As I mentioned earlier, I’m on a mission to fatten Freedom up. The photos I took of him on January 11th showed too many ribs. Since then, I’ve upped the amount of fat that he’s eating (in the form of Purina Amplify) and added more soaked timothy/alfalfa cubes. I think that after two weeks of his “improved diet” he’s looking better. Still too skinny, but those ribs are starting to disappear.
I’ll post more photos in a week or two but I expect him to be round and shiny soon!
Arggh, talk about too much and not enough! Two of your horses are “””Easy Keepers”” and one is Not . I’ve heard of many different recipes for putting weight on a horse, most of them being expensive. For instance, I’ve heard of people using (oh,,,what is the term) the grains left over from beer brewing. There used to be a brewpub in my hometown that used to make a KILLER cake (or pastry, cant remember what they termed it) out of the used up beer grains. It was fabulous and no, there wasn’t any alcohol leftover, but as one of my friends said, “I might as well just slather it on my thighs…that’s where it’s going anyway.”
I’ve also heard of folks using beer. In fact, one of our veterinarians (when I was just a kid working at a QH breeding farm), an OLD man, swore that he kept a six pack of cheapo beer (the Midwest was full of those types of beer, with names like Grain Belt) in his clinic to use as a colic drench. I never had the courage to try it, though. But I know the horses liked beer. In fact, Zenyatta, Queen Z, gets a bottle of Guinness Stout every day. Hell, she’s earned it.
In gerrman the leftovers you’re describing are called “Treber” or “Trester”, I think the english word is mace or pomace. I worked for a company who sold this stuff as cattle feed and I can attest it’s very nutritional.
Liz: do you think Freedoms weight loss is not only winter related but also age related? I know old people tend to lose weight easily, as they don’t like to eat as much anymore …
Freedom has always had a problem holding weight in the winters but he’s coming 23 now and I’m sure it makes a difference. He is not nearly as interested in eating large quantities of hay any more (and I have really nice second cut right now). He loves timothy/alfafa cubes and I’m soaking larger quantities for him to keep long stem forage as the basis for his diet. I also am feeding him some Denie alfalfa which is a good bribe. It must be quite tasty judging by his interest in it.
Thank you. I’m crossing my fingers for his continued weight gain 🙂 I wish I could just give him some of my fat reserves 😉