hard keeper thoroughbred horse

[WTA]

Do any of you own any hard keepers? By that I mean hard to keep weight on? We have a 13 year old thoroughbred mare that is hard to keep weight on. She's the only one like this here. We also have an American warmblod, a quarterhorse, a foxtrotter/appy mix and a 20 week old colt from the foxtrotter.

None of them are skinny and in fact they get overweight very easily.

This thoroughbred is a hard keeper though. She spent 3 years on the track before becoming a ranch horse out in California and then she moved here about 4 years ago. We got her 2 years ago and while she hasn't really lost much weight she has sure not gained any. She always seems to have just a bit of rib showing. It's gotten more noticeable now in the winter. We're keeping all the horses off pasture until the wheat catches up a little so we are feeding hay and grain. Recently we have upped this ones rations to way more than everyone else and begun a much more involved exercise program.
I found something called chopped alfalfa at tractor supply. It's chopped alfalfa and timothy in a bag. It's really green and fresh looking. We can't get timothy any other way here so I thought this would help. Anyway, her feeding schedule now is

2 scoops of chopped alfalfa/timothy 3 times a day
2 flakes of our giant bermuda hay 3 times a day
1 scoop of 12% pleasure horse feed from dumore twice a day.
She only gets hay and chopped hay in the lunch time feeding and gets exercised when she is done.

We are also using a weight gain supplement from dumore twice a day.

Does this new feeding and exercise schedule sound adequate for her now to get her body condition back up to where it needs to be?

Do any of you with thoroughbreds have any different have any different suggestions to get her back to that race horse look?

 

[bigbull338]

theres a few things you might want todo that might help the mare hold her weight.take her to the vet an have her teeth checked.they may need tobe floated.an also worm her.an also you might want to change her over to a senior horse feed.

 

[WTA]

We have her scheduled to get her teeth floated again next month. It's done once a year on all of ours. Worming is on a schedule too and she's up to date. I just did her yesterday as a mater of fact. We're good on worms though. I have about 80 chickens that don't let a pile of manure sit on the ground more than 5 seconds before scratching it into the dirt. It really helps a lot with the flies annd worms not having piles all over the place.

Here's a picture of her.

She is the one on the left. My warmblood is the gray in the middle and my young quarterhorse is the one on the right.

Lena is the only one that is underweight looking. It's hard to see in the picture but her ribs are showing just a little and she just has that old look to her. Her life hasn't been that hard though. We are really getting on the exercise lately though. Hopefully we will be able to fix it. I plowed up the arena last night and we are about to go have another 2 hour exercise session.

 

[zzvyb6]

Throw some corn into the girl and wait for it to come out. If its unchewed, then she's not getting good digestion.

Corn will put some heat into her, too. I had an Arab/Hunter with the same issue. Timothy / grass is not for weight gain, its to keep their stomach working and your fences intact.

Oats and corn will get some energy and protein into her system. Need a lot of water available to help this process, too.

 

[QRTRHRS]

Purina Ultium. Only out a couple of years now, it was formulated for high performance horses but we have seen better results than with Purina Equine Senior for some of our elderly horses.

In fact, we had a someone bring in a throughbred that had been starved to the point where many thought he ought to be put down. We brought in a vet, had his teeth done and slowly over about a six month period got him back into pretty good shape.

Like any new food, start out with small amounts. We actually had that old gelding on about four quarts of grain a day until he got to looking good again.

We only gave him timouthy hay during that time.

 

[Rara Avis]

Flaked Barley...

 

[HickoryNut]

I've always considered Dumore products the Ol' Roy of horse feed.

 

[blueriver]

Sometimes some just require more feed. Here are some suggestions take them for what you feel they are worth.

Every once in awhile a horse will become immune to the type of wormer you are using. Try switching. Here, we use Ivomectrin Catttle injectable for horse's... have for several years ... 1CC per hundred weight... so for a thousand lb horse 10CC directly in the mouth like a paste wormer.

Pen her off seperate, with the same diet, add free choice good quality grass hay, free choice mineral/salt block lick and ample fresh water. Let her eat all the grass hay she wants! Lick all the mineral she wants (may become loose as a goose the first few days of the mineral lick) The more lick the more water the more grass hay consumption.

My ranch mares and geldings are free choice grass hay fed and even the hardest keeper is keeping and only on grass hay. The horse's we use everyday that are working get grain 1X a day. I use the ivomectrin every 6 months.

My opinion, just like a human, exercise will tone the muscle and burn the fat. If she doesn't need the muscle, but needs the fat back off the exercise.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[HickoryNut]

Looking at the pic again, note the lack of shine in her coat, pretty obvious next to the bay. That's a very strong indicator of worm problems.

 

[WTA]

I asked the vet a few months ago about the lack of shine in her coat. He checked her for worms then and didn't find any intestinals but went and wormed her anyway. They are all shaggy now with winter too and that day we did some swimming and running in the mud going after cows so she looks a little more dull than normal. We worm every 6 weeks though ourselves and rotate every type of horse wormer there is in the schedule.

You all should have seen her yesterday. My gray warmblood is always the fastest one around here and the one most willing to do things but yesterday my son was running all over the place on the TB with out even having to ask really. We rode about 5 hours or so. She had a great day. I learned it's not even possible to keep up with a thoroughbred no matter what kind of horse you are on. I can outdistance her in a all out run with my horse but not out run her. My gray was so mad about not being able to catch her a couple times. Her stride is just so long compared to his that it's not going to happen. Lightening, the gray horse, was snorting and flinging his head around at her for running off like that. He almost popped me in the face doing that once because we were running all out and I was sortof laying forward just hanging on to his mane and the reigns at the same time.

What did you mean by considering dumore as the old roy of feeds? Is that good or bad? Only one place around here even sells it and I've tried all the other kinds from the feedstore. Noone here sells purina anymore. I used to use that brand a lot. It doesn't make sense, we have a mill here that makes all the purina brands but it's all sold for export.