Most of us are trying to lose weight, Penny needed to gain weight!

Keeping your horse at a healthy weight can be challenging, each horse is different and many factors contribute to a horse losing or gaining weight.  It can be health related, weather, behavioral (like cribbing), change in environment...the list goes on.

We have spent the last 5 months trying to get our senior mare, Penny, back up to a healthy weight.  We still haven't been able to pinpoint what caused the sudden drop in weight, it started to happen shortly after we got her so it could have been the adjustment to the new environment (especially for a senior horse), we initially expected it was due to her stall mate, Rowdy, eating all of her food, but we separated them while eating and that still did not result in any weight gain.  

The biggest mystery was the fact that she and Rowdy were on virtually the same diet of feed in the morning along with a flake of hay, they would graze all day with more feed and hay at night.  Penny just kept getting skinnier and Rowdy just kept getting fatter!  This was our first lesson learned, each horse has different dietary needs.

We immediately began to do our homework, our first change was increasing her senior feed and getting her teeth floated.   The vet thought we were taking all the right steps and recommended we wait a bit before testing for possible health issues.

Penny getting her teeth floated

Our second lesson learned was "eyeballing" our feed, it's very easy to underestimate how much your horse needs to eat and we were way underestimating the amount of feed we were giving her.   We attended a Purina feed clinic which was extremely helpful!  Although you may spend a bit more, we are big believers in Purina feed for special needs horses.   We also purchased a feed scale the very next day!

Even with the increased senior feed we were extremely discouraged that we still weren't seeing any major change in weight.  We talked to our farrier who recommended we try Beet Pulp.  Penny is also a challenge to feed because she colics so easily, we had read that Beet Pulp was easy for horses to digest so we gave it a try. Unfortunately, she had signs of colic shortly after eating it.

Poor Penny, at her skinniest her flanks were completely sunk in and you could see every rib.  She had also put herself in quite the predicament this day! :)

We continued a slow increase of her feed and each day would stare at her for any sign of weight gain.  We had increased her senior feed to 5 pounds per day, she was receiving approximately 5 pounds of Timothy pellets and was still grazing all day.   We still just weren't seeing the results.

We had another vet out to float Sadie's teeth and she finally gave us a suggestion that would lead to the perfect combination.   She recommended we try Purina's high-fat feed, Amplify.  We started her out slow and eventually got her up to 2lbs of Amplify per day.  

About 1 week after increasing her Amplify we also increased her Timothy pellets.

SUCCESS!!   We immediately started to see the weight gain and the change in her behavior.  You can tell she feels better and has more energy.  

We are so thrilled that Penny is finally putting on weight and looking healthy.  She truly looks like a different horse, we credit this both to the change in her diet and the Missing Link supplement that has transformed her coat.  

Picture taken tonight!

Her current diet consists of the following:

5 pounds of Purina Equine Senior 

2 pounds Amplify

Approximately 10 pounds of Timothy pellets

Plus she still grazes all day

We had no idea it would take this much feed to gain her weight back, but we are so relieved to have found the right combination.   At $50+ per bag, we are hoping we can slowly reduce the Amplify and maintain her weight going forward with Senior Feed and Timothy.

Although most girls would be thrilled to lose weight as easily as Penny does, we intend to keep this girl fat and sassy from now on!