How can I keep my horse's weight healthy? ?

Speak with your vet and get their suggestions for feeding and exercise. The horse may be having other problems with their health that your vet can help you with, too.

You may need a grazing muzzle or to keep him off grass altogether. A Best Friends grazing muzzle is the only one worth purchasing...it will not come off or be destroyed. Easy keepers like this often also have the disorder called insulin resistance. You might want to have him tested for that. If he is insulin resistant, his diet will need to be adjusted with the help of your vet to balance his hormones. In the meantime, a mineral supplement is all he should require....but again, he needs to be evaluated to get at the reason for his obesity. He should not be fed alfalfa either way, that is to say, whether or not he is insulin resistant. Plain grass hay is best, and much better than fresh grass for obese horses. Feeding alfalfa to an obese horse increases the risk of founder significantly.

Alfalfa hay is the best thing to keep a healthy weight on your horse and it keeps their belly tight so they dont look like they have a grass belly. Also you dont have to give him that much if he is an easy keeper just a flake morning and night. It also gives your horses energy.

You could also try giving him some grain. I prefer allegra cadence and allegra senoir depending how old your horse is. If he is 10 and younger allegra cadence would be best and if he is older than ten then allegra senior would be best. It not only gives then energy but it also gives them a nice shiny coat. Also if he is an easy keeper you dont want to feed him too much.

Since he is an easy keeper my opinion would be to go with the alfalfa hay and give him some oats and a vitamin supplement at night.

hope this helps

Hmmm, I don't know of any specifically for horses on diets to keep their weight up.

You are good about controlling his eating when you've seen he's too fat - as many issues can come along due to overweight as lack of weight.

It sounds like perhaps the turnout he was on was high in alfalfa or clover? These feeds give a horse energy.

You can contact more and more equine nutrition specialists now that can do a hair analysis or lots of things to tell you what your horse needs. I just got a Uckele (you-klee) catalog that tells about their ability to do hair analysis to tell you what your horse may need. Mine are pretty healthy so I didn't read it all.

Uckele is in Blissfield Michigan, near the state line close to Ohio - they're a pretty good supplement company - I get most of my supplements through them.

Some people also rely upon grazing muzzles which allow the horse turnout, but he had to work to eat so eats less. I haven't seen a horse yet that doesn't fight them or try to get rid of them or chews through them though.

good luck!