Which makes a horse fat?

Thanks everyone! I think I'm going to ask them to try that out for awhile and cut her down to a handful of oats with her vitamin supplement instead :) and free choice hay! I'll let you know how the conversation goes tomorrow!
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Oh and by the way her vitamin supplement is pelleted and she eats it by itself so makes it easy ;)
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Then just give her the pelleted supplement and nothing else if she will eat it that way....

Free choice hay is a given IMO they NEED that to keep the system working properly

Easy keepers can be kept over weight on not even free choice hay. And I am talking just timothy, not fancy alfalfa or anything.

You will have to monitor your horse and see how it does.

So, yes, horses can get over weight on more hay. It is nice to think that they can eat all they want and will stop when they have had enough. But not always the way it works.

I'll have to remember that! Thanks!

I fed my horse sweet feed along with 14% protein pelleted grain. It made him fairly hyper. Then again, it could've been his age. (???). I switched him off the sweet feed. I have a pony that tends to get fat, so I just feed him a cupful of 10% protein pelleted grain twice a day with plenty of hay. He has some grass in the pasture, but not a bunch. He's a very healthy weight now and looks great.

Just because a feed is pelleted does not mean it isn't a sweet feed just means it isn't a textured feed ...

We feed our horses free choice hay - all they want of good native grass hay (aka prairie hay). Don't like to feed much in the way of grain - we feed soaked beet pulp and alfalfa pellets as a supplement to the hay/pasture.

Have one mare that is due to foal any minute - she gets a feed made locally called "Paddock," which does have grain in it - mostly oats and a small amount of corn - along with vitamins and minerals needed by nursing mares and foals. She'll come off of it when the foal is weaned. Foal will gradually be switched over to our regular feeding program when it's about a year or so old, depending on how it's doing.

All of our horses are rescues and tend to be hard keepers, but they do well on this regimen.

How often is she exercised?

We have a pony down on our yard that hasn't been ridden for a while and he a got a right belly on him now!

So, if she isn't getting enough exercise and too much hard feed, this could well be the part of the problem x

We Event together, and I ride her 5 days a week, so she is definitely getting more than enough exercise She's actually getting a little ribby now, I definitely think she needs more hay! But all I keep hearing from the BO is "she's going to get a hay belly if she eats any more"! :(

A horse should be getting 2-3.5% of their body weight a day in hay. For a 1,000 lb horse that's about 20-35 lbs, depending on the horse and the hay. My horses get free choice hay, all they can eat, day and night. If they get fat, I will increase exercise or decrease "feed". If that does help, then oh well, they're a bit fat . Horses are grazing animals and need access to something to munch on 20 hours of the day. Their stomachs constantly produce stomach acid, even if they don't have any food in it. This is one of the contributing factors to the staggering statistic that 80% of "show horses" have some form of ulcers....