Turning the world upside down – Includes discussion of horses keeping/losing weight.

@Plowboy 7574 wrote:

Plowed our first furrows today 3/30/09. Great energy management for our coming 4yr old filly. She is getting almost as powerful and determined as her mother. We used these two with our Belgian gelding that is 13. He was losing weight last year and needed his teeth floated but never bounced back completely. He was always an easy keeper and fat and slick. Now while he is not thin he isn’t as fat as normal and his energy level isn’t where it normally is. I’m thinking of giving him some oil on his feed and see if he responds to that. Dad will be plowing with 3 of our other Percherons tomorrow while I’m at work. We are plowing tough alfalfa sod and the horses will take a few days to get into shape but the more furrrows we turn early the less we have to do at planting time. We have managed to not plow much at all with the tractor the last few years except for two years ago when my Dad lost part of his finger in an accident on April 1st and couldn’t harness and drive horses for over a month in prime field work season. We had to get the fences fixed and the ground ready for planting. He was able to pound posts and staples if he held his finger right but buckling hame straps was difficult for a while.

Let me know how this works out please, as I have the same situation with a paint saddle gelding. He is usually a very easy keeper, and suddenly he started loosing weight. His teeth seem to be okay; no burrs, no sharp edges, but I’m going to have them floated just to be sure.

I honestly think he is freaked out because he has always been the boss hoss in the outfit & one of the Percheron mares literally kicked him off his feet and took over as leader of the pack. He sure isn’t happy about that and started to lose weight just about two weeks after she rang his bell. He wants to try to take over again, but he is too afraid of her to stand his ground. I think maybe his ego has been bruised!

@jenjudkins 7586 wrote:

Or she is keeping him away from his food….

I always watch the herd dynamics around feeding time when I introduce a new horse or there is a change in the pecking order (which occasionally does happen) to be sure everyone gets their fair share. I also feed enough hay so that those on the low end of the pecking order…who have to wait for their turn at the hay piles have enough as well. Just another thought.

… that we tie them up when they are eating. Otherwise a good thought. I do feed hay free choice, but often he is the only one at the bunk so I don’t think he is getting shorted there either.

@sanhestar 7611 wrote:

Hello,

have you wormed him? It seems too obvious but I just returned from a friends cattle herd where a heifer almost literally starved to death because of worms.

Yep, when he first started to lose condition I wormed him with an Ivermectin (maybe ?) paste that I bought off the shelf. I didn’t have the vet drench him, but that is going to happen the next time I am off during the week … which will be next Tuesday.

I did notice the other day that he is wanting to chew wood, which I have never had happen with any horse, so something is up. The funny thing is he has always been such an easy keeper, staying almost too fat on very little feed. I have increased his feed by about 20% and it has made a little difference, but not a whole lot.

He just doesn’t look quite “right” if you know what I mean. He doesn’t have the “bloom” to him that he use to have. He looks, well for lack of better words, old. (His eyes are not sunken in, though) So that started me thinking that he is feeling dejected about loosing his dominant role. Not sure if I really think that, or am just using that due to lack of other options to consider!

@highway 7625 wrote:

I am glad my horses are not the only ones that chew on wood. :confused:

They are certainly fed well and I attributed it to boeredom. As soon as the fields opened up they went to pecking at the little tufts of grass left over from last fall.

That may actually be the issue … there is NO grass after over a year of severe drought. They have free choice hay, but I know they are craving something green to eat. Although, it doesn’t seem to be bothering the other two as much as him.

@sanhestar 7631 wrote:

well,

if he has stress because of the changes in his life he could (!) have stomach problems – you know that horses can develop stomach ulcers?

It’s a long time ago but I treated a horse once that chewed excessively on wood – turned out he had ulcers due to stress.

Can you change to his roughage ration to ad libitum for a couple of weeks to see if there’s any change if he can eat as much as he wants?

ad libitum …. You had me there for a second there, sanhester. I had to look that term up. Actually, that is the way I feed hay. I call it “free choice”. I put out a round bale in a feeder and all three horses have access to it. Typically I would put it under a cover, but since we haven’t been getting very much rain lately I have just been putting it out in the open.

Usually when I go down to the lot at least one horse is eating from the ring, sometimes two & sometimes all three. It doesn’t appear that there is much pushing and shoving going on around the hay ring, but they will push him away from his feed when we feed grain if they are not all three tied. Formerly, he use to push them away from their grain … hence the reason that they now get tied.

I have noticed that he eats much slower than he use to, but I attributed that to the fact that he knows that he is not going to get anyone else’s feed by finishing his early, nor is he going to lose his feed if they finish theirs first. However, it may be some other cause.

Sorry for the latin – couldn`t remember the english term….

You can also try linseed OIL or another vegetable oil (start with small amounts) or molasses for energy.

Are his teeth ok? (haven`t re-read your original post, so maybe you said that already)

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I have checked his teeth, but just by twitching his nose and holding his jaw open with a spreader yoke and then running my fingers along his molars. I did not find any ridges or burrs, but I am going to let the vet check this out next week as well.

Just yesterday we noticed something new happening and it probably isn’t good. His hooves, which are about 2 to 3 weeks overdue for trimming, have started to chip and flake. No big surprise there, but they are doing something I have never seen a horse hoof do; only the outer wall is chipping away. You can actually see the fibrous inner wall, white line and part of the sole from the outside if you get down and look at the hoof from ground level. The frog has more of a spongy feel to it than you would think it would have in such dry weather as we are experiencing. The frog is really dark (his frogs are usually a light color), but there is no strong odor to them.

I mentioned earlier that he had been chewing wood. That appears to have stopped, but most of the wood he was chewing was treated wood. I am starting to wonder if he was poisoning himself on the treated wood. Next week when I have a couple of days off I am going to remove any treated wood that I can, if it is no longer needed. Everywhere else where he has chewed it is going to get a coating of a chew stop paint stuff that a friend of mine recommended. He did seem to look a little better today. Hopefully, if this is what was causing him problems it isn’t something permanent
.