Foundering on grass

["Sarah Roxanne Zawacki" <zawackis@pilot.msu.edu>]

    Hi.  We have a twenty-something mare who foundered quite badly three
years ago, after we sold her, because of being massively overweight and
then getting Potomac.  She has been sound ever since, and corrective shoeing
initially made all the difference.  Now she just needs to be a little more
upright than before (she's at 59 degrees in the front), but is otherwise
entirely sound.  We feed her a little less than a cup of straight oats
twice a day, and she gets grass hay.  We just moved to a place with grass
in the pasture (mostly because it's a new pasture...) and my mom has been
wanting to limit Holly to about two hours of grazing daily, three days
a week or so.  Because people expressed such surprise at someone else's
horse foundering on grass, I was wondering if putting Holly on pasture for,
say, five or six hours every day would be okay.  She hasn't shown any signs
of foundering since her initial bout, and I'm starting to get the impression
that she's not particularly susceptible to foundering--it took two extreme
conditions (high fever from Potomac and being, literally, three hundred
pounds overweight (she's a 14.3 hand quarter horse)) to cause her to founder
in the first place.  In the meantime, so little grazing in the pasture is
breaking her heart.  Does anyone have any experience letting a horse who has
foundered go on pasture full time?  Thanks in advance,


                                    Sarah


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