Question
I have a 20-year-old Thoroughbred-cross gelding. He's healthy and sassy, and he’s an easy keeper. In addition to pasture, he gets only half a flake of hay twice daily and is probably 200 lb (90 kg) overweight. I no longer compete him, but I use him to trail ride a few times a month. Can you offer some general nutrition guidelines for aged easy keepers?
Answer
While your horse is older, it does not sound as though he exhibits any of the physiological changes that would indicate a need for increased nutritional support. From a nutritional standpoint, horses classified as “senior” or “geriatric” are those that exhibit signs of decreased digestive efficiency or physiological problems associated with increased age. In these horses, the key to nutritional management often lies in providing slightly higher energy and nutrient concentration in their diets in order to overcome reduced digestive efficiency as well as offering them highly digestible feedstuffs. Because your horse is obviously thriving on a forage-only diet, he can be treated the same as any other horse that is an easy keeper.
An important component of feeding any horse that maintains weight easily on forage alone is balancing its diet by providing the nutrients not delivered in sufficient quantity by the forage while limiting additional caloric intake. This can be done by using a concentrated vitamin/mineral supplement such as a ration balancer pellet, which would be fed at 1-2 lb (0.5-1 kg) per day, or through use of an even more nutrient-dense, lower-intake option such as Micro-Max, which can be fed at 0.25 lb (120 g) per day. Both of these will supply the key trace minerals and vitamins often deficient in a forage-only diet while contributing very few additional calories to the diet.
In order to avoid metabolic problems, it is important to maintain moderate body condition and avoid obesity. We recommend most horses be maintained at body condition scores of 5 to 6. If you’re unsure of where your horse fits on the body condition scale, refer to this body condition score chart.
Limiting caloric intake and increasing exercise are both great ways to reduce excess body condition. Beware of the temptation to feed supplemental hay or traditional feeds to horses that are already fat from consumption of pasture alone as these will add additional calories without supplying sufficient nutrient intake to meet the horse’s nutritional needs. Reducing time on pasture or using a grazing muzzle to reduce the rate of intake are both ways to lower caloric consumption of horses that receive the majority of their daily calories from pasture.
