My horse is 27years old. Shes looseing a bit of weight. So last month we started her on senior feed. She seems to really like this feed. She gets a full metal scoop of the feed in a bucket and thats her lunch every day.  In that bucket is her meds and supplements. 

Today my trainer ordered some beet bulp. So we are going to try that.   So hopefully she will gain some more weight and look a little better. 

We have to order some more fat cat from Smart Pack Equine,so im going to order weight tape. That way i can see if shes really putting on weight or not.

So wish me luck with my horse for putting on weight.  I would like to take her to a horse show at the end of next month.  So maybe she will look a littler better by then?

~Laura~

When I first got my horse she was a bit ribby and needed some bulking up. I started feeding her Horse Chow 100 along with beet pulp and a daily vitamin/mineral supplement. After a couple of months of adding this to her diet of 1/2 oat hay and 1/2 alfalfa she had filled out nicely.

Good luck and I hope you get the results you are looking for!

Lassie, I highly recommend Triple Crown Complete if you can get it.  It's really high in calories AND fiber.  I used it in combo with their fortified chopped forage when I had an old (26) gelding with jaw cancer.  The vet was awed by the fact that I not only put weight ON the horse, but he was shiny and (if you didn't notice the huge tumor) looked fit as a fiddle.    Complete has rice bran in it for the extra calories.  I added corn oil at the beginning to really give him a boost, but he was putting on too much weight so I cut that out.  I have all my horses except the mini on Complete now.  I had to take the mini off because he just blew up like a hairy little balloon on just a handful of the stuff twice a day.  LOL

BTW, did you have a really GOOD dentist check her teeth?  Part of my gelding's issue was that he was losing them party due to old age and partly b/c of the cancer.  If she's quidding her hay, that's definitely a sign that her teeth are an issue that needs to be addressed first.

 Good luck!

I second the notion to have the teeth checked at your soonest convenience sine she is just starting to struggle with weight.

 Most senior feeds are complete feeds that already contain beet pulp, but in already balanced proportions with other ingredients.They are meant to be fed alone or mixed with grass hays, have to check the label to know for sure. Adding more beet pulp could throw off that balance a little for the vit/min aspect. I'd give the senior feed time to do it's thing. It takes more than a week or two to see a difference -you don't want to overfeed and risk colic/founder, so up it a little at a time.

 I LOVE feeding beet pulp, I just think your senior mix probably has enough in it already. If you really want to customize the vit/min mix, then omit the senior feed and give her beet pulp and carefully analyze what you are adding to make sure it's balanced. But you might find the Senior feed is much more convenient for you.

Hi Lassie,

i had the same problem with my old tb, he was 25yrs old. now he lost weight within a couple of weeks, so i got his teeth done. turned out he was gaining some, but still very slowly. even though he got his teeth done he was still dropping a whole lot. so since i didn't want him to waste my expensive feed, i ended up soaking it in water over night. he would get

1 coffee can (reg size) of co-op senior feed, fat pellets (hi fat 20), cob, beet bulp and then , 1 cup of corn oil, 2 scoops cool calories and some other supplements for his joints. now i know it sounds like a whole lot and i kinda agree, but he was worth it. now once i started soaking it over night and he could just suck it up and munch on it, he gained weight like it was going out of style. and it was always hard to keep weight on him. now i'm not saying it was everything together, since it all depends on the horse, but i think because it was more of a soup he was able to retain all the noutriens better than dropping half of it.

so all i could suggest is, if you're giving your horse beet bulp soak the rest of your food in water as well and see if your horse will gain weight. i liked cool calories as a weight supplement as well, so you could consider that.

 i know trickie liked making a mess out of his food in the end, but he ate it all. i mean it ended up in his mane and ears. he did pass on since his liver failed over the winter but in the last yr and a half when we started soaking his food he looked never better. no one believed he was 25.

good luck with the feeding and i hope your horse is going to gain some weight!