Question
I own a 16-year-old draft-cross mare. She stands 16.2 hands and weighs about 1,800 lb (820 kg). She’s in moderately fleshy condition (BCS: 6). She’s stalled for 16 hours each day and in a drylot for the remainder of the day. She’s fed five flakes of soaked hay and four flakes of dry hay daily with two cups of ration balancer. We hit the trail two or three times a week, mostly walking and some short stints of jogging. She was diagnosed with PPID and is on pergolide for that. I recognize that she needs to lose some weight but how?
Answer
The current diet is appropriate, as it is composed of hay and ration balancer. To more accurately assess the diet, more information about the amount (lb/day) of hay and ration balancer fed would be necessary.
Controlling calorie intake is important for weight loss but, whenever possible, increasing the amount of exercise through frequency or intensity is recommended to help increase the calorie deficit and improve insulin sensitivity. Kentucky Equine Research offers a free smartphone app called KER ClockIt Sport, which allows you to monitor distance traveled, time spent at each gait, and length of each ride to help you develop a suitable fitness program for your mare.
Soaking is useful to remove some of the sugar from hay, but its effectiveness varies based on the length of time soaked, water temperature, and initial sugar content of the hay. Soaking also causes certain nutrient losses in hay that need to be addressed through the provision of a fortified feed, such as a ration balancer. Provide the full amount of ration balancer recommended by the manufacturer to ensure optimal nutrient intakes. Cutting back on the amount of ration balancer fed is not recommended to help cut calories.
Consider sending off the hay you’re currently feeding for analysis to determine its nutritional value and to decide if soaking is necessary. This would be especially helpful if you have a steady supply of hay, i.e., you are able to source hay from the same supplier each time or you have purchased a large quantity of hay that should last for several months. Hay analysis becomes more time-consuming and expensive if the source of hay changes often, as then you’d have to test each batch.
The nutritional supplements Nano-E and EO-3 are recommended for metabolic horses, as they have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties beneficial for overweight horses with PPID.
