In this video, Bryan Cassill, MS, MBA, gives us tips and advice on everyday management of overweight horses. Cassill is the Commercial and Formulations Manager for Mars Horsecare and BUCKEYETM Nutrition.

(Editor’s note: The content of this video is the expert’s approach to the topic. Please consult with your practitioner if you have questions.)

First Tips

“We talk a lot about how to feed overweight horses,” said Cassill. “But, we don’t often talk about the everyday piece of how you are going to do that in your barn.”

He offered the scenario that you have a horse with a body condition score higher than you want. It might be a 7 or 8, and you are trying to work it back down. Or, you might have a horse with a metabolic condition that you are trying to get some weight off of the horse.

“It’s feed time. The barn’s loud. Everybody else is getting fed, and there’s your horse,” Cassill said. “What are you going to do to create some type of acceptance that this horse isn’t going to get fed like everything else in the barn?”

He said the best thing you can do is still feed that horse. You don’t have to “starve it down.” The best way he suggests to do that is with a balancer.

“You feed about a pound a day, and you can split that pound up into multiple feedings,” he suggested. “If your barn is feeding twice a day, you can split that pound up into two, 1/2-pound feedings.

“That way when everybody else is tearing the barn down because it’s feeding time, your horse can still get fed as well,” he said. “That’s a lot better than him just standing in the stall and watching everybody else eat.”

Stretching Feed Out

Cassill said you can ‘stretch’ that balancer out to create more volume. He said this creates more activity since they “aren’t just throwing back that half-pound of food and watching all their neighbors eat.

“You can mix [the balancer] with a fiber source such as chopped hay, a soaked beet pulp source, a low-starch, low-sugar alfalfa or timothy cube, an alfalfa pellet, or a mixture of those,” he suggested.

He said among the benefits to that is adding protein (such as with alfalfa) to the diet. Protein makes us feel less hungry. Since alfalfa is high in calcium, that can help with gastric issues.

Treats

Horses on a diet can still receive treats. “The key is to lower the amount,” said Cassill.

“When you are walking through the barn and handing out treats, or your horse worked well and you want to give him a treat, that’s okay,” he said. “But use moderation.

“We’ve done some research, and we’ve looked at insulin responses to sugar. It’s about a 50 grams/meal threshold for an 1,100-pound animal,” he continued. “That’s equivalent to about 5 peppermints.

“So, if you are thinking about trying to decrease insulin response or you have an overweight animal you are trying to get [the weight] down, I would hold to only a couple of peppermints. Moderation in every meal. It’s still okay to treat your horse. It gives us and the horse a lot of joy.

“But pull that number down so it’s in moderation and so you don’t get a response you don’t want,” he said.

Final Words

“Creating that ‘longer’ meal will decrease the stress on your horse of watching everyone around him eating,” Cassill told the listeners.

Management tools to slow consumption could include putting big rocks in the horse’s feed tub so it has to ‘search’ around to get the feed. He also suggested that you can put a small bucket in a large trough.

“That way if he drops anything, he can spend time looking around in the large trough to get feed he might have missed. You are creating activity,” Cassill said. “Basically, you are creating a grazing behavior in your stall.”

He noted that what owners and managers are tying to do is create activity around feeding time and spread that small amount of feed out so the horse isn’t just “throwing back food.”

Further Content