Feeding an Easy Keeper on Stall Rest
Clair Thunes, PhD
January 27, 2025
A nutrition expert offers advice on preventing weight gain and boredom while a hefty horse is on stall rest.
A nutrition expert offers advice on preventing weight gain and boredom while a hefty horse is on stall rest.
Follow these steps to help your overweight horse subsist on fewer calories.
Caring for easy-keeping horses can be challenging. Learn how to manage your easy keeper safely and effectively.
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Feeding and managing horses that gain weight easily can become a challenge. Learn about ration balancers and how to craft a diet for the easy keeper with these free resources.
The term “easy keepers” refers to horses and ponies that maintain or gain weight on a minimum amount of food.
Much like humans, horses need a proper diet and adequate exercise to maintain a healthy body weight.
If your horse gains weight eating air, founders on grass every spring, and has a cresty neck, he could be insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is part of an equine health issue called Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS).
Equine Metabolic
An equine nutritionist explains how to rectify common mistakes owners make while feeding easy keepers.
Adams hopes to better understand why EMS occurs and to find a safe and effective way to treat the disease.
Consider alfalfa hay, small meal portions, forage access, and more when feeding an ulcer-prone hard keeper.
Reader’s question about why her Thoroughbred horse (stallion) won’t put on weight despite excellent care, and a veterinarian’s response discussing nutritional management, veterinary examinations, and genetics.
Horse owners gathered Feb. 20 at the SmartPak Retail Store in Natick, Mass., to hear a lecture on keeping weight on a hard keeper, presented by Lydia Gray, DVM, MA, medical director/staff veterinarian for SmartPak.
The followin
Is your horse a “hard keeper?” If so, you are well aware of how difficult it is to maintain adequate or desirable body condition in this type of horse. The reality is that no two horses are the same when it comes to the amount of feed (and numbe
Don’t panic. That’s probably the most helpful thing I can say about calculating the balance of nutrients in your horse’s diet. Most people are perfectly comfortable speaking about calcium or vitamin E levels in the abstract sense, but when
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