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 Expert
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| Ever had a horse get poor even thought they have all the good grass they can eat? We have a mare turned out with a few other horses on 80 acres of pasture. They are all mud fat, except this one. We havent had her long, and she was fat when we bought her. My husband thinks she probably lived in a stall all her life and doesnt know how to be pasture bound. I feel like something HAS to be wrong. Shes been wormed. Anyone ever dealt with this? |
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 Shelter Dog Lover
Posts: 10277
| Have you called the past owners to see what they fed her? Maybe she needs it while transitioning to your place. I've never heard of a horse that doesn't know to graze but who knows. |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 1100
Location: Southeastern Idaho | Have you had her teeth checked recently? May have abscesses or issues not allowing her to chew her food properly. That would be one of my first places to look.
Edited by luvropin 2016-04-11 12:20 PM
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Expert
Posts: 2128
| We did notice that she has a front tooth that was slightly out of line with the others (when we purchased her), but she was fat during that time, so we did not think it to be a risk to her health. Could a snake bite cause a horse to go down like this? |
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 Veteran
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| I would treat for ulcers. She may have them after the stress of moving to a new location/environment. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1100
Location: Southeastern Idaho | scwebster - 2016-04-11 11:26 AM
We did notice that she has a front tooth that was slightly out of line with the others (when we purchased her), but she was fat during that time, so we did not think it to be a risk to her health. Could a snake bite cause a horse to go down like this?
That tooth out of line may be causing hooks in the back. If she was on processed feed when you bought her it may not have been noticed. I have had easy keeping horses with hooks before as well. |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 678
Location: Canada | I'd start with getting her teeth checked and a blood work up just to be sure. If those come back normal then I'd start treating her for ulcers. I have found a couple of horses that I've moved from pens to pasture have dropped weight (even with grazing and hay bales) because they are moving so much more where before they were just parked in front of the hay 24/7 and ate without moving.
So she may have been kept in a smaller pen and ate 24/7 without moving and now she's moving and needs more calories. If everything else is normal start upping her feed until she balances back out but get her checked first just to be sure it's not something in her mouth preventing her from eating well.
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 A Somebody to Everybody
Posts: 41354
Location: Under The Big Sky Of Texas | Yep first thing I would be checking her teeth and how her bite is, her jaw could be outa line and shes having a hard time chewing. |
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 Extreme Veteran
Posts: 460
| I had a horse that was like this... checked out completely sound of health! That horse just could not live off of only a grass based diet. We still turned him out all day, but we also started feeding him alfalfa and grain. He finally started gaining weight after we started feeding him. I think there's just some horses that can't handle only being on grass. |
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 Off the Wall Wacky
Posts: 2981
Location: Louisiana | My mom sent an older gelding to turn out on our grass. He always assumes low man in the herd, and just hangs out alone. Unless there's a young horse or just a very nice one lol. I would watch him...he would just stand there not grazing. He started losing weight pretty quickly. My husband got to where he was sneaking feed to him when the other horses were out of sight. At that point it was costing us to house him so my mom took him back. She fed him up and he gained right back, slowly but steadily. He's been stalled his entire life. |
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Ever had a horse that is really poor despite..