Horse Weight issues - Please Help!

[horsesfurever]

Hello all! I need some help/advice on what to do with a colt of mine. He is about 2 yrs old and is about 17hh high. He has been in poor condition for the past week or so. I have had in a barn that I bought specially for him, and I have put him on 100% Weight gain mix, Performance mix, Alfalfa hay, and normal hay, with no change. I am very, very confused, and I would like to know if I am doing something wrong?
Thank you! horsesfurever

[BlackOak2]

Hello all! I need some help/advice on what to do with a colt of mine. He is about 2 yrs old and is about 17hh high. He has been in poor condition for the past week or so. I have had in a barn that I bought specially for him, and I have put him on 100% Weight gain mix, Performance mix, Alfalfa hay, and normal hay, with no change. I am very, very confused, and I would like to know if I am doing something wrong?
Thank you! horsesfurever

First off, remember that horse's can't die on poor weight conditions (that's too thin and too fat). Secondly, although our feeding system is nominally good, there does seem to be a couple unusual, hard-to-pinpoint buggies that are still hanging around. These pop up for horses that can't loose weight and can't gain weight.
I am going to assume you mean this one:
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/974155
Ruby Moon

If you scroll down to the feeding section, you'll notice an area that says regular feed and max feed.
You need to keep in mind that regular feed means how much they are going to eat (within nominal amounts as in real life a horse won't eat the exact same amount of hay/grass/grain every day), and that the max feed is how much they can consume in a single day. This max feed if you notice is a red 16.9kg. This means you're trying to stuff your horse with too much food and he can't eat it all.

So now I come to the third thing you must keep in mind. Feeding is given to the horse from top to bottom, which means your horse is filling up on the hay and not able to touch the alfalfa hay let alone the performance or the weight gain.
So, (keeping in mind that there are some floating buggies) our feeding system prices are lower than perhaps they should be and we're safe having our horses be over or underweight without threat of death. Stripe off his hay and alfalfa, give him only the performance and weight gain. See if you can balance out being above 100% food with as much of weight gain and performance as possible. I suggest giving more weight gain and less performance since the weight gain is designed to help put weight on these horses.

Now the last point to keep in mind. If you can't balance out what he can eat with greater than 100% food intake, or even if you do and he doesn't steadily gain weight, you'll have to move him into a lush pasture and stuff him with either weight gain or performance until he gains back the weight you want on him.

Good Luck.