1 Meal A Day!? Ahhh!

Hi there, this is a bit of a venting post but I am also a little worried. I board my horses across the street from me and last week I took 2 mares to get bred. I was only gone for 3 days but I was so frustrated to come back and learn that my horses were only given 1 meal each day! All of my horses are fairly athletic and I gave a very precise meal plan for them which included pellets and grass hay. Sorry to sound like a nag but I was so frustrated. The other lady who keeps one horse there was in charge of feeding and her horse is rather overweight and that was her "diet" plan. Even if the horse is overweight, is 1 meal a day (2 flakes of grass hay at night) enough??? That gives her no protein! I lost so much trust in her! Sorry again for the rant. But help would be much appreciated. Has this ever happened to you?

How is cutting back to one feeding from two, or three dieting? (assuming they move all the other hay fed from the other feedings into that one feed) Quite strange. If you cut back on the amount of hay fed you should feed in more feedings so they can eat more spread out through the day.. Do your horses have any access to grass through the day?

Diet or no, 2 flakes of feed is not enough. I would be complaining long and loud over it.
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Hmm, not always.. Some hay bales can have flakes up to 10 pounds, but the average is around 4 lbs. If the horse is a pony 8 lbs could be enough!!

Thanks for your input, I will raise these points to her. There isn't much grass at all in the pasture they stay in, I graze my horses when I'm home, but she normally doesn't.
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One meal a day is not good at all! Even if a horse is dieting..
All horses need AT LEAST 2 feeds a day as their stomach needs to be digesting. If a horses stomache is left empty for too long, hello stomache olcers. Big no no.
As for the lady feeding two flakes of grass hay a night, maybe point thus out and id suggest white chaff with supplement powder morning day and night its how I had to diet my obese gelding for fast weight loss. :) (prescribed by the vet)

The one feeding a day is most likely just pure laziness on her part. It could be a diet plan for the horse when they get ulcers and can no longer keep weight on.

Even if the horses are on a diet she should break the feedings up in at least 2 meals - preferably 2-4 meals - and make sure they get at a bare minimum 1% of their body weight in hay. Most horses actually need around 2% of their body weight in hay to maintain their condition.

And even so - you had outlined your meal plan that your horses were used to. Any horse owner should know how high the risk is to just suddenly deviate from that plan. That put your horses at risk for colic!

Thank you so much for all of this information! I'm still working on resolving the situation completely but I'm still working on it! Thanks again your help is very appreciated.
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I've decided that the only way to be sure your horses are getting cared for the way you want is to care for them yourself, which, sadly, isn't always possible.

Occasionally I will be out riding during feeding time, and twice in the past month or two I've come back after feeding to find my horse's corner feeder empty, but that day's feed gone. There's one horse on that aisle whose owner comes to feed him herself, and I suspect he's occasionally getting the feed intended for the next horse down, while my horse, who is at the end of the aisle, is getting left with nothing. To make things worse, his supplements are in his evening feed, including one for his seasonal allergies. If he doesn't get that one, he starts coughing. I asked the feeder and BO to please make sure it doesn't happen again, but it makes it very hard to trust that he's being fed properly the rest of the time when I'm not there to check!