The mistake a lot of us make with an overweight horse is just thinking that weshouldn't feed it very much at all, and generally feed it a very low quality diet (straw forexample) or lock it up so it can't eat much at all. The problem with doing this is thatwhile you will do a good job of restricting calories and causing weight loss, you will alsobe severely restricting protein, vitamin and mineral intakes, and in doing that, you aregoing to cause more health problems than you can imagine.

To feed your 'easy keeper' a restricted calorie diet without compromising its health youshould do the following:

1. Restrict access to good quality pasture or forage
Because most pastures nowadays are designed to fatten cattle or sheep, they are now morelike double chocolate mudcake than high fibre Allbran for horses, meaning horses grazingthem will usually become grossly overweight. Thus we need to restrict their access to thepasture. You can do this in one of two ways. First, you can lock your horse up over a nightor day period off the pasture or you can put a grazing muzzle on your horse. I like themuzzles as they allow your horse to be out wandering around and interacting with herd mateswithout having access to massive quantities of feed. It also still allows the horse to haveits head down and be chewing all day which helps keep their gastrointestinal and respiratorytracts nice and healthy.

2. Provide access to very low quality hay
Because you are restricting your horse's forage intake at pasture (or if your horse has noaccess to pasture) it is essential that you do fill your horse up with a high fibre forage.Suitable forages include weather damaged lucerne hay, cereal crop straw or a very, verymature or weather damaged grass hay like the stalky pasture hay in the photo (be careful toensure all are mould and contaminant free).

Your horse's intake of pasture will determine how much extra forage you have to feed. Around2% of your horse's bodyweight (10 kg for a 500 kg horse) should be the minimum you feed to ahorse with no access to pasture. If your horse does have access to pasture you should feedless than that, but the amount really depends on your horse and the quality of your pasture.Use FeedXL to work out how much hay is needed to meet your horse's feed intake requirement,without overfeeding digestible energy.

To extend the amount of time it takes the horse to eat its hay and help prevent boredom, putthe hay into 2 or 3 hay nets as this makes it harder for the horse to pull it out and eat,so will keep the horse chewing for a lot longer.

3. Add some high quality protein to the diet
While you need to restrict your horse's calorie intake (by restricting access to pasture andfeeding low quality forage) you need to make sure that you still meet their proteinrequirements. Failure to meet protein requirements can result in muscle wastage, poor haircoat and terrible hoof quality.

Full fat soybean or soybean meal contains the best quality plant protein available. You onlyneed to add a small amount (up to 400 grams per day for a 500 kg horse on a diet of poorquality hay) to help maintain hoof and coat quality and avoid muscle wastage. You can alsoadd a small amount of lucerne hay or chaff to the horse's diet to add some qualityprotein.

4. Ensure vitamin and mineral requirements are met
It is essential you do not compromise the overweight horse's health by restricting vitaminand mineral requirements. Adding a low dose rate E vitamin and mineral supplement to anoverweight horse's diet will meet their vitamin and mineral requirements without addingunneeded calories to the diet. You should look for a 'complete' vitamin and mineralsupplement that is fed at a dose of less than 100 g/day.

5. Oils
Over the years I have found that horses on restricted diets often lack shine in their coats,even though they are on well balanced diets with all their protein, vitamin and mineralrequirements met. This is likely due to a lack of oils, and more specifically the omegafatty acids in the poor quality forage diets they are being fed. Adding a 1/4 of a cup ofoil that contains both omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids (for example canola or soybean oil orcommercial oils with added omega 3) to their diet per day will make sure they have theiressential omega fatty acid requirements met to keep their skin and coat nice and healthy.

6. Salt
All horses should have constant access to a salt lick and easy keepers are no different.Always make sure your horses can get to salt. It should also go without saying that theymust have constant access to clean, fresh water.

An Example Diet
To give you an idea what a well balanced diet for an overweight horse should look like, thefollowing is an example diet for a 500 kg easy keeper:

1. Restricted access (either with grazing muzzle or yarded overnight) to average qualitypasture.
2. 2 kg/day (approx 4.5 lb) poor quality meadow hay
3. Up to 100 g/day (approx 3.5 oz) of a balanced vitamin and mineral supplement 4. 60 ml/day Canola Oil
5. 250 g/day (approx 9 oz) good quality lucerne chaff
6. Free access to salt lick

If the pasture quality was 'poor' (dried, brown with seedheads present) some full fatsoybean would be used to provide quality protein.

Why Bother Trying To Get The Weight Off
What we often don't recognise is that being overweight for a horse carries just as manyhealth problems as it does for humans. In overweight horses we see increased levels of:

• Insulin resistance
• Laminitis
• Increased bone and joint wear and tear
• Lack of mobility; and
• Heat stress

It is worth the effort putting together a diet for your overweight horse as heor she will be all the healthier for it. Just giving them poor quality hay or straw orlocking them in a tiny dirt paddock is not a solution to weight problems. Remember, you mustrestrict the calories but provide for all their other nutrient needs, otherwise you will endup with a skinny, but very unhealthy horse!

Dr. Nerida Richards (PhD) is Australia's foremost expert in Horse Nutrition. This article iscourtesy of FeedXL DIY Diet Planner forHorses. If you would like be among the first to receive FeedXL newsletters thenplease consider subscribing to FeedXL.

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