Effects of an irregular feeding schedule for horses

My endurance horses have been “enduring” an irregular feeding schedule for some time now. It hasn’t really hurt their performance at rides. Fantazia has continued her general trend for speed, eating, soundness (top ten, with one win, because no one else went fast). Jazz has won three 50s in a row, and received BC as well in the last two. (Read about our last ride here: The last Western Mojave xpride.) I don’t worry too much about Jazz, because he takes care of himself (and especially his stomach). Fantazia, however, is far too thin. Unfortunately, she is not food motivated. She is the primary cause for the irregular feeding schedule.

It turns out the pasture can provide a lot of nutrients! They might be more at risk of getting fat than skinny, Read my later post about it here: What’s growing in my pasture.

First, some background.

Why my horses have an irregular feeding schedule

Reason 1: My schedule and their personalities

To a certain extent, this is inevitable. I work in Bakersfield during the week. My horses live together while I am gone. Fantazia needs to eat more than Jazz does. In fact, she needs an entirely different diet, but primarily, she just needs more calories.

Unfortunately, even though Jazz is NOT a dominant horse, Fantazia is even less dominant. I’ve seen her boss Jazz around (i.e., move his feet) a few times. And where she goes, so does he. But she simply doesn’t care enough about food to stand her ground about it. And she eats slowly. Jazz eats fast.

Initially my solution was to have Jazz eat a bit too much on the days I am gone, and Fantazia a bit too little. I am referring to pelleted feed here. They are out on pasture 24/7, and as soon as the grass started coming in, they stopped eating much hay, so that hasn’t been an issue. So I leave identical bags of feed for Eddie, the person who feeds for us, to give them. Then when I am home, I separate them to eat and give Fantazia a bit more than she needs (as much as she eats, in fact) and Jazz less.

Above: Jazz sleeping in a pen I put him in to eat when I’m home. He doesn’t mind coming in now and then.

Ideal feed for each?

Fantazia does well on 5 lbs. of Ultium Gastric Care in two feedings, plus one cup rice bran (I use MannaPro pellets) in each. That gives her a full dose of Outlast per day. Jazz can eat just about anything, but 5 lbs. of Ultium Gastric Care would be too much. So I give him 2 lbs. of Nutrena ProForce Fuel and a pound of oats, top-dressed with Outlast, in two feedings. I give them both beet pulp and alfalfa/oat cubes soaked, on days when one of them works. (I soak about 1 lb of each and give Fantazia as much as she’ll eat and the rest to Jazz, aside from a handful I give to my mom’s gelding to be fair.)

Actual feed

On weekdays I leave 2lbs of Nutrena Fuel for each (am) and a pound of Purina Equine Senior Active plus a cup of rice bran (pm).

The problem is, if they are out on their 33 acre parcel, they don’t come in to eat.

Above: Jazz and Fantazia trotting along the dam on their way in for breakfast… when they still came in!

Reason 2: They don’t come in to eat

Fantazia has bonded with some neighboring horses. When I say neighbor, I mean over a quarter mile up the road from us. To Fantazia, social life is more important than food.

She and Jazz have been on that parcel since October. For months, they came in every morning to eat. I put their feed bins at the gate. If they weren’t there waiting, I would clap my hands. They’d come galloping (or at least trotting). They’d do the same for Eddie. At first, they were being fed hay and grain once a day. When the grass started coming in, they started leaving most of the hay. We’d feed hay only when it was eaten.

Starting in January, they stopped coming in regularly. Sometimes they would be there, sometimes not. We would leave the grain in the feeders. Then one day I got home from Bakersfield and found a bunch of uneaten soupy rain. It had rained. So I told Eddie to only put grain out if it wasn’t raining or they were there. He feeds my mom’s horse twice a day, so he’d feed them if he saw them, whenever.

They got grain about half the time when I was gone through the beginning of February. When I was there, I’d bring them in to eat.

Complication: Cattle

At the end of January, five steers were turned out on the parcel. They are going to be taken off again for about six weeks soon, but they’ve been there for a month and a half now. We can’t leave food out for the horses when the steers are there because they will eat it. No way am I feeding expensive feed to steers! Perhaps because they couldn’t trust there to be a bit of hay at least in the feeders, or perhaps just because it’s raining a lot and there is grass and a low, protecte place where they like to be, the horses are not coming in at all anymore. I have to go fetch them out of the pasture when I get home.

Effects of an irregular feeding schedule on my horses?

Hard to tell, beyond Fantazia’s low body score. I’ve been putting them in a smaller parcel on the weeks before rides. It has less grass, so I have Eddie give them as much hay as they’ll eat. And then two feedings of pelleted feed (Fuel in the morning, senior feed and rice bran in the evening). This week that was impossible because of floods and impassable bridges and mud.

I expect when the grass really takes off, they’ll fatten up nicely in any case. At least Jazz will. Fantazia will stay near the other horses and thus limit her grazing range. Sigh.

They are certainly both capable of carrying me 50 miles. Jazz honestly seems to be thriving. Fantazia is far too thin in my opinion. I am going to try to breed her in late April or May. She won’t be doing endurance then, and not until it cools down in any case. But she’d be better off for breeding and carrying a foal if she were fatter.

Above: Every time I turn the horses out, they run straight up to the horses on the property up the road! Here they are inadvertently herding the steers up too!

My questions

Potential issues that haven’t occurred to me?

I am wondering about possible effects of an irregular feeding schedule that I don’t know about. I worry that any effects of Outlast, whether top-fed or in Ultium Gastric care, will be lost.

Possible solutions?

If anyone has an idea about how to deal with this, I’d love to hear it. It has occurred to me that we could run a fence down the middle of the property to keep them away from the other horses for a while, but that’s a lot of work. Of course, I could keep them in smaller paddocks. But then they wouldn’t get the benefit of 33 acres of good grass.

Other ideas?

Above: My horses enjoy their pasture… but they seem to expect me to bring them their food where they want to be… a long way from the barn! In the first picture, they are in the furthest corner, about 0.4 miles from the barn.