This is my friends mare, Luna. She is a OTTB and she came to my place about a week ago and she needs to gain weight and muscle we just started feeding beet pulp which she seems to love and the three horses get between 1 and 1/2 and two bales of hay a day not including a 5 acre pasture and she has access to a spring fed creek 24/7. The first picture is when she first arrived and the second was taken pretty late last night.
In your third post it looks like you've been riding her? Personally I wouldn't until she has gained the weight that she definitely needs (good job for feeding her up!) - any exercise you do will just be burning the calories that you want her to be putting on in fat. I understand that you want to muscle her up, but that's not going to happen until she is in an equal or positive energy balance - where her body is using as many, or less calories than she is being fed. Once she has that +/= energy balance, then those calories can start being used to build muscle, else she is just going to stay underweight, or take much longer to see the results you want.
Obviously, it's your friend's horse, so we can only advise. She looks like a sweetie!
She is a sweetie but it wasnt from riding i was lunging her with a saddle on. Im working on a headset which she loses when she has a saddle on so i was lunging her with the saddle on but at the same time asking for a headset and it had been really hot that day.
thank you guys! Since this is not my horse I will talk to the owner about waiting till after she has gotten into better body condition and weight to start riding and working her. And when I mean headset i dont just want their head to be pretty I want them to be working their entire body but I dont want them to have a beautiful way of moving and a good looking body just to look at the head and see it looking uncomfortable. My mustang mare I have never tried to force a headset on her to make her look pretty she does it fairly naturally as long as I am engaging the rest of her body but if she starts raising her head to high i do ask her to lower it. That is what Luna's owner wants me to work with on her. She also wants to show her in 4-h this year though i have reccomended having her use my horse and wait to use hers.
Just explain to the owner that any work at this point will just delay her gaining weight and make it take longer. As well I don't there's a saddle that fits her well with her in this current condition, so that is a factor as well.
How long will she be staying with you? Will she be fed well when she moves away from your place?
I don't see much weight improvement in the recent pictures. She's got a ways to go. But her eyes look do look more alert and her expression looks happier/calm. And that's something... Posted via Mobile Device
She will be staying till the end of June. And her owner will move her back to her house. She should be fed pretty well as she will be the only horse and they have about 6-8 acres of pasture for her alone.
She also hasn't gained much but along her withers are filling in when you run your hand along it and her coat is getting more shiny than when she first came although the pictures are kinda dark cause it was getting ready to storm. She just needs to fill out along her hips and her side then she needs some conditioning to build up her topline.
In the one photo I have circled the poor line on her rump and the ribs. This is not ribs slightly visible.. this is you can count every one!
In the other photo I have circled her back bone into her coupling.. and it is like the ridge of a roof! The horse in the background that I circled is what this horse should look like.
She might have ulcers. She is a nice horse too. Way too nice to look like this or to be worked at all while in this condition!!!
I would love to keep her and bring her up more but the owner takes her home the end of this month and she plans on showing her Posted via Mobile Device
Well I don't know anything about getting horses to gain weight but the owner sure isn't going to win everything if you could play tunes on Luna's ribs...
I'm still not thinking she looks much better. I actually think she looks better in the before pictures. Especially her hindend. And her neck looked fuller.
Coats is healthier. But that's all the improvement I'm seeing.
Has a vet been consulted? Posted via Mobile Device
I think the owners vet is coming out the end of the month and I wish I had a before and after picture of her side cause thats where you can see the most improvement
so while Luna is looking better today she did something really odd. When I pulled up to the pasture she was laying down in the field but when she came over to the barn she was sweating and walking odd. So I tied her up and was getting a bucket with water to cool her down when she laid down while tied! First thing that came to mind was colic but no rolling so I took her out to hand walk her and let her graze a little and she pooped and peed. Well she also laid down 4 more times only kinda rolled twice but she would just lay down and eat. Any thoughts?
I wouldn't say colic if she's eating and passing manure ok. Unless it was really mild gas colic perhaps? It could just be that she is really tired, she is underweight and as I understand it you have been riding/working her which definitely isn't good for her at this point. So she could just be plain tuckered out. With the horses that I've rehabbed back to a normal weight they all seemed to lay down a lot, there was never anything wrong with them, they just didn't have much energy. And any energy they had went into gaining weight, which is where hers should be going to be honest, not working/riding.
She needs feed in her! she can live on pasture for months and she wont gain weight quick enough. I got my horse from skinnier than her to a normal weight in 5 months. She was being fed strategy healthy edge. And if i was able to feed it to her every day she would have gained it weight faster. She needs more than to be just tossed out into a field.
What feed? My TB gelding needed 8 lbs of senior feed to keep weight on, and that's with not being worked.
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