Winter Weight Loss

Winter presents a number of challenges, particular for poor-doers and of course their owners! If the recent cold snap and a lack of grazing has left your horse looking a little too lean, the following tips may help you to combat that dreaded winter weight loss.

First and foremost forage is the foundation of every horses diet, so start by ensuring your hay or haylage is of good quality and fed adlib, ideally in the field as well as the stable. Far from being ‘just bulk’, forage provides the lion share of your horse’s energy (calorie) intake and is essential for maintaining gut health. If your horse is a ‘fussy-feeder’ it may be worth monitoring how much forage he is ‘choosing’ to eat, aiming for a minimum of 1.5% bodyweight per day, (7.5-8kg/ day for a 500kg horse). Although grass intake is impossible for horse owners to measure, it can generally be ignored for underweight horses on poor pasture. Haylage is not automatically ‘richer’ as commonly thought and it is important to remember that due to higher moisture content, you need to feed approximately 1.2-1.5 times more haylage than hay by weight.  Forage analysis is the only way to determine the nutritional value of both hay and haylage and may be particularly useful when it comes to calculating haylage rations or choosing the most suitable forage supply for you individual horse. If your horse or pony has poor teeth, look for a short chop hay replacer or a cube that be soaked to make a mash.

Although moving to a ‘conditioning’ feed may seem like the obvious choice, start by checking that you are feeding the recommended ration of your current feed as a simple increase may be all that is needed; even if your feed says ‘low energy’ or ‘low calorie’ on the bag. If this doesn’t achieve the desired result; look for a feed containing higher levels of digestible energy and protein. Choosing fibre and oil rather than cereal based feeds is the most sympathetic option both in terms of digestive health and preventing unwanted excitability. However if your horse is prone to any clinical conditions such as laminitis, colic or tying-up, speak to a nutritionist before changing his feed. Traditionally sugar beet has been a common addition to winter diets and although it is high in calories and fibre, it contains approximately 80% water once soaked, making it easy to overestimate how much of it you are feeding. Whilst a Stubbs scoop of soaked beet pulp may look like a significant contribution to your horse’s bucket, it actually contains limited nutritional value. In fact, just 1 scoop of Horse of Pony Cubes is approximately 5 times higher in calories!

Finally make sure your horse is well rugged to help ensure he isn’t wasting valuable energy from his feed keeping warm. If you are reaching for an extra duvet you may need to think about doing the same for your horse!

Ribs: to see or not to see, that is the question...

In recent years the media has been filled with messages about obesity and this message and indeed the problem, is one that affects our equine population too. Although many of the horse owners that I speak to seem aware of the problems associated with excess weight gain, we are still seeing large numbers of overweight horses and because of this, sometimes find that the perception of ‘ideal’ is skewed.

Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is an objective and effective way of assessing if and where the horse is carrying body fat and in many respects, is of greater importance than the horse’s actual weight. The 1-9 scale assesses 6 main areas which should be scored individually before calculating an average. For leisure horses, a score of 5 (described as ‘moderate’), is considered ideal. A ‘perfect 5’ is defined as:

·         No crest, neck blends smoothly into the body

·         Shoulder blends smoothly into the body, no fat pads behind the shoulder

·         Withers ‘defined’ but smoothly rounded

·         Back level, no fat pads behind the ‘saddle area’

·         Ribs can be easily felt but not seen

·         Fat around the tailhead beginning to feel spongy

However when using the BCS system, there a few important considerations, one of which is the horse’s breed and another being the natural cycle of seasonal weight loss/ gain. For example on a TB horse, you can often see a faint outline of the last two ribs (particularly when they turn), even when they are at an ‘optimum weight’ or in ‘ideal condition’.

Ponies and other native breeds evolved to gain weight in spring and summer and lose it again over the winter, ready for the return of better grazing in the following spring.  Allowing natives to slim down and enter spring a little on the ‘lean’ side as nature intended (perhaps a score of 4.5), helps to prevent excess weight gain.  Provided that the horse or pony is otherwise fit and healthy, seeing ribs is not automatically something that we should be concerned about, even for natives! In addition to whether or not you can see the horse’s ribs, consider other areas on the BCS chart as well as factors such as general health and fitness, skin and coat condition and hoof quality/ health. Whilst ‘ideal condition’ and seeing ribs can go hand in hand, owners of such horses can sometimes be faced with conflicting advice from other liveries, particularly if there are several overweight horses on the yard.

Like people, horses come in different shapes and sizes and for natives particularly, the natural cycle losing and gaining weight is very important. This considered, is being able to see your horse’s ribs a problem? Not always!