Oh forgot, besides founder or colic, she is a yearling! My vets said slightly thin is better for a young horse than fat. It's easier on their joints. No more than 1.5 % of their bodyweight in grain. And grass with a supplement will probably still keep her fat. Some people think fat means healthy, so they overstuff their animals, maybe the barn manager is the "over nurturing food type" (Like do they keep donuts at the barn, and lots of horse cookies?) It's your horse, you're paying the bill. . . Not all breeds and ages eat the same, our TB and QH eat three times the grain our arabs do. You could cut out the feed bag directions about bodyweight and percentages and circle it in red. . . Copy pages any basic horse care book about weight and feeding You could get your AG dept. body condition charts ----- Original Message ----- From: julie fox Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 8:18 PM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [RC] anything essential missing from grass? AKA, how to deal with barn manager? Hi everybody.
I am hoping that someone out there can at least ease my mind. I have a yearling Kiger filly, who I think could subsist on air alone if she had to. Unfortunately, the barn manager has always known Thoroughbreds, and insists on feeding my little mustang like a TB. This means one "ration" (about 3.5 pounds) of generic sweet feed twice a day. Needless to say, Sombre has blown up like a balloon since the grass turned green. She is out 24 hrs a day in a HUGE pasture with 8 other horses, with unbeatable trail access, and close to my house, so I really can't move her to another barn. The problem is that every time I ask the barn manager to reduce her grain, she gives me the "I don't like it, but she's your horse" speech and reduces the grain, but within a week she's back up to where she started.
I have finally convinced her to not feed Sombre any grain at all. I truly believe that she will get plenty of calories from the pasture, but I am concerned about essential nutrients or vitamins that the grass alone may not provide. For example, I know the east coast is notorious for being low in selenium. (We live in central Maryland).
So my question is this. Is anything essential to a growing yearling missing from a 100% grass diet? If so, can somebody recommend a good supplement that will provide the missing essentials, without adding calories? Also, since our barn-manager-problem is guaranteed to repeat itself when fall comes around and the grass isn't so rich, can anybody suggest a way to deal with the barn manager so that she will listen to me and my instructions on how much to feed?
I really appreciate any thoughts on these issues. I'm so stressed about it that I'm actually dreaming about grass and sweet feed at night.
Thanks a ton,
Cristin
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