Worth every penny. I’m pretty risk averse so that peace of mind helps me a ton!
I thought I’d share a before and after from this year to last. I’d say we’ve had some weight loss success! Diligence has really paid off.
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Charlie looks fantastic!! That’s great news, and I’m very happy for you!
Thank you! It’s amazing looking at the photos. I tape him every few weeks so I know we are on track, but boy, visually I was really happy to see how much healthier he looks and the progress we’re making in conditioning.
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He looks wonderful!!
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Hi all! Charlie had been pretty consistently taping between the 1000 and 1017 weight estimates. He’s recently been up to 1033 so I think we’re getting some weight from somewhere.
Last year the barn we were at he was getting much more hay than now, but I suspected that the hay at the previous barn wasn’t great and wouldn’t doubt that was part of it.
Here are all his significant sources of calories by weight:
1.25 lbs total Beet Pulp:
0.50 lb 6:30AM
0.25 lb 2:00 PM
0.50 lb 5:00 PM
0.30 lbs total Flax + Vit E
0.15 lb 6:30AM
0.15 lb 5:00PM
16 lbs total 1st cut grass hay in stall with hay chix extreme slow feed net:
4 lb 6:30 AM
4 lb 2:00 PM
8 lb 5:00 PM
3 lbs total Alfalfa/Timothy hay pellets auto feeder:
- 3 oz hourly at 10AM, 11AM, 12PM (in case weather is bad; normally eats with “lunch”)
- 3 oz hourly from 8PM - 6AM
Grand total of 20.55 lbs PLUS pasture hay w/GG muzzle ~ 8AM-2PM
Additional supplements: Vermont Blend Pro, TractGuard, Apple a Day electrolytes, OneAC
Treats: beet pulp based low sugar treats and hay pellets
The hay in the pasture is the bigger variable, but they get thrown flakes vs being on rounds and his muzzle slows him down fairly well.
My main concern with him is mitigating an empty stomach. Initial thoughts are to give him 1 flake (4lbs) with breakfast…let him have any remainder at lunch and remove the 2PM flake, and cut him back to 1 flake at dinner. That would remove 8 lbs but still keep food in his stomach around the clock. Any other ideas?
The other thing worth noting and I don’t know how it plays in, he IS getting fitter. He’s starting to use his rear end much more effectively and we’ve been more active this spring/summer showing and trail riding than in the past. I think he’s looking pretty good, he’s just a tank. Comparatively to quite a few other fjords, he doesn’t look as beefy as many of them so it’s hard to tell for me.
Vets advice is been he has been looking good but we don’t want him to gain, hence the cutting back of hay thoughts.
Muscle weighs more than fat. Could explain the gain if work load is more.
Other than double bagging hay or cutting beet pulp to bare minimal, I’m not sure I would cut back his hay and leave him with an empty stomach.
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Whew, omgosh, I started reading this and thought he was currently IN a laminitic flare! 
Agree with luv - he’s only eating barely 1.5% of his weight in hay, so I couldn’t cut that.
3lb of hay pellets is in the 2400-2700 or so calorie range, not truly insignificant for his weight. 3oz an hour really doesn’t do anything for his stomach, but does add calories, so is what I would likely drop.
Reality is he may need to be off grass altogether or at least cut in half (so 8-11 would at least be the lowest sugar times of the current 8-2)
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No thank goodness! I figured I’d keep it on this one since it’s related
Would the 3 pounds of pellets not be just an equivalent-ish to a flake of hay over the course of a day? I’m thinking purely weight based so could be missing something. Any thoughts on utilizing the auto feeder any better? I think I can do up to 12 ounces/hour.
The 3 oz of pellets expands quite a bit when I wet it, I was curious about how much of his stomach it would fill up.
He’s not on any grass, dry lot with hay. With his grazing muzzle to not inhale the hay 
This was my thought as well, but was curious of others experiences!
Muscle weighs more than fat, but I wouldn’t think it would tape bigger since it is more dense, would it?
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That’s what I wasn’t sure of. I switched back to our english dressage tack from our western over the weekend and his his girth doesn’t go up as many holes as it did over the winter.
I know taping isn’t that accurate, but I tape every couple weeks just to know if we’re maintaining, losing, or gaining specific weights aside.
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I should also add that he is 6 this year too so I’m sure has been growing and maybe starting to level out more at his age.
wet hay pellets are the same as eating them dry and then taking a drink. Water moves out of the stomach pretty quickly
Ohhh, I saw “pasture hay” and though that was grass pasture LOL
This somewhat depends on where the muscle is being increased. If it’s filling in the top around the wither area, where the tape passes over, and you’re just doing the heartgirth measurement with a weight tape, they might or might not change weight depending on whether fat there is also reducing.
If your doing HG and length and neck measurements, muscle is put down there too so weight could increase.
Assuming the girth didn’t magically stretch over the Winter LOL then this is a much better indicator of healthy weight changes, than just a tape measure.
Perfect use of the tapes.
No doubt he’s done some growing in the last year, and should be tapering off here really soon. The downside to that is that it generally comes with increasing how easy a keeper they are, since there’s no energy going into growing 
BUT, since for him it also means more work, hopefully that will take care of that side of things
Muscle does not ‘weigh’ more than fat. 1 lb of muscle weighs the same as 1 lb of fat. It is denser than fat (takes up less space). If you build up the percentage (volume) of muscle vs fat, at some point, the amount of muscle will weigh more. But 1lb muscle weighs the same as 1lb fat.
That argument drives me crazy.
Susan
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Except it does if you are on the volume train that this phrase usually follows and as it does above. The thing missing from that phrase is " a cubic decimetre of muscle weighs more than a cubic decimetre of fat." Those volume explanations (choose volume measure of choice) are assumed in that phrase. And where it got muddled above (but quickly sorted) was it seemed that a tape measure “weight” may have been taken as an actual weight, but the phrase, even with its missing details, is not responsible for that misunderstanding.
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unfortunately the volume qualification does not usually follow “weighs more”, and the original comment did not say that: You wouldn’t believe how many times I see this - just flat out “muscle weighs more than fat” end of story no further details given.
A subsequent comment about it DID add in “it’s more dense”.
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I feel old now. This phrase goes way, way back to the beginning of the (human) fitness fad. I guess the whole thing does need to be spelled out and not short formed for those that are not dinosaurs like me!
I’ll do my best to not use that phrasing on Coth. Geez.
But if OP was using a measuring tape it assumes the mass is growing. Since mass is growing and workload increasing, I assumed cute horse is adding muscle vs fat.
Hope my logic makes sense.
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We just got hay testing results back as one of our cushings/IR horses got set off a couple weeks ago. They didn’t calculate the NSC (equi-analytical) but adding together the Water Sol carbs, the ESC, plus the starch gives you 24.1% for Dry Matter or 22.1% as sampled.
That’s on the higher side no?
what’s the breakdown of the 3? No, E_A doesn’t give the total, but NSC = WSC + starch
However, the IR horse needs ESC + starch to be < 10%, with starch < 4%. SOME say that NSC needs to be < 10% always, and some horses for sure need it that way too.
ESC is a subset of WSC (meaning you don’t add those together to get anything), so there can be a little, to a lot of difference between ESC and WSC, and therefore ESC+starch and ESC+starch
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