For your information I have owned this horse for six or seven years, he has never been rideable, and he never WILL be rideable. For five of those years I did not own any other horses because he was my one and only. I actually own two other horses these days, one of which I’m paying to board right now, and whether or not I had him has no bearing on whether I would get another. I have poured every ounce of my time, effort, and money into keeping this animal healthy enough to bum around a pasture with his pals without being in too much pain for that to be enjoyable for him. Don’t you DARE try to tell me I haven’t done enough or cared enough about him. Find somewhere else to go on this rant.
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For everyone else, thank you.
I forgot to add the vet reviewed our feed situation. The sweet feed is nutrena 12%, which while not my faaaaavorite thing to feed, apparently isn’t all that crappy of a food especially if he’ll eat it. Everything else is on par, and with the alfalfa he actually put on a couple pounds between when I called her last week on Monday and when she reviewed his situation on Tuesday.
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I cringe at some of the things I put on here before I knew better I’m going to be honest >.>
I was a very, very dumb new horse owner and let’s be frank, sometimes I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.
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He’s not that bad. With his issues you wouldn’t want him to be a butterball anyways.
At 14 my chronically lame OTTB was eating 3 lbs of TC senior twice a day with 1 gram of bute AM and PM and all the hay he wanted. As he aged, and dental problems developed, I added water to his feed and another 2 lbs of Hay Stretcher.
So you aren’t feeding him that much and you aren’t medicating him that much either. I did swap to Previcoxx (at that time you couldn’t get Equioxx in a bottle of pills only in a $$ syringe form, so I got the dog form and used the delicious meaty flavored pills much cheaper and my horse did not care) and it made zero noticeable difference in my horse so we went back to bute since it was so much cheaper.
Just wanted to give you another experience/perspective. You are doing fine and I don’t think he’s doing as bad as you think.
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Late to this thread, @dungrulla , but since you mentioned Nutrena, I had great results adding their Empower Boost to my WB’s ration (whole oats) when he came out of Winter ribby.
I added 1 cup to his feed 2X daily & within 2mo he was back to a good weight.
After that, I began feeding Boost again in early Fall & continued through Winter and he kept his weight. Horse was 19 at the time & in moderate work.
I also had an aged - 27 - TB who got along on 1G Bute daily for minor arthritic changes w/o any gut issues.
There’s a pharmacy in KY that makes flavored powder: molasses, peppermint or orange - vet sends them a script & you order as needed.
BTW: your pics were not that alarming to me
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Dang, you mean you went and got other shiny new things and STILL have this inconvenience hanging around? The gall! insert smiley faces since the stupid smilies don’t work
The point is never what you didn’t know.
The point is always that you’ve cared enough to keep coming here asking questions insert lots of nodding yes smilies
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Are they still not working for you?
Because they are working for me again.
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GET OUT! I just assumed!
:D:D:D:D
:yes::yes::yes::yes:
And NOW I see that the smilies appear below, not just the broken characters
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Alfalfa was a huge help in keeping weight on my late large, senior, fussy, not a fan of eating, gelding. I’ll note that he developed a cough on the compressed bales, since they tend to be quite dusty. We were concerned he had really entered a final stage of CHF, since he had a grade 6 murmur. Thankfully, it was just the dusty alfalfa, and change to regular bales eliminated that issue. It was hard to find around here, but I was able to find a supplier and it was something he actually enjoyed eating. By the end, I just fed him whatever feed he wanted, and had to change that up regularly.
He also was on previcox/equioxx daily for the last 8-10 years of his life, and it kept him quite comfortable. The other thing you can try is winstrol (stanazolol) as an appetite stimulant. Having the vet out monthly for the injection can get expensive though. I found I didn’t need it during the spring/summer when I had grazing available, but it was really helpful in the winter to keep him interested in eating and it was a relief to my anxiety over getting him to eat, so the peace of mind made it worth the expense.
It wouldn’t have been any more tone deaf or smacked any more of privilege if you had responded to a concerned owner struggling to figure out the right management choices for an unrideable horse that’s losing weight with, “let them eat cake”.
Shaming someone for thinking about what is the right time for humane euthanasia before it becomes absolutely necessary doesn’t seem like a particularly effective way to advocate for equine welfare, in any case.
OP, I hope switching to Equioxx ends up being a big step in the right direction. Last time I was caring for a really hard keeper it was an older horse with a history of being a picky eater. Previcoxx for arthritis pain, splitting meals into smaller/more frequent portions to get more nutrition and calories in before she’d lose interest in a given meal, and making sure she was getting tons of walking in (e.g. hand-walking during periods of inclement weather when the horses would just hunker in turnout shelters otherwise) were the best tools I found for keeping her at a healthy weight and in overall good health/spirits. Hoping you can get your guy comfortable and back to a weight you feel better about this fall.
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Horse is now on day 3 of equioxx, my husband just called from the barn to ask me if he was bucking ‘because his back hurt’. Apparently he tore out of his stall and bucked and reared the entire way back to the pasture so I think maybe, just maybe, he might be feeling better.
For reference–we don’t lead them out, our stalls join directly to pasture.
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Yay that’s great! Hopefully that translates to some weight gain and improved appetite.
This reminds me of a meme that is going around “ The biggest reason men get hurt? Thinking they’re still young”
I actually noticed that my 11yo air fern has dropped some weight (out 24/7). It’s that time of year when it’s still hot and buggy, the grass growing is slowing down here, but they won’t touch the hay until they think they’re starving.
I hope that is a good sign as well! When we started Equioxx, my old OTTB started playing with the youngsters - it made me so happy.
Stress and poor appetite from heat and flies can make summer a difficult time to get a horse to gain weight. As it cools off, you might get him to put on some more weight.
Keep up the good work!
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Late to the convo but @dungrulla your horse is SO LUCKY to have you. You care, you get your vet involved, you look for outside information and consider information with little ego and lots of love for your old guy.
Regardless of when his time comes, as it does for us all, you will make that choice in his best interest. Would that all horses were so lucky
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Late to the convo too, but glad to hear he’s feeling good! I saw at least two others post about Empower Boost, and I was going to suggest that as well. I have always had good luck with that putting weight on ones that needed it. In fact, when I started my now deceased but at the time 23yo gelding on it when he’d started dropping a little due to getting older and just not utilizing his feed as well (TC Sr.), boy, he bloomed out so pretty! Topline filled out, coat got rich and dappled, and he looked years and years younger. It was amazing. And you might be able to cut back a little on the sweet feed if you use a fat supplement like Empower Boost (which is basically rice bran), which would be easier on hit digestive system too. Just a thought! It sounds like you’re going in the right direction though!
Probiotics can boost digestive efficiency , have you added those?
Did you even read the thread?
This horse isn’t healthy. If OP wants to PTS, then no one should think twice about it.
and even if it was healthy but unrideable, it’s still ok to PTS. I recently was reminded of this when I saw a post from a rescue org near me. They had picked up two horses who were in such bad shape one actually died in the trailer on the way home. The other had to be euthed not long after arrival. They had been loved by an owner who fell on hard times and sold them to someone. Both were unrideable. Instead of those horses living a good, shorter, life and then crossing the rainbow bridge, they were starved literally to death because the old owner felt that it was wrong to PTS two reasonably healthy horses.
Don’t make people feel bad for making hard choices!
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Equioxx made a big difference in my oldie, 26ish Morgan with DSLD and ringbone. I know, I’m late to this too but wanted to add that.
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I was just looking through my post history and remembered I made this post, haha. The horse in question is still alive and keeping weight on great. We switched him to equioxx and he’s still going strong two years later. He’s also in during the day with a few flakes of alfalfa and unlimited second cutting hay, the combination seems to have fixed the problem.
We switched to mane menu by blue seal in early 2022 because other feed became both very expensive and way harder to find because of supply issues. It’s objectively kind of a crap feed, but this also seems to be a magic weight gain potion because the other skinny horse I was refeeding also gained a bunch of weight right after we switched.
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What a nice updated to read!
