA, so I know my favorite cubes are available up there.
They’re called ‘Packer Pellets’, made by Purina for use on National Forest lands, they are certified weed free. They are not a fixed formula, the label lists ‘plant products’ and ‘grain products’ and ‘forage products’ unhelpfully, but the horses consistently like them, as does my dairy cow who inexplicably milks better on them than on straight grain (as the ‘grain’ part of her ration). They are supposed to be complete feed, part forage and part concentrate.

[Flash44]

Here is an article about feeding before exercise:

http://feedxl.com/newsletters/16-feeding-before-exercise.html

[Guilherme]

[QUOTE=kalidascope;7288472]
It depends on how much you are feeding, and how hard/fast you will be riding.

No problems with hay and/or a small hard feed (say a pound or two) then going for a hack or some lower-level dressage school. However I would expect less than ideal results from feeding say an event horse a large hard-feed then immediately galloping or cross country schooling. Endurance riders ride at slower speeds and do not, as far as I can tell, feed heavy grain meals.[/QUOTE]

This.

The U.S. Cavalry routinely traveled 25-35 miles per day carrying a load of 250 lbs. (or more) in the field. They were not “racing” and most of the time was spent at the walk or trot (8 mph was the Army standard). Breaks were taken every hour and grazing was done if available. Each trooper carried a grain bag with about 9 lbs. of whatever was available (corn, oats, barley, etc.). Small feedings at each stop were routine.

I would not think that small, frequent feedings would be much of a problem in an otherwise healthy horse.

G.

[The_Equestrian_Vagab]

I’ve ridden lots of endurance horses many miles, and never had a problem with it.
I started on the racetrack where after horses ran and you were cooling them out you could only let them drink a few sips at a time, until they were watered out over an hour or so. (One trainer told me “ONLY FOUR SIPS!!”).
I saw that debunked at an endurance ride where the temps were below freezing, a guy rode up on a sweaty mare to water - which was a pond of ice that he had to break - and she guzzled and guzzled, and they went on to win the ride, and she’s been doing rides for years since.
Horses can eat and drink before/during/after heavy exercising without a problem.
If you are really worried about it, can you just feed part of your horse’s food before riding, and the rest when you finish?

[PNWjumper]

A BNT told me about a horse he had that was a bit of a nut. They finally tried the “Thanksgiving Dinner Method” (stuffing him full of grain right before walking into a Grand Prix) and that was the ticket. So he would hack him in the morning, put him back in his stall, give him a bucket of grain and carry the bucket of grain with the horse up to the arena where the horse would continue eating at the back gate. He would then mount and walk right into the ring. Can’t think of a much more aerobic activity than jumping around a 1.60m Grand Prix course straight off of eating as much grain as the horse wanted! He suffered no ill effects from that program, and ended up winning quite a few GPs.