A wee bit skinny

As you could see from the last post, Digby is skinny coming out of winter. Sigh.

He had lost a little weight between when I moved back and before I moved him back to PA but he was probably a 4.5 on the BCS so I wasn't too worried. Enter cold winter of doom.

All in all, I guess he could look worse...? But he looks pretty bad. His coat is still pretty shiny which makes me chuckle and he is always a very enthusiastic eater. He got tons of blankets and free choice hay. Fecal was fine but I dewormed him before I moved him back to PA with equimax and again in December with a powerpac. His teeth were up to date but I did them in March anyway. They weren't great so the equine denist is coming back out in May to use some power tools. I also switched him from what the barn feeds (Blue Seal Strider) to Triple Crown Senior in January. I've fed it before and had great results. He gets an entire scoop (3 quarts) twice a day and still looks like this. According to weights on their website, that's about 6-7 lbs a day. That's a lot for a 15hh guy like him! The last time I fed TC Senior he got max 5 lbs a day and that was in the dead of winter, not March and April.

The vet is coming back out for the second round of spring shots on April 9th so she's going to run some tests then. I'm thinking we will pull blood, discuss the possibility of cushings, Lyme or ulcers and see what she has to say. I had given him Ulcergard two days before, during and for a few days after the move, but I suppose he could of gotten ulcers while in PA. Any suggestions? 

Feed and weight

As you know Digby can be a little bit of a hard keeper in the winter. He's had many, many feeding programs in all seasons. I'll do a quick outline of them here.

Before DelVal
- Mostly unknown. I do know for winter though he got as much hay as he could eat and lots of beet pulp. Grain tends to make the kid a little nuts from a young age, apparently.

At DelVal
- I don't quite remember but I believe it was a handful of sweet feed for most seasons. I'm not sure about winter.

With his next owner
- Free choice hay, 2 qts beet pulp and 2 qts 10%/10% Pennfield Grand Prix Granola twice a day. He came to me looking great. Probably a BCS of 5 and very fit. I did look at putting him back on Pennfield when I moved to a self care barn but it's very expensive. I figured I'd try other options first. I still wish it was cheaper but it's a high quality grain for sure. He looked fantastic, in good weight and was being worked pretty darn hard, as well as having a full body clip.

With me in NY
- Round bales while outside, 3-4 flakes of hay while inside given 3x a day, more if kept inside all day due to weather, 3 qts local feed mill senior pellets 2x day. 2qts beet pulp in PM as wel. Kept weight on for the rest of the winter at a BCS of 5, maybe 5.5.
- Spring: gradually backed off grain until turned out in May as a live out. Had acres of fresh grass. No grain.

With me in PA (first barn)
- 2-3 flakes hay 2x a day, given no grain at first. As winter approached, started gradually upping grain from handful to 3 qts 10% pellet for a local feed mill. He was in work, though possibly not as hard as last winter due to my fault not his, and had a full body clip. I asked to have his grain switched to senior but that was frowned upon. I was also not allowed to buy beet pulp to feed. He ended up being about a BCS of 3.5. It took till I moved in April to get weight back on.

Second barn in PA
- BCS of about a 4.5 when I moved. Was started on McCauleys WB100, 2lbs 2x a day and 2 flakes of alfalfa 3x day. Had access to fresh grass when outside. Gradually brought down to 1lb WB100 and then when he went lame, was put on McCauleys M30 1/5 lb per day and hay was reduced to 1 flake of alfalfa 3x day.

Current barn in PA
- BCS of 6 when moved. Currently a 5. Started on small amounts of Triple Crown Senior and gradually upped as winter got colder. Currently gets 4-5 flakes (more if it's absolutely freezing, like the past few nights) when in at night, otherwise has free choice round bales in field and limited grass outside. Getting 5 lbs total for the day of TC Senior. He also gets a half dose of electrolytes when the temps are unusually warm, cold, or the temp at night goes below 25. This is a prevention measure since he is not getting beet pulp or soaked feed to help him get more water in. He has, as far as I've known, coliced twice. Both times were in the winter. I use electrolytes to try to get him to drink as much as possible to prevent this.


Here's the good part. I preemptively upped him a little last week since it's so, so cold here with lows going into the teens at night! He actually put weight ON! Holy crap. Now, he's not in work, he's not body clipped and he's still wearing blankets of various weights depending on the temps but holy crap. He's notorious for not being able to keep weight on. I wish I remembered what DelVal had him eating (maybe someone else does??) during the winter cause he was skinny there too. He's pretty calm as well, not hot at all to work around, which makes me happy. Could I get away with this feeding regime if he was being worked? No idea. TC Senior is low NCS (aka low sugar and starch... or jet fuel, as Digby likes to think) and pretty high fat which is supposed to be "cool" energy because horses don't burn it off like they do sugars. So maybe it would work. I'm so pleased that he's keeping weight on and actually PUTTING it on even when it's so cold out! Yay. Happy dance for Digby.

I've started thinking about what I'm going to do come spring, fall and summer when he doesn't need the calories at all. I think I'm going to put him on Triple Crown Lite or TC 30% which foods designed to be full of the good stuff (vitamins, minerals and aminos acids that they need) without a whole lot of calories. It looks to me that the TC 30% is actually lower calorie and you feed less of it so I'll probably lean that way. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm just happy he's not a skinny mini! :) Go Digby! And a big thank you to Triple Crown for keeping him sane and still plump!

Progress?

So, update on Mr. Digs himself! Due to the hurricane and the following storms featuring more flooding, massive road and fence damage, and some other fun bad weather activities, Digby just hasn't been going out. None of the horses at the barn have. They don't have sheds in the majority of the fields and it just isn't safe for a horse to be out in severe thunderstorms with wind and potential (and sometimes definite) flooding. He has gotten his feet done. The vet gave free x-rays (a big thank you!) to our farrier so she could properly address Digby's freakish hoof issue and make sure the angles are correct so we are doing the most we can to help prevent the issue again. The angles were basically correct already so we're just going to continue to leave him as is. We don't want to increase the heel angle like you would with a normal navicular horse because we're not sure what exactly is causing him to go lame. It might not be his congenital bipartite navicular bone. It might be something entirely different and in order to be certain, we need to do several more vet visits with MRIs, more x-rays, etc. I just can't afford to do that on a free horse when he's comfortable. If we can't get him comfortable after he goes back into work, we'll have to think about things. He got shod again with the pads and the EquiPak just for extra "comfiness." Yes, I did just make that into a word! His weird right hind swelling that lasted way too long for my comfort has gone down and is back to his normal size.

With winter quickly approaching, Digby needs to get back into regular work... NOW. Winter and Digs don't mix so well. I'm not sure if it's the cold, or the lack of turnout, or the fact that he needs lots of food to keep from losing weight but he tends to get wild in the winter. Always has. I'd like to avoid having to walk for half an hour with only 2 minutes of trotting when he's going to want to be leaping around like an idiot. He's had off since June and needs to be brought back slooowly. Think walking for twenty minutes and trotting half way around the ring. Then walking for thirty minutes and trotting one way around the ring. Then walking for thirty minutes and trotting one way around the ring and one way the other direction. Yes, that slowly. I haven't made an "official" plan yet but it will include a LOT of what I call "busy work." Since we'll be doing a lot of walking, far more than either of us is going to enjoy, I need to keep his little brain busy. This means I'm going to be constantly riding but without the addition of other gaits. I'll be asking for changes of bend, transitions within the gait, transitions between gaits (aka halt and walk), doing lots of schooling figures and hopefully playing with some lateral movements. I'm also going to incorporate ground poles into the plan as long as Digby behaves and doesn't try to jump them and land in a bucking frenzy. That's happened before. If anyone has any awesome ideas for me, let me know! Digby isn't the type of horse you can just throw the reins at and walk around for hours at a time. Trail rides are an option but he's 1) not very well behaved on them and 2) winter is coming. Either way, they are definitely going out tonight because the entire barn is going stir crazy. So tomorrow, I will definitely be sitting on the wild hony beast in an attempt to get back into "regular" work. Hopefully by the beginning of winter, I'll be able to move him around enough to be safe for riding.

The farrier said something totally perfect when I was holding him so she could shoe him the other day. "Digby isn't mean, definitely not. He's never even remotely aggressive. He's just kind of a playful weasel. He has an opinion on EVERYTHING. From how he wants to stand, to where he wants to walk, how he wants to be touched, how much hay he gets, everything, right down to what color his freaking shavings are! I've never met a horse with so many opinions!" <3 I love my opinionated, high maintenance pony.

PS - Still no name for my "grooming mini series" but I'm tossing around some ideas... hopefully the first installment will come soon! :)