feeding a good doer

[Loopy_Laura]

Can i just have some reassurance/ advice?

I have an ID/TB who is proving to be a very very good doer. Due to saddle issues, she has also been doing less exercise the normal.
As a result her waistline is fast expanding!!!

At the moment they are on winter grazing still, which is unrestricted, and although eaten right down, the spring grass is still growing through and she does appear to be finding lots to eat. When they move to summer grazing it will be restricted grazing. I am seriously thinking that if they do not move in the next fortnight i may invest in a grazing muzzle. Do you think this is acceptable?

As for her hard feed, she gets the reccommended amount of baileys lo cal, and a v small handle of hifi lite.
Should i keep going or would she be better with just the hifi and vit and min supplement. I am very conscious that she should get her vitamins, especially if i restrict her grazing. her coat is looking great since i moved to lo cal.

So opinions please?

 

[puzzles]

first things first - it's great that you're concerned about her having a balanced diet. some people, in a desperate bid to restrict their good doer's food intake, overlook the importance of this. so well done.
therefore, vitamin and mineral supplement or the Lo-Cal, especially as she's doing so well on it, either will be fine as both will rovide all the vitamins and minerals your horse needs - though some are better than others and Lo-Cal is of very high quality so you'll be fine sticking to that. the handful of Hi-Fi (preferably change to Hi-Fi Lite/Good Doer if you can; every little really does count and they are lower in energy) should be fine too in order to make the balancer more platable/or to mix in the vit&min supplement (if you choose to use one).
rather than use a grazing muzzle (personally, i would only ever use one as a very last resort, for lots of reasons) i think restricted grazing using electric tape and restricted turnout would be healthier both mentally and physically. let her graze the grass right down in a small, sectioned-off area, then move the tape a metre or so every few days, supplementing her fibre intake with a haynet as expalined later.
if you have a menage, is it possible for you to have your horse turned out in there - with or without a buddy - for a couple of hours or so, preferably with a haynet or two and water, or with a toy. this means that your horse will be moving about but won't have access to lots of grass or other lush food.
you can stable him for longer but this could cause more harm than good if your horse gets particularly stressed out and he won't be burning calories through movement due to the lack of space. anyway, if you do stable him at all, place his haynet on the opposite side of the stable to his water, so he has to travekl from one to the other (using up calories).
it also helps to give him a good-sized haynet, but with either very small holes or one haynet over another, so that he does not go without food for long periods without food but it still takes more effort and time to eat the hay, meaning he'll eat actually less.
try soaking/steaming your hay for about half and hour, to reduce its nutritional content further. you can also mix it a maximum of 50:50 with oat straw to dilute it and make it even lower in nutritional value, though any more will make your hore more likely to get colic as oat straw is pretty indigestible.
even if you only have 10 mins to spare, lunge or long-rein/walk out your horse or something - every bit counts, and if you can 9even if you have to pay for ti) ask someone else (such as your YO/RI/friend) to exercise her. a 20-min lunging session is the equivelant of a 1-hour schooling session, so it's well worth the effort in the long run.

good luck and i hope this helps!