Yet Another Diet Thread...

[Paddys Mom]

OK 6 year old Saddlebred gelding in light/moderate work, body clipped and blanketed. Lives outside most of the time with stall access as he chooses. 15.3h and weight tape says about 1100 pounds. Was overweight one year ago when purchased, mostly due to stealing others' rations. :winkgrin:

He now gets about 18 pounds of medium quality timothy hay, which is about the most I can give him without the pony and donkey stealing it.
He gets 2 pounds (before soaking) alfalfa cubes with 1 cup of stablized rice bran (which he hates!) in the morning and 2 pounds of Grow-n-Win in the evening.

He dropped all the extra weight slowly before I added in the morning alfalfa cubes. Then he continued to drop weight so I added the rice bran. He still needs to pick up a little more weight.

One option is to ditch the alfalfa cubes and rice bran and add Ultimate Finish. I admit I do hate soaking the alfalfa cubes. :uhoh:

One option is to move him over to a different feed altogether, like Buckeye Promient or Buckeye Cadence.

PS - Teeth are good, he drinks a lot of water, and he is finishing up a solid month of Ulcerguard that I chose to give due to some things I observed (yawning at mealtimes, etc).

[TrotTrotPumpkn]

Have you done a fecal for worms? Even if you are worming it might be worth doing...

[Paddys Mom]

Fecal scheduled for March. :)

[jn4jenny]

So you hate soaking the cubes and the horse hates the rice bran.

Have you considered going to alfalfa pellets instead, and adding more pellets to make up the "lost" calories of the rice bran? Easier for you, horse will be happy with the taste, and you can add calories without having to add a grain product.

Alternately, you could swap out the rice bran with something even higher octane, like oil. I know people whine and moan that oil freezes, but just this morning I was standing in a 20-degree barn with unfrozen canola oil.

[Paddys Mom]

I have tried alfalfa pellets three different times with three different horses and could never get any of them to eat them well. :confused: Maybe the alfalfa pellets available to me are not good quality.

I called my feed store and the semi-knowledgeable woman who was available suggested Buckeye's new EQ8 Gut Health feed. However, that is so new that it isn't on their website. :confused: