Friday, June 2, 2017

Easy keeper?

Um.  Not so much.  "Easy Keeper" is an expression describing horses that don't need a lot of food.  And Canadian Horses are well known for being easy keepers.  Air ferns actually.

This presents some challenges however.

My fat girl

L has become seriously overweight.  I'd say...maybe...2 or 300 pounds overweight.

When we were competing we'd work a couple of hours every single day.  And in peak shape she'll take your breath away.  Sometimes we'd ride 6 or 8 miles just warming up.  L has a very large capacity for work.  She'll just go and go.  And go.  We were going to start endurance riding at one time.  But that's another story.

She barely gets a third of a cup of grain for breakfast and dinner.  We have no pasture so the rest of her diet is hay.

It's hard to keep her fit and I certainly don't have the stones anymore to do it under saddle.

So I'm putting her on a program.  She'll get some more disciplined ground work.  I'm talking about my discipline here.  I need to more actively supervise her exercise.

And I got this:

Tough-1 Hay Hoops slow feed haynet

Product review: So far it's just perfect! She's been eating too fast. And that's why she's getting as much hay as she's been getting. So I got that slow feed hay net a week or so ago and I'm just thrilled. She figured it out easily enough. It's slowed her way down so I can give her less hay and not only does it keep her busy she's also spending less time with an empty stomach. All kinds of wins. I have read that the net will break down and tear apart in 6 months to a year so I'll have to get a spare net to keep around.

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