Question
I have a two-year-old Thoroughbred gelding, about 15.3 hands (160 cm) and growing. He weighs nearly 1,000 lb (450 kg). He’s turned out 21-22 hours a day, and he spends a few hours in a stall. He is currently fed 4 lb (1.8 kg) of sweet feed, 2 lb (0.9 kg) of a ration balancer pellet, and free-choice grass hay. He was in race training for about two months and lost significant weight. I brought him home to improve his condition. How can I help him gain weight at home and maintain healthy condition when training resumes?
Answer
Without knowing exactly what the gelding’s diet composed of when he was at the track, it is best to begin refeeding him slowly, and it seems you have taken this approach with his current ration.
Beginning with forage, because it is winter in your area, he is likely not receiving much energy from any pasture he is picking at. Allowing him free-choice access to grass hay is wise, not only for energy intake but also gastrointestinal health. If you would like to increase the caloric contribution of the forage portion of his ration, you could switch him to a mixed hay that contains alfalfa (lucerne) or another legume.
Now that he’s acclimated to feed again, he should receive a performance feed that offers both moderate to high levels of starch and sugar, and added fat (6-10%), to support maintenance requires and fuel weight gain. This feed should be fed according to the manufacturer’s recommendations, which at a minimum will likely be 5-6 lb (2.2-2.7 kg) and for this horse, because he is on a weight-gain diet, should reach nearly twice that. No single meal should weigh over about 5 lb (2.2 kg), so the total volume of feed should be split into two or three meals a day.
Furthermore, adding a fat supplement like stabilized rice bran or vegetable oil (soybean, canola) to a traditional sweet feed can provide a boost in calories without significantly increasing the amount of daily feed offered.
Moving a horse up in condition requires time. In a paper titled “Assessing Energy Balance,” published in Advances in Equine Nutrition IV, energy requirements for weight gain are discussed in depth.
When he returns to training, keep a close eye on his condition and be prepared to further increase his uptake as needed, following the previous recommendations, to maintain healthy weight with increased energy expenditure.
As a final note, it is important to rule out other possibilities for this weight loss such as digestive upset (gastric ulcers, hindgut acidosis), stress, inappetence, or parasite burden.
