The ongoing battle of the equine bulge

I have never had a thin horse here.  I've had a couple of scrawny horses come here and bulk up when other people had been pulling their hair out trying to keep weight on the same horses.  Hmmm ... calories in the air??  Maybe that would explain my own personal battle of the bulge??  Nah--unfortunately I can't blame it on that.  Jerry was a little thin when he arrived, even though he was being fed quite a bit.  Well, he didn't keep his slender figure for long here.  He started bulking up and just looked better, yet I was feeding him less grain than at his previous home and my hay was nothing to write home about (more on that below).  Rosie was a chubby little thing on arrival--her previous owners might not have touched her, but they did feed her--my guess is she was just out on a big pasture with a high lactating momma, or she would have been more comfortable with people around her instead of flying through the air with the greatest of ease when approached by us scary humans.  Babe is an eating machine--she could enter a grass eating contest and win, hooves down.  Rosie does appear to be a lot like Babe.  Sigh ... (I do that a lot)

My pasture is weedy, but the grass in it is very healthy and I think calorie dense.  Therefore, I have to limit it for the horses.  In the past, I haven't done this with Mac and Babe most years and they were like sausages on legs by July.  Some how I got away with it without their getting laminitis and founder, nor had any other horse I'd had on the same pasture.  Then, my world was rocked when I was given Lucky who came to me with severe insulin resistance that I was unaware of.  The only thing I was told was that she needed to have some limitation on the lush spring grass but the previous owner told me she had been turning her out on her rather weedy, yet grassy pasture all day long without a problem.  It was similar to my pasture, so I didn't think she would have an issue here.  Turned out *looking* at grass made Lucky sore.  She was sore within a couple of days of grazing here.  She couldn't even handle grazing with a muzzle for more than 1/2 hour a day.  I had to tape the hole of her grazing muzzle half way shut with Gorilla tape (that stuff sticks!!!) so I could let her out of her little "Pony Prison" tiny paddock jail I ended up having to leave her in for pretty much 23 hours a day.  With the hole taped half way shut, she could get only a few sprigs here and there.  I only did this for about an hour a day--it wouldn't have been OK for her GI system to go without food for a long time--this was just for some exercise, mingle with the horses, and get a change of scenery.  This and very low NSC hay kept the mean old laminitis wolf away.  Welcome to Super Laminitis World, Dorothy!   And, as Babe ages (21 next month) and now I have minis who don't need many calories, I realize my luck of keeping a laminitis-free herd (except for Lucky's extreme situation that I really don't count because even the vets thought she was a case of insulin resistance gone wild and way out of the norm of most minis) is bound to run out and I must be more cautious with their grazing. 

I'm not Anti-Grass.  In fact, I would say I'm definitely Pro-Grass, if there is such a thing.  I believe grass has benefits that hay just can't offer.  It's high in protein that growing Rosie and older, let's-keep-the-muscle-mass Babe need.  The only other way to cover their protein requirement is with a super high protein soy based ration balancer or high calorie alfalfa, neither option I like as much as fresh grass from my free non-GMO pasture.  Soy can also mess with some mare's hormones--trust me, Rosie has attitude enough without messing with her hormones, lol.  I did feed Purina Enrich Plus to everyone during the winter because that was the only high protein, lower calorie option.  We had a wet early hay season and 1st cutting was late cut here in my area and 2nd cutting was few and far between because they just ran out of time to get another cutting.  I didn't have it tested, but I think it was a safe bet that it was low protein.  Growing Rosie needs nutrients, but not a lot of calories.  Grass has a lot of nutrition and also a high moisture content--a vet told me once that he had never seen a horse on grass get an impaction colic.  Grass also has high quality natural vitamin E, of which so many horses are deficient.  It's FREE; hay costs money.  And, I just plain love the way horses look when they are getting fresh pasture grass.  They look so healthy and just glow from nose to tail.  Since the grass started growing a little bit ago, I've taken them off the ration balancer and they get only a smidgen of regular textured grain as a carrier for their supplements--Rosie gets a basic vitamin/mineral, raspberry leaves (her heat cycles that started last summer were pretty hard--hoping to help level that out with the raspberry leaves this year), and Remission.  Jerry gets vit/min and Remission, and Babe gets vit/min, a joint supplement, Remission, Focus HF (her hoof quality took a nose dive over the winter), and occasional flavored bute powder for her arthritis. 
 
I have a total of 3 1/2 acres fenced pasture with a basic electric perimeter fence.  Inside, I have dividing fences, some permanent, some temporary tape with step-in posts.  I have "Pony Paddock" attached to one end of my barn with run-in stalls for the minis--I'd say it's about a 1/2 acre permanently fenced semi-dry lot with a little grass stubble, but not enough for much actual "food" grazing.  I had a lot of excavation and gravel work done there about 10 years ago and the grass that's grown up is no where near as dense as dirt pasture grass is.  It's fenced with pony proof welded wire with an electric wire at butt scratching height--ask Rosie why I had to add that particular wire.  She practically ruined the fence in places where she just HAD to itch her butt, even though I installed a Rosie-body-sized nubby scratching pad for her big butt on the side of the barn when I noticed she had no tolerance for itches as she was beginning to shed last spring.  And, she didn't even feel guilty for messing up the fence!  BTW, That girl has a drafty kind of build and is SO strong.  I can't wait to see how she pulls a cart.  I bet she will be able to tackle our hilly terrain better than a lot of minis her height.  Last spring/summer/fall, I fed quite a bit of hay to the minis and they ate very little grass.  I decided to try something new this year--I tape fenced a paddock extension (probably around 1/3 acre) off the back of Pony Paddock called "Pony Paddock Annex" with a gate where Rosie and Jerry can go for limited grazing each day when I choose. 

Babe's primary pasture is about one acre, attached to Pony Paddock on one side and a temporary tape strand on the other, separating her from the remaining pasture at which she is currently gazing longingly as the grass is starting to grow green and sweet in Upstate NY.  This is just about enough to meet her nutritional needs without much additional hay during the spring and summer, but not so much that she will blimp out--I hope. 

Here's a picture of Babe I took today in her pasture next to Pony Paddock Annex.  I'd like her to lose a little more weight and I'm only feeding her a little bit of supplemental hay now on rainy days when I know she will be standing inside her stall a lot--she doesn't like getting wet.  If necessary, I'll move the temporary tape strand on the other side of her pasture in a bit to make it smaller.

Everything is subject to change depending on the grass growth and their body condition fluctuations.  I'm really going to try hard to keep them all leaner this grazing season, which is very difficult since NO ONE does any work to burn calories!  Although that may change for Jerry if it turns out he is a good little driver.  I might even be able to pony Rosie along behind the cart for exercise if Jerry is solid ... at least in the fenced pasture.  Just have to see how things go.  I've been around horses long enough to know all plans need to be flexible and everything is subject to change.

I have a few tools in my Prevent-a-Blimp (or in Rosie's and Babe's case Trim-a-Blimp!) arsenal.  Babe has a weird tooth alignment issue where she scraped her teeth on a salt block so much that her front incisors no longer meet--I do only loose salt in buckets now.  She can graze just fine, but she has to use the teeth more on the sides, rather than right in front.  She can't graze AT ALL with a regular hole-in-the-middle grazing muzzle.  I did some research and found this cool grazing muzzle called Greenguard that accommodates her problem

It has a series of slats on the sides for better ventilation and the same pattern on the bottom.  She can tilt her head just a bit and graze with this muzzle.  Now that the grass is growing more, she will have to wear this any time she leaves her small pasture to graze in the remaining larger area (I like her to get out and walk around more than she does in just the one acre).  It doesn't look like it would restrict her grazing that much, but it really does.  Definitely more restrictive than when I tried to make her old Best Friends muzzle work by cutting longer oval shaped hole.  That hardly slowed her down.

Rosie ... poor Rosie.  She is a chubby little one and I'm having to monitor her grazing like a hawk.  She mows grass like a Cub Cadet, a Toro, or whatever lawn mower is in your neck of the woods.  The grass in Pony Paddock Annex (PPA) is now at the point where it's juuuusst tall enough for her to consume it way too fast without a muzzle, even for short periods of time.  I introduced her to a muzzle a few days ago.  She was not pleased!  I swear she was swearing at me!  We practiced on the taller, thicker lawn grass and I helped her figure out how she could wiggle the basket to get grass to poke up.  She's young and patience is not her strong suit right now, but after a few mini pony tantrums and lots of encouragement she got the idea and started getting some grass here and there.  Today was the first day of the muzzle in PPA.  She started to do the tantrum thing (paw the ground, try to rub it off, and silently yelling "I'm mad!!") but she soon did the smart-pony-Rosie thing and redirected her energy to scouting out the grassier areas where she could graze more easily.  Most of PPA has short, rather sparse grass except for two areas where the big horses generously fertilized it through the years it was part of their pasture and it's probably 10 times as thick and tall as the rest of PPA.  She gravitated towards those areas and seemed pretty happy for the hour she was out there.  They have already been doing daily light grazing in PPA as the grass has been popping up--as you can see by the trees, it's still very early spring here and not much growing yet.

Here is the little darling at the point where she wasn't swearing at me.  "I still love you, mom ... but just a little."

Chubby, but some of the full figure is winter hair, I promise!

"Don't bother me, mom, I'm busy trying to eat through this starvation torture device you put on me."

Jerry was the lucky one and I didn't make him wear a muzzle because he doesn't graze like a lawn mower out of control like Rosie does ... but his time is coming as the grass grows more.  Where he is grazing is what my entire pasture is like now--short grass just starting to grow.

In the barn, I have hay nets with the Tough-1 rack/frame things that make it very easy to fill.  I found stuffing and tying up hay nets every day was making my back and neck hurt.  The frames are ideal.  I had to swap out the net that came with them with my smaller 1" hole super-slow-feed hay net that Big D (www.bigdweb.com) sells for only $13.99 for a large size.  If you can trust your mini to free feed with this type of tiny hole net, you can easily stuff in enough hay to last for several days.   I have them mounted high enough so the minis can't even come close to getting their heads in the opening to chow down, so I don't have to close them up at the top--makes things even easier.  Drop in some hay and go.

One thing I've learned about minis is they do not eat any hay that is not fine, which is probably a good thing because I can't imagine that their teeth would be able to grind up coarse hay very well and that would create GI problems.  As I said, our hay was late cut and was a mix of fine undergrowth and coarser older stems.  Babe ate pretty much everything, but Rosie and Jerry wasted a lot.  Here is the pile of hay that was scattered over PP (Pony Paddock) after winter that Mike raked up.  It was even taller until last nights rain flattened it.  My wonderful, marvelous, super helpful teenager horse/farm helper assistant, Michaela, is going to help me remove this stuff later in the week.  I can't shovel/fork because of my recent neck spine surgery--she will do that.  Then, I'll tow the lawn dump cart behind the riding mower down to the far end of the pasture where she will spread it out.  I think it will just kind of compost into the ground over time.  Remind me in the fall not to feed the minis' winter hay outside unless it's fine and they will eat it all.  Jerry prefers to eat outside, so I indulged him last winter.  Jerry--suck it up--you are eating in next winter!

This is my barn with the paddock divider for the big horses (well, only Babe now) and the ponies.  The ponies are on the left and the big black pad hanging on the outside wall between the stall doors is the scratching pad I bought and put up so dear sweet Rosie would have a good place to itch her entire body, rather than on the fence.  She uses it occasionally--at least there are a few hairs on it.  Sigh ...

And, what young pony doesn't need a toy collection?  She has two Jolly balls that I paid hard-earned money for, but her favorite toys are the yellow supplement bucket, plastic milk jugs (they are such fun to stomp on and smash), and a supplement container with a couple of stones in it with a tight screw-on lid.  She also has a large inflatable ball, but I don't leave it out.

So, here we go with 2016 Battle of the Equine Bulge!