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| What have you had good luck with to fill out behind the withers and through the back? |
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 Expert
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Location: The best kept secret in TX | Round pen work wise, or supplement wise?
I believe the two work hand in hand personally.  |
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 The Bling Princess
Posts: 3411
Location: North Dakota | feed wise?? I love feeding alfalfa hay. good for the guts and helps build a topline. |
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| We have a gelding with what I consider a poor top line. He gets alfalfa and also MVP's InSync, which is a supplement formulated for muscle health. It contains amino acids, which obviously are the building blocks for protein....and you need protein for muscle.
ETA we also do exercises with him. Every time he is worked he is worked over ground poles.
Edited by WrapN3MN 2017-08-16 4:49 PM
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Member
Posts: 32
| IRunOnFaith - 2017-08-16 1:47 PM
Round pen work wise, or supplement wise?
I believe the two work hand in hand personally.
Yes, definitely! I would love to hear opinions on both |
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 Nothing Comes Easy
Posts: 2353
Location: Texas | Good protein-- alfalfa. Start with long trotting, ground poles and hills. If available, backing up some hills. Then build towards collection, driving the horse into the bit to lift up the stomach to bring up the back. It takes a lot of time to build up a horses back properly. Key thing is to make sure your saddle fits properly. A poor fitting saddle will go against this. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 534
Location: Ohio girl moved to PA | collection work and a high protein diet. We had amazing results with the DAC bloom. Its a muscle/fat supplement and it was the only thing that worked for putting a top line on my guy. It puts the weight right where its needed instead of all going to their belly! its about $25 for a 40 day supply. Definitly worth the money. Plumped his butt up too! |
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Location: South Dakota | Forco is great for a good topline. Our horses are bloomy, healthy, with grass hay, 1 lb soaked alfalfa pellets, and 1 lb of whole oats, daily. |
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 Expert
Posts: 1430
Location: Montana | You are describing classic symptoms of not enough protein. Alfalfa will fix it if you can get it.
Lots of good topline feeds at https://prognutrition.com They make great high protein ration balancers and other feeds. I feed a lot of their Grass Formula ration balancer for it's high quality protein. GREAT stuff.
I feed an 18 year old TB stud . . . he gets a lots of protein but you'd never know he was that old. He's a son of Seattle Slew and I want him to last to 28 like his daddy . . . and I'm going to keep that topline strong to help with that.
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Expert
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Location: Willows, CA | Renew Gold and some alfalfa in the diet. Added protein in the diet only helps if it is properly digested. Renew Gold gets that done. |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | There are three things that make a good top line. They all need to be present for the best results:
1. Genetics - As with anything, if the genetics are not there, then its not going to happen.
2. Nutrition - Its not this feed or that feed, but good quality protein and nutrients needed for health. No feed can claim exclusivity to building the best top line and feed alone will not do it.
3. Exercise and conditioning - Routine exercise to build and strengthen the back muscles. This is achieved from collection. I am not talking about collection that comes just from bringing the head down. A horse can be soft in the face and hollow in the back. That is very common, actually. We call it false collection. You have to bring the head and neck down, LIFT the back, and drive the hind end. This stretches and strengthens the back muscles and builds top line. |
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Expert
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Location: Willows, CA | Tdove - 2017-08-18 10:04 AM
There are three things that make a good top line. They all need to be present for the best results:
1. Genetics - As with anything, if the genetics are not there, then its not going to happen.
2. Nutrition - Its not this feed or that feed, but good quality protein and nutrients needed for health. No feed can claim exclusivity to building the best top line and feed alone will not do it.
3. Exercise and conditioning - Routine exercise to build and strengthen the back muscles. This is achieved from collection. I am not talking about collection that comes just from bringing the head down. A horse can be soft in the face and hollow in the back. That is very common, actually. We call it false collection. You have to bring the head and neck down, LIFT the back, and drive the hind end. This stretches and strengthens the back muscles and builds top line.
All these points are so true. ^^^^^^^. You can only make them as good as they have the genetic ability to be. Nutrition will only take them so far, but is still an important piece to this puzzle. Lots of people that have a horse with a poor top line do not work on the exercise part of adding muscle there because, for the very reason that the top line is weak, those exercises are more difficult for the horse and rider to do. Working toward proper collection will really help a poor backed horse, if the nutritional building blocks are there, and the horse has the genetic potential to properly use them. |
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| Myoplast, but don't do two scoops a day on a quarterhorse for long, you'll end up with a halter looking horse. I start on two scoops, then do one scoop, then 1/2 for maintenance. It can make a TB look like a warmblood, amazing stuff. I've never ran into a horse that doesn't develope a massive topline on this, I put my big mare on it becasue it has all the amino acids and had to take her off, even 1/2 a scoop made her too big and muscled. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 509
| Alfalfa check for worms and parasites if you can't find good hay try cubes |
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 A Somebody to Everybody
Posts: 41354
Location: Under The Big Sky Of Texas | I agree with T-Dove the genetic's has got to be there for a good top line to happen and good nutrition.. |
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Regular
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| Kaye - 2017-08-19 11:58 AM
Myoplast, but don't do two scoops a day on a quarterhorse for long, you'll end up with a halter looking horse. I start on two scoops, then do one scoop, then 1/2 for maintenance. It can make a TB look like a warmblood, amazing stuff. I've never ran into a horse that doesn't develope a massive topline on this, I put my big mare on it becasue it has all the amino acids and had to take her off, even 1/2 a scoop made her too big and muscled.
Where do you buy it in the US? |
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Gettin Jiggy Wit It
Posts: 2734
| Needmocash2 - 2017-08-19 8:59 PM
Kaye - 2017-08-19 11:58 AM
Myoplast, but don't do two scoops a day on a quarterhorse for long, you'll end up with a halter looking horse. I start on two scoops, then do one scoop, then 1/2 for maintenance. It can make a TB look like a warmblood, amazing stuff. I've never ran into a horse that doesn't develope a massive topline on this, I put my big mare on it becasue it has all the amino acids and had to take her off, even 1/2 a scoop made her too big and muscled.
Where do you buy it in the US?
i buy stuff all the time from this website. Viovet.com... reasonable shipping from the UK and I get my order in a week and a half. https://www.viovet.co.uk/Equitop_Myoplast_for_Horses/c10604/ |
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Expert
Posts: 1695
Location: Willows, CA | WetSaddleBlankets - 2017-08-19 9:08 PM
Needmocash2 - 2017-08-19 8:59 PM
Kaye - 2017-08-19 11:58 AM
Myoplast, but don't do two scoops a day on a quarterhorse for long, you'll end up with a halter looking horse. I start on two scoops, then do one scoop, then 1/2 for maintenance. It can make a TB look like a warmblood, amazing stuff. I've never ran into a horse that doesn't develope a massive topline on this, I put my big mare on it becasue it has all the amino acids and had to take her off, even 1/2 a scoop made her too big and muscled.
Where do you buy it in the US? i buy stuff all the time from this website. Viovet.com... reasonable shipping from the UK and I get my order in a week and a half. https://www.viovet.co.uk/Equitop_Myoplast_for_Horses/c10604/
This is an interesting product. The major benefit I see is the supplemental Lysine. Horses that are on a grass hay based diet and fed grain based feed will almost always be deficient in Lysine. This can be a major limiting factor in the horses ability to use dietary protein. Some studies say up to a loss of the ability to use up to 50% of the protein fed if Lysine is critically short. So, what do horse owners do? They add more feed that contains unusable protein, and the excess starch and sugar that goes with it, when the proper response should be balancing the Lysine level in the diet. There are a number of ways to do this. One is a product like that shown above, but straight lysine added daily will do much the same thing. Typical clinical studies with diets that are mostly grass hay and grain show shortages of 8 grams to 10 grams of Lysine per day. This is not a lot to add, but it is needed.
Edited by winwillows 2017-08-22 4:01 PM
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