What to feed a good doer in the winter months

kirstinbell

kirstinbell

New Member
Jul 24, 2007
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Glasgow
Hello,

Looking for some advice. Just bought my first horse (subject to todays successful vetting) and looking for some advice on what to feed him during the winter.

He's a 6 y/o piebald cob. A very good doer who is in light work at the moment and quite overweight.

I'll be looking to do a lot more work with him (taking him from 10 minute hack per day to 1 hours schooling)

At the moment he's in the field pretty much 24/7. He get 1/8 scoop of pony nuts and 1/8 scoop of readygrass and some supplements (seaweed mainly).

I'm planning on keeping him out most winter but brining him in almost everyday to ride and feed - I'll also stable him perhaps once a week. He'll get some hay while I'm grooming him but is it ok to keep him on the same feed and keep it to once a day or will he need more? I don't want to underfeed him over the winter but if he's on grass 24/7 in a good sized field would it be good enough just to add something like Baileys lo cal to his usual feed?

I'd be grateful for any advice you can give!

Kirstin
 
My pony does not get any feed at all, except pasture all year, but she's an extremely good doer, and still very obese. It really depends on how much of a good doer he is, if he's gaining weight, cut down the food until he remains a good weight.

It might take a while to see what he needs.
 
Cupcake said:
My pony does not get any feed at all, except pasture all year, but she's an extremely good doer, and still very obese. It really depends on how much of a good doer he is, if he's gaining weight, cut down the food until he remains a good weight.

It might take a while to see what he needs.
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Thanks cupcake - I guess I'm just worried about changing too much when he moves to his new home but the diet he's on just now is not working for him - he's still really heavy despite spending the last 2 weeks in a starvation paddock! They've just moved him into the haylage field and he's expanded significantly in the past few days!
 
i'd completely scrap what he's on now. I'm very much in favour of fibre feeds, so my 2 (irish cob and welsh cob) have feeds based around an appropriate base. In their case hi-fi lite. Low in sugar and low in alfalfa content (which hots mine up). If you find he lacks energy on the hi-fi, you could switch up to alfa-a lite. My irish cob gets the dengie fibre mix easy since he's in moderate work and needs a bit more. You can't go wrong with a good allround vitamin and mineral supplement either :)
 
echo EB.
Not much point in 1/8 scoop of pony nuts anyway; I feed HIFI lite plus a good vitamin supplement, garlic and some veg. Doesnt need the ready grass either, grass is growing again. When the winter sets in you may want to give him adlib hay in the field, depends what you're grazing is like/will he be rugged/work level etc.
When you get him, weight tape him, take a photo and make up a weekly weight chart, then monitor him weekly - you'd be surprised at how easy it is to forget what they're were first like!
Whatever you decide to do, make the changes very gradually; new environment plus new feed ect can be a bit of a shock to the system.
Good luck for the vetting!
 
Just purely out of interest, if you are gonna keep him out, why will you be stabling him once a week?
 
I would feed Baileys Local Balancer or something simular so that he gets all the nutritional stuff without extra calories. Wouldnt need any supplements with that.
 
Funnily enough I was going to post a thread asking what others were feeding their good doers.

I have a VERY good doer, he is on 24 hour grazing at the moment but will be stabled overnight when the clocks go back at the end of this month. There isn't much grass, but he is overweight and so I am only giving him his Bailey Low Cal balancer and an apple a day. He is steadily loosing weight and I am going to add a couple of handfuls of Hi-Fi Light to his feed over the next couple of days.

Last winter he only had the above with his hay and coped very well. However, my YO and another livery constantly told me I wasn't feeding him enough blah blah blah. It's already started this year, I am a novice owner and last year was our first together but I feel I am doing right by him.

Anyways I would highly recommend Bailey Low Cal - Sonny's coat is fantastic!
 
but if he's on grass 24/7 in a good sized field would it be good enough just to add something like Baileys lo cal to his usual feed?
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Not unless your grass grows all year or it's a very big field. The horses at my yard have the equivalent of almost 2 acres each throughout the winter (they're out as a herd but if you work out acreage to each horse that's what it comes out as). Even so, all the horses have supplementary hay on a daily basis and they all need it to do well over winter.

If you can put hay out in the field when the grass drops off (if you bring him in and he scoffs an entire net in a short time take it as he needs more than the grass is giving him) and feed a balancer like TopSpec or Lo-Cal you may find he doesn't need much in the way of other feeds at all.

If he starts to drop weight whilst being given plenty of hay and the ration balancer then I'd look to add something like unmolassed sugar beet or a larger amount of Readigrass as a bucket feed.

My very good doer who isn't currently in work will get ad-lib hay over the winter months, starting when she is hungry enough to want to eat it (she's ignoring hay at the moment as we've loads of grass). On top of that I'll feed a full ration of Baileys Lo-Cal and approx 100g of unmolassed sugarbeet (dry weight, it looks like more once it's been soaked). At the minute she's getting a couple of handfuls of Dengie Good Doer but I won't replace this once it runs out as she doesn't need that and sugar beet. That's it, and chances are she won't lose any weight on this diet and I'll have to restrict her hay intake at some point before Spring.
 
nelle said:
Last winter he only had the above with his hay and coped very well. However, my YO and another livery constantly told me I wasn't feeding him enough blah blah blah. It's already started this year, I am a novice owner and last year was our first together but I feel I am doing right by him.

Anyways I would highly recommend Bailey Low Cal - Sonny's coat is fantastic!
Click to expand...

Dont listen to that - if he was up to weight Baileys lo-cal will give him all the nutrients he needs. Being fed on a feed balancer I bet he is better fed than alot of horses.

Its hard having a good doer sometimes you do feel mean keeping them on a diet but it is for the best and I think a lot of people who dont have good doers dont take it seriously enough and appreciate that fed anymore they would pile on the pounds.

Sorry I will get off my soap box now :D ha ha:D
 
Gem is overweight at the moment, due to her just out on grass doing nothing for a year before I got her.
She is an extemely good doer, she only needs to look at grass to put on an extra 100kg! :D

She is ridden everyday, is in a starvation paddock with a full haynet at night and then half a net in the morning.
She also has a scoop of hifi, in order for her to have her vitamin supplement.

With this plan she is steadily losing weight and putting on much needed muscle :)
 
Nothing, if has little work and is fat, then he should cope with grass/hay. When you up his work load though you may find he gets a bit sluggish and lazy, then i would stick on him on an energy mix to supply him with what he needs to keep moving. Otherwise I wouldn't feed anything at all unless he needs weight on or suppliments (which can be fed with a handful of chaff)

My little fat mare and big fat mare are just on grazing at the moment and probably will until the field is almost bare (they are boardering obese :rolleyes:)
 
nothing really just hay-grass hay not the rich alfalfa kind. I am having the opposite of what your horse is my horse just doesn't eat. i also don't think giving horses grain once in awhile is right it srews up their digestive system so if you want to give him a treat try a carrot.
 
I only feed Poppy - an extremely good doer - hay in the winter. She lives out all year round and always has plenty of energy (too much most of the time!) and her coat is beautiful and shiny all year round.
 
I have a 3/4 TB and an IDXTB who are not in work. They live out all year, and if the weather is bad I rug them. They get ad lib barley straw, ( a big 4x4 bale) which they also use to lie on. I do have sheltered fields with trees all round. If the weather turns nasty or if I feel they are loosing a bit of weight;) I give them some bruised barley and wait for it !! soaked beef nuts (barley, mins vits and beet shreds hence the soaking) I know sacrilage to feed horses non horsey food but most of the horse foods are over rated and over priced. Check out the contents and try some cattle feed 1/2 the price and just as good. I can't remember the last time I had a vet out to the girls, so I must be doing something right. Both my girls are good doers and I have to practically starve them over the summer.
 
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hmmm.... i have a h/w cob and she is a good doer. i kept her on the starvation field all year round apart from once a fortnight when she goes on the lush grass for a couple of hours.I feed her on small feed(few coarse mix and handful of mollichop to add bulk to her food)and 1/2 or 1 small section of a bale of hay. she has got a gutter along her bum(although the last owners said she just had a big bum...i think that too...)but her body is nice and sleek ...for a h/w anyway...
 
Why is there a need to give a good doer hard feed. :confused: I realise that handfuls with the needed vits etc are a brilliant idea. But other than plenty of hay surely we shouldnt feel that we HAVE to feed hard feed. :eek:

I fed my fat coblet on adlib hay last Winter. And that is all he will get this Winter. He had the most beautiful shine to his coat all through. His weight slowly dropped and he was certainly happy enough. :)
 
atillathefun said:
Dont listen to that - if he was up to weight Baileys lo-cal will give him all the nutrients he needs. Being fed on a feed balancer I bet he is better fed than alot of horses.

Its hard having a good doer sometimes you do feel mean keeping them on a diet but it is for the best and I think a lot of people who dont have good doers dont take it seriously enough and appreciate that fed anymore they would pile on the pounds.

Sorry I will get off my soap box now :D ha ha:D
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I so agree. My YO has other ideas though :confused: She is a brilliant horse woman, but I do disagree with her opinion on feed regimes. She seems to feed hers the maximum amount of hard feed with the minimum amount of forage.

Last winter she told me I wasn't feeding him enough so I gave him more (he wasn't overweight or sluggish but I'd only had him a few months and I trusted her judgement). When I was away over Christmas she added sugar beet to his feed to 'make it more interesting for him'. When I got back he was a maniac and huge, RI asked what I was feeding him and almost had a fit when I told her. I cut back again and discovered Low Cal.

I'm going away for a week tomorrow. Fellow livery is feeding him for me. She's under strict orders not to feed him anymore than I've told her to no matter what anyone says. I'm just hoping YO doesn't interfer.:mad: I'm much more confident now that even though I don't have many years experience I do know what's best for my horse.
 
Thanks for your advice everyone!!

I really like the idea of weight taping him to track his progress - at the vetting the vet advised he needs to lose about 50 to 60 Kg :eek:

I've bought the readygrass and pony nuts to start with - will keep him on very small amount for a week or 2 until he settles (I'm only getting him on saturday and don't want to change too much) then I'm going to switch to Hi Fi lite, his seaweed, vitamins and some fruit.

He's also currently on suregrow but everyone I have spoken to about this says that this is not helping his weight problem so I'm just replacing it with a multi vitamin supplement!

We'll get that weight shifted by christmas!!
 
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