TC's Nutritional Overhaul

I got the testing back on my hay last week so I decided to sign up for FeedXL to see what we were looking at nutritionally. 

TC has had some real issues with weight gain this year. To the point where he was so fat that I tested him for IR. He tested negative but there was still clearly something wrong, since he was unbelievably fat on almost no food and was super hungry. The vet wanted him back in work so that he could lose weight, so once his feet were feeling better, that's what we did.

(My coworkers thought it was funny that I tested my fat horse for horse diabetes and now he is on a fitness plan.)

We finally got to go on the tracks
together again, it was so fun

I knew that FeedXL wasn't going to go well for us but it really wasn't good. But it's okay, it's something to strive for and fix as soon as we can.

Obviously the first big red flag is that he isn't eating enough for his size. I know. But we have already been able to increase his food since we got home from the vet AND he's still losing weight, he's very close to being where I want him at this point which is great. I'm putting him to work as quickly as I can without making him uncomfortable, knowing that we still need to get his injections. 

The next big issue is a multitude of vitamins and minerals that he isn't getting enough of. This is obviously because he simply isn't eating enough and because we had to cut his alfalfa back entirely to keep him from ballooning up too much. It recommended a ration balancer, so over the weekend I picked one up and am slowly getting him up toward the 2lbs recommended daily amount. 

Finally, it cited that he wasn't getting enough protein, and some other important things for muscle growth. Which is also kind of obvious given that it's like he's on a celery diet. Luckily the ration balancer should correct the protein too!

And of course, as he gets to a manageable weight, I'm excited to add hay. I've already got a plan for that as I'm able to. I'm hoping within a month to be able to increase the hay and by the end of winter, to have his diet completely balanced. 

I had to prep my arena for rain
yesterday, first step is dragging

But it reminded me that this is going to be so much more complicated than I initially thought. Ideally, we would stick him back on alfalfa, give him twice the hay he's getting now, maybe even get him onto a muscle builder. But he'd be at risk of foundering in no time. 

I can't emphasize enough how slowly this went down and how interconnected all of this is. I think I'm piecing together what went wrong in 2020 and how things continued to get worse over the years. Hopefully knowing that means that I can reverse it and get my horse back. 

It's easy to slowly slide into dysfunction and then you look around like... what the fuck happened? And now we have to climb back out. And that's also going to be slow. 

And the second step, rolling!

So that's what we are doing. We are going to slowly improve his feet, slowly bring him back into work, slowly add back the calories and nutrients he needs. All while trying to keep him happy and increasingly healthier. It really sucks, and I feel terrible, but I'm trying to just look ahead. 

I may still get the nutritionist to take a look. FeedXL is great, but I think it showed me that we're in a much weirder spot than just him being kinda fat. So I'm probably going to see what she says too. For now, we can start with the ration balancer though! 

Maybe He's Just Salty

On Friday of last week, my vet was back out for Rico and Riot to do some bloodwork and I had her pull more blood for TC. Why? Because the day before, she had given me the news that TC's metabolic panel came back totally normal. 

I was kind of shocked by that! I had done a ton of research on IR because I was so confident he was about to be diagnosed with EMS. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense - he had the muscle wasting, the difficulty keeping weight off, and he was just downing salt and water so much that he pees ALL THE TIME. 

My vet was also surprised and so I asked her if there was any other explanation for him being such a salt fiend. She offered to do a full chemistry panel to test his electrolytes and make sure that his kidneys were functioning normally. Like maybe he just loves salt. 

He's a salty boy

Outside of that though, things are going well! I found an interval app that I like, so I set his rehab schedule up. I think every 3-4 sessions, we'll add some time, since he's not lame, he's just out of shape. All of this is on the longe line just in his rope halter. 

Right now we are doing this schedule:

- Figure 8 bars (to loosen up his shoulders and pelvis)

- 15 minutes of walk

- 8x 30 seconds of trot with 30 second walk breaks in between

- 15 minutes of walk

- Either hill work or reining back up the driveway (which is a slight hill)

We had our second and third days doing this schedule this weekend and he was getting in the groove pretty well. He seems happy to be working again and I've noticed some really great improvement since the last time I had him in any sort of work. 

How is he not EMS, like he's lost a little weight
recently but he still has zero topline

He's moving much better now than he did earlier this year, which again does tend to happen starting in the fall, so it might not be related to the changes I've made at all. But I'm glad to see that he seems comfortable in his feet, on my footing, and in a bit of work! 

His back also looks better, he had gotten kind of tight moving in the back, less swingy than before. So seeing his back move and him actually lift the tiniest bit through his withers is pretty promising too. He's so unfit that I'm hoping this just gets better and better. 

As far as exercise goes, my main goal is to a) get him fit and strong so that I can get back on him and b) get him committed to being forward at all three gaits. Luckily he never had too many problems balking on the longe line, so he's been really good! And I think the more I can see him being forward and the more he gets praised for staying forward on the line, the better. I'm in no rush to get back on, I want to be afraid he's going to launch me by the time I get back on so that we can start fresh with him being forward and my fascia not shutting him down. 

I get to weight tape him every week
because he's a chonky boy

Hopefully we get an (easy) answer with his bloodwork coming up. Outside of that, I got my hay sampling stick, so I'm going to grab samples from the bales we have at the barn as well as the bales at the feed shop (they don't test their hay but said that we could!) and send it off for testing. Once the testing comes back, I'll schedule an appointment with the nutritionist. I'm also going to have her help me with Rico's diet since he's lost a little weight recently. Although when my vet was out on Friday, she pulled blood on him and gave us permission to give him as much hay as he'll eat and then to give him as much Senior as it takes to get him gaining weight. 

And because he doesn't have IR, he can get his joint injections!! I think I want to schedule those for sometime in October. He sees my shoer again on October 7th so I want to give him maybe a week or two with his new shoes before I get him in for injections just to understand his baseline without the injections. But we'll see what the vet's schedule is. 

Then hopefully it's smooth sailing in rehab all winter and I have my horse back next year! I went to the California Dressage Society championship show to watch the Grand Prix Freestyles a couple of weeks ago and it was super fun and inspiring. I really hope that all of this works for TC. I think he'd love to be going to a show next year. 

Joint Supplement Intensifies

After TC's x-rays, I decided to do some research on joint supplements. I had Rico on Hylasport for years and was wanting TC to be on something about that impressive. I have the budget to do so and there's no reason not to do it, even just to make myself feel better.

With a lot of thought, I ended up choosing SmartPak's SmartFlex Ultimate Pellets. They run about $75/month and are cheapest when in SmartPaks, so TC now has those. It's a big jump up from his cheap MSM and glucosamine regime, but we're starting to ask him to do the collected work pretty regularly and that plus his hocks not being totally clean anymore, inspired me to just spend the money to give him the supplement.

I like that it's a pellet because then he's more likely to eat it and I like that it comes every month so I don't have to worry about running out! Plus maybe in the future I could transfer everything to smartpaks and make life really easy for me. For now I kind of like the scooping routine though.

Gotta keep those hocks happy, they're going to work much
harder soon... 

He went probably 4 days without the glucosamine since I ran out right before the new joint supplement came and things were NOT good. He kind of felt like crap for a few days this week. Whether that had anything to do with the joint supplement, I don't know. But I took it easy on him until the supplement arrived on Wednesday and gave it to him yesterday morning.

I'm really hoping that this, plus reevaluating our work schedule (taking him from 6 days a week to 5 for a while to see if we still make the progress we've been making with less wear and tear), will slow any wear he's got going on. I know it's not unusual for a 7 year old horse working this hard to show changes in his joints, but it's definitely on my mind to keep him as comfortable as possible for as long as possible!

Next up: talking to the farrier about anything we can do shoe-wise to give him more support. I don't know if there's anything else to do though, because my farrier is pretty awesome.

Secret Santa 2017: Evaluating TC's Diet

I was fortunate enough to receive my Secret Santa gift really early this year! The reason being is that L was my Secret Santa and she knew immediately what to get me and I'm having SO MUCH FUN with it.

She and I have been really good friends for years now and even though she moved away from me, we still chat a fair amount. When she was in town for Thanksgiving, we rode together (still need to write about this) and she gave me my present! It was a month's subscription to FeedXL.

She knows I'm both really into data and really into being completely overwhelmed by horse ownership despite having them my whole life. So when she told me about FeedXL, I was super stoked. I had been thinking that I wanted to redo TC's feed for a while, since he's not finishing all his grass hay, and this has been SUPER helpful.

First page

Basically what you do is you put in all your feed information and it tells you where your horse's deficits are. I was super stoked because not only would it tell me how his feed is now, but I could put in a bunch of other feeds and experiment with what is the best feed.

TC's diet (up until tomorrow) is as follows:

AM:
1 flake grass hay (5.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

PM:
2 flakes grass hay (11.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

Grain:
3lbs LMF Gentle Balance
1g Animed Muscle Up
5g Animed Glucosamine 5000
10g Animed MSM
3g Animed Anipsyll
15 pills (6,000 IUs) Vitamin E


I had let his Omega Horseshine run out a month or two ago because I didn't see enough of a difference and then I added the Anipsyll because he eats on dirt a lot of the year (which is now run out and I'm not going to feed it over the winter since he doesn't eat on dirt in the winter). I'm also relatively cheap so the Animed supplements are great. They're a very no-frills company. I hate spending money on stuff my horse just pees out and I do worry that he just pees out all those supplements!

Final diet- his sodium is still low because he licks his salt
lick and I dunno how much he's really getting, I will be adding
more salt to his diet though

The problem coming into winter was that TC wasn't finishing his grass hay, so I wanted to remove a flake of hay and add some grain to make up some of the calories. Now that I had more room in my tack room, I could store more grain so this was actually an option!

I wasn't sure what to take out though, so I ran the analysis.

The first analysis came back that TC was being fed WAY too much protein, and not enough iodine or sodium. I was also feeding more Vitamin E than he needed, so he was probably just peeing it out. Knowing that he needed less protein, I opted to pull a flake of alfalfa and ran it again.

Final diet continued

Now TC was getting too little energy for his weight/workload and he was also missing copper and selenium in addition to the iodine and sodium. 

Knowing that I didn't want to spend a lot, I decided to replace some of the grass hay with grass pellets (cheaper than feeding an extra flake of hay, and less wasteful hopefully), which helped with the energy but not anything else. I also added a pound of equine senior because I had wanted to get something a little sweet for clicker training and that seemed to be a good idea- either add it to his grain or use it for clicker training each day.

That took care of everything except the iodine if I'm remembering correctly, so I asked the supplement wizard what to do. It listed a TON of supplements but the one that I noticed was California Trace, a cheap supplement that has a bunch of stuff that California soil doesn't have in it. This one stood out because just the other day my mom asked me if I wanted a bunch of it and I said I didn't know. So now I know!

New diet! No salt in there yet though oops

With TC's new diet, he now has everything balanced and I'm not out a ton of money I don't think.  Here's the new diet:


AM:
1 flake grass hay (5.5lbs or so)
1 flake alfalfa hay (6lbs or so)

PM:
2 flakes grass hay (11.5lbs or so)

Grain:
3lbs LMF Gentle Balance
3lbs Grass Pellets
1lb Equine Senior
1oz California Trace
1g Animed Muscle Up
5g Animed Glucosamine 5000
10g Animed MSM
12 pills (4,800 IUs) Vitamin E (going to to slowly let these run out)
1g Salt

So the changes are: add grass pellets, equine senior, california trace, and salt; take out Anispyll (becuase I ran out anyway and he's now eating on his mats for a while due to winter), vitamin E (slowly since I have a lot of it), and the extra alfalfa flake.

Now my goal is to work on this stuff (without being shamed
into spending too much money lol)

I'm really excited to see how this works! I need to keep an eye on his weight because it does get cold here (in the 30s overnight now) and he doesn't wear a blanket (he isn't clipped), but I figured I'd try this for December and see if he's okay. If that's not the case, he'll get some more food.

So major thanks to L for the most amazing Secret Santa gift! I had no idea I could obsess over my horse's diet to another level but it was so fun and didn't tell me I was accidentally depriving my horse of any necessary food, phew.

Now off to the store to get him some equine senior and grass pellets!

Blog Hop: Supplements

An unofficial blog hop keeps popping up about supplements, I think it originated with Olivia, but I actually have my horse on supplements now so I figured I'd join in.

Why I want to feed him money, I don't know

In terms of hay, TC gets 5 flakes a day. Two are alfalfa and three are grass. Our grass is of good quality, so he is pretty much meeting a lot of his nutritional needs with hay. But I'm definitely a sucker for feeding him money, so he's also on some grain and supplements.

He gets 3 quarts of LMF Gentle Balance. He could probably go on something else at this point, but he was originally put on it because it doesn't make horses hot. And he was a bit hot on rehab.

With his grain, he gets some supplements!

10,000mg of MSM
TC has been on MSM since I bought him when he was four years old. It's cheap and makes me feel better about joint support for him.

5,000mg (I think) of Glucosamine
I wanted to add another level of joint supplement now that TC is working harder. I looked into different combinations of joint supplements that had both MSM and Glucosamine in them, but it ended up just being easier to get them separately. Maybe next year I'll put him on something fancier. But he's only just now starting to school the collected work so he's probably good.

1/2 cup of Omega Horseshine
I know you can feed up to a cup, but there are other coat/hoof supplements out there that are cheaper if I had to feed that much, so TC is on just the half cup. So far he DOES seem a little shinier, but he also rolls in the dirt, so he could be covering up a lot of his shine. I'm not totally sold on it, I think I might want to switch to farrier's formula to focus more on his feet and hope that has a good side effect for his coat. I feel like it doesn't matter how much I try to get his coat looking good, he's just going to roll in the dirt and make himself look terrible.

1 scoop of Muscle Up
I threw him on this when I was at Expo and they were offering me a buy two get one free supplement deal. I don't necessarily think TC needs a muscle supplement, he gets lots of protein from his alfalfa, but I was curious. So far he looks pretty much like I'd expect him to look given his level of work. Soooo we'll see. He's only been on it for a month and had a week off recently. What I am curious about is that he definitely has felt less muscle sore than usual recently. I'm not sure whether that's this supplement or just that he's finally fit/strong enough to not get sore.

6,000 IUs of Vitamin E
I've always fed Vitamin E, I get the little gel capsules from Costco super cheap and I figure it can't hurt to give it to them. Rico gets them so TC gets them too.

Psyllium (for the first 7 days of every month)
TC eats on sandy dirt, so I'm pretty paranoid about sand colic with him. The psyllium flushes him out every month.


That's what he's getting right now. I'm still working out exactly what I like and don't like to feed. I do like hearing what other people feed, even if it just enables me!