Question

I own a 13-year-old Arabian gelding that I ride four or five times a week for about 45 minutes to an hour. I recently moved him to a new barn, and he lost a little weight after the move, but because the amount of exercise increased, I wasn’t concerned. I upped the grain a little so that now he receives two quarts of an all-purpose feed and four flakes of second-cut hay daily, split between two meals. He has gained back some of the weight but not all. How can I get him to fill out more?

Answer

It sounds as though your gelding is not getting enough calories for the amount of work he is doing and for the condition you’d like him to carry. Offering slightly more grain increased the calories but perhaps not enough. Although it is impossible to offer exact recommendations based on the general description of your gelding’s diet, workload, and environment, I can offer a few suggestions.

There are several ways of getting additional calories into the horse:  increase forage, increase grain, or add a calorie-dense supplement.  They each have the identical goal of adding calories but work in different ways to accomplish this.

The horse can get calories from the hay, so the first thing I would suggest is to increase the amount of hay being fed. This is the safest way of increasing caloric intake. It does depend on the quality of the hay.  If the hay is poor quality it will do little to increase calories. It may take 3-4 more pounds of hay per day to meet the caloric needs of a 1000-pound horse in moderate work.  I realize in a boarding situation that it is often difficult to get the horse extra hay, but if he will eat more and not waste it, it would be less likely to cause digestive disturbances than the next two options.

Another option for increasing calories is to increase the amount of grain being fed and/or switch to a feed that has more calories. Feeding more is always an option when trying to increase calories and grain is more calorie-dense than hay, so you don’t have to feed as much to get the same amount of calories in the horse. In order to meet the caloric needs of a 1000-pound horse in moderate work with the amount of forage you are currently feeding, it would take 2 additional pounds per day to meet the horse’s energy requirement. If you find a more calorie-dense feed, one with at least 3.3 Mcal/kg, you would not have to feed as much, probably only 1 pound more per day. To find a higher calorie feed look at the fat content on the feed tag: the higher the fat, the greater the number of calories.

The other option is to add a high-energy supplement to the diet. Examples of high-energy supplements are rice bran and vegetable oil. To get the calories needed it would take 1.6 pounds per day of rice bran.  If adding vegetable oil, it would take 1¼ cup. High-energy supplements add less bulk to the diet, but they tend to be the most expensive option for adding calories.

Any combination of the different calorie sources would also work.  Remember that it takes more calories to gain than to maintain weight, so once the horse reaches the weight that you desire, it would be a good idea to decrease the amount being fed slightly so that the horse doesn’t continue to gain weight.