Lose about 200 pounds HOW?

[PonyGirl]

Feather must lose some weight. What is the healthest way to do this? She gets worked for an hour a day. Some days for an hour and a half.

Please advise.

She is so ROUND!

[bellajack]

From Laminitis Conference Part 4:

Base horses diet on forage/fibre, not sugar/starch.

Feed a broad-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement to horses on a restricted diet, and ensure an adequate and balanced supply of magnesium.

Do not starve or prevent from eating for long periods in an attempt to reduce bodyweight, and make all dietary changes slowly.

Maintain or increase regular exercise.

Plan an active weight management programme for overweight animals; Meadow hay at 2% current bodyweight for 6 weeks.
Meadow hay at 1.5% current b/w for 6 weeks.
Meadow hay at 1.5% target b/w for 6 weeks.
With increased exercise wherever possible.

Maintain a moderate condition score - between 4 and 5 on 9 point scale.

Get forage analysed and try to feed a forage with less than 10% NSc. Soaking hay in clean water for 30mins will significantly reduce sugar content.

Follow turnout advice given in Part 1, 2nd post.

Hope that helps.

[PonyGirl]

Thanks. She is on a dry lot when turned out and given a set amount of hay to graze. Her feed gain has been reduced some. She is starting a supplement today.

She isn't allowed the grass lot for sometime.

Thanks for your quick post BellaJack!

[shiatsudales]

I f you're in the USA check what her hay is. I read quite a lot that ponies in the USA are fed alfalfa hay rather than our 'grass' or 'meadow' hay that we feed in the UK. At the moment Rose, nursing mare, is given an absolute maximum of 1kg of alfafa a day along with grazing. Drummer, gelding in work, gets poor grazing for 12hrs a day and then a third of a kilo of alfafa.

If they were on pure alfafa hay I reckon I could only feed about a third of their fibre needs with it, otherwise they'd be waaaaaaay too fat! They need around 2% of their bodyweight per day as 'feed', most Dales do well on no hard feed (sweet mix, oats, etc) at all but do appreciate a small amount of chaff (chooped straw) with a broad spectrum vitamin/mineral balancer or supplement.

I've had Drummer in harder work than Feather on just hay, poor grazing and the alfafa and unmolassed sugarbeet bucket feed.

What bucket feed or hard feed does Feather get?

[knight]

Yep, all good advise & I agree. Especially about the hard feed (grain), when Knight's too fat I eliminate it completely. In the winter I give him 1cup, and I mean one measuring cup measure of oats and that's MAX. They just don't need it. Knight never looks better than on poor grazing, grass hay ( ad lib), a pound or two a day of unmolassed beet pulp (sugarbeet) & a good broad vitamin mineral supplement. It took me awhile to understand that ponies are different & should not be fed just like horses. Too bad we don't have much choice in feed balancers as in the UK, just not popular here. Purina makes one I use though, called Mare & Maintenance it's fed a pound a day per horse and seems to be a good balancer for his beet pulp & hay diet. More exercise does wonders too, but not all of us have time for several hours of pony exercise a day. Wish I did! Good luck with Feather, she will slim down but it will take a little while.

[PonyGirl]

Thanks for the fantastic advise. She is dropping some weight. Getting back to her figure slowly.