How to Help Your Horse Gain Weight

Having been involved in equine rescue, I'm often asked the best way to put weight on a thin horse. There are many factors involved in doing this properly that involve more than just simply offering food. Believe it or not, without knowing some of these things, feeding your thin horse may not help put weight on him/her at all.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Thin Horse
• Farrier
• Vet
• Red Cell
• Psyllium
• Horse Wormer
• Quality Feed

1. CHECK YOUR HORSES TEETH::: If you have an older horse, especially. With horses, their teeth grow and grow until they literally grow out of their head. This means that for an older horse, some opposing teeth may be missing and others may be over grown. If the horse's teeth are missing, they obviously need special care. A soft mash diet of senior feed and hay chaff usually works well. If you have some that are overgrown, they can be causing mouth injuries, pain and even preventing proper chewing. In this case, you will need to have your horse's teeth floated. Many farriers will perform this service for you but if not, have a qualified veterinarian do it for you. Floating is simply filing and sometimes snipping of the teeth. NEVER to be tried by someone not properly trained!!
2. WORMER::: Be sure the horse is current on being wormed. If you don't know, have your vet run a simple fecal test to determine if there are any parasites to worry about. With starving horses, this is rarely a problem as worms need something to eat, too.... But with horses that are simply too thin, it very likely could be.
3. PSYLLIUM::: Many horses are fed on the ground and sometimes even just grazing can cause ingestion of sand. By purchasing a product called psyllium and giving this for 7 days straight once a month during times when this could be a concern (no need in snowy areas) will clean out the horse's colon and free them of that sand and thereby enabling their body to get back on track with digesting properly and not feeling full when they should be hungry.
4. VITAMINS::: Serious horsemen know that Red Cell is hard to beat when a horse is fighting pretty much anything physically. I know it has worked wonders for my rescued horses and I would never be without it for them. It's costly but don't let that deter you. It will make a huge difference to them and it lasts for a long time.
5. BEET PULP::: Grain will be one of the first things that come to your mind when getting things for a thin horse in hopes of fattening them up, but what type of grain? Instinct may tell you to grab a bag that is high in fat but that is wrong. High fat content only puts your horse at risk of developing diarrhea which will only hinder the progress and could give you a good case of dehydration to worry about on top of the weight issue. Instead, you need to look for a horse grain which is high in beet pulp. I can't tell you which food would be best for your particular horse since even my own will end up needing different ones but I will tell you that the first one I try is Purina Strategy. My most extreme cases have done the very best on this feed and probably over 90% of my rescued horses recuperated with that feed and then continued to use that feed even after they were where I felt they should be. Start them off slow! I usually use a 1lb coffee can and give them one of those full am and pm but do confer with your vet on this and in how quickly to increase their intake.
6. LIMITED ROUGHAGE::: You may feel you need to free feed that hay to a thin horse and if their condition isn't terrible, that isn't all bad. But if you have a particularly thin or emaciated horse, you need to limit their roughage at first. Reason being is that their body must work very hard to break down and digest hay. So for these horses, I recommend offering them the already somewhat broken down hay chaff (shake your hay leaves/bales) It would be nice if you very slightly dampen this before offering it to them to prevent them inhaling dust but do not ever leave damp hay to sit for any length of time. Monitor and remove within a few hours, especially if it's hot out. Many very thin horses will do just fine in offering a handful now and then. Again, refer to your veterinarian on how much for your specific horse. I've had them so bad that they weren't allowed hay for the first week at all. Just the Purina Strategy feed.