Siamber Wen Icelandics

The Home of Tim and Janice Hutchinson,




Image by Herdis Reynirsdottir


Dieting an Obese Horse

The weight of the average Icelandic horse is around 360 kilos.  Imagine our dismay when we were presented with a mare who was clearly obese and who weighed 540 kilos when weighed on a veterinary weigh bridge.  A horse carrying this amount of excess weight is a ticking time bomb of potential ill health and even death.  Laminitis and Cushing's are two obvious possibilities with the very real danger of hyperlipaemia and death if she were to be dieted too drastically.  Her previous known fit weight had been 370 kilos so she was carrying a staggering 170 kilos of fat.  This mare of under 14 hands, was carrying the equivalent of two large adults around all of the time.  Obviously there was no way she could be ridden even if we could have found a saddle to span her flat and bulky back.


Here are some photos of her on arrival at her worst.

1  August 2009:  Weight 540 kg



These photos were taken on the 1st of August 2009.


Formulating the diet

It is of vital importance that dieting is undertaken gradually and that the horse is not suddenly starved.  The horse's gut needs a steady supply of roughage and should not be kept empty for prolonged periods.  The diet should not be less than 1.5% of the horse's body weight.  The difficulty lies in trying to maintain food in the horse's gut while ensuring that the dangerous fat deposits are broken down by cutting the feed intake as low as is safe.  So the food has to be divided up into as many meals as is practical during the 24 hour day.  Horses are trickle feeders who are designed to eat for most of the day.  However, if the horse is obese it is much more important that their food intake is drastically cut so that they lose weight.  The risk of ulcers due to an empty gut is out weighed by the many dangers provided by being massively overweight.


So, this horse was taken to the vet's weigh bridge to get an accurate weight for the correct formulation of the diet.  In the absence of such a marvelous machine it is useful, though not so accurate, to use a weigh tape.  We used the weigh tape and estimated that this horse weighed 525 kilos.  When we put her on the weigh bridge she was 540 kilos.  So the tape was reasonably accurate and certainly would have given us a good enough estimate to formulate the diet.


2.5% of 370 kilos is approximately 8.5 kilos.  that is the dry matter weight of the minimum amount of food she should be given.  This was divided into 5 meals as follows:


Meal 1    0800    1 kg hay


Meal 2    0900    0.5 kg Dengie Hi-fi with laminitis supplement and salt


Meal 3    1300    1 kg hay


Meal 5     1800   2 kg hay


Meal 6     2200   4 kg hay


Note:  For those who have to go out to work my advice would be to provide a 2 kg hay net with the morning feed and another net with 2 kg of straw.  To slow down the eating you can put one small holed hay net inside another to make it more difficult to get the hay out.


Of course she was not allowed any access to grass.  She was kept in a large yard most of the time but she was put out into a very bare small paddock with a companion for several hours so that she could walk about, socialise and roll.


Initially she was walked slowly in the exerciser for 30 minutes.  We were careful not to introduce hard exercise too quickly as she was already carrying far too much weight on her tendons, joints and ligaments and we did not want to cause damage to these structures by over stressing her systems.  This was gradually increased until she was walking for a full hour and then it was increased again to 2 periods of  an hour on some days.  In the first two weeks she was walking noticeably more easily and was coping with the two periods of walking at a steady pace.  At the end of the second week the weigh tape showed her weight to be 503 kilos, making her weight loss about 20 kilos in two weeks.  We plan to take her to the vet's weigh bridge from time to time to check on progress more accurately but in the meantime the weigh tape gives us a convenient way to make sure that our regime is working and that she is losing weight.


Note:  For those who do not have access to an exerciser brisk walking or long-reining in hand would be good exercise for those horses that are too fat to be ridden.  Lungeing is not recommended for really fat horses as it poses too much strain for joints.


4 Weeks into diet we add 2 oz of flaked soya,  2 oz of linseed lozenges and half a pound of Dengie Alfa-A to her feed.  


Her weight loss was steady and fairly dramatic as follows:


Weight by Tape:


1 August:     539kg

14 August:    503kg

21 August:    495kg

30 August:    482kg

6 Sept:           475kg

13 Sept:        468kg

20 Sept:        455kg


6 Weeks into diet we added some barley straw as she was showing signs of needing more fibre by eating her own droppings.  We did not give her a large quantity of straw as this type of good doer can put on weight on straw.  We gave her about a kilo of straw spread throughout the day and she stopped eating droppings quite so much.


7 Weeks into diet we rode her for the first time.  The huge pads of fat over her shoulders had dissipated enough to put her saddle on.  We rode her in the arena in walk and then in trot and we were very happy to see that she was moving rather well considering how fat she still was.  At this point she was showing a weight of 455 kg on the weigh tape.  Her crest had melted away so that her headcollar went straight on instead of being pushed up by the crest above her poll.  There was also quite a dramatic difference in the width of her chest.  When she first arrived her chest was so wide that her front legs paddled outward at the elbows as she waddled in walk.  Now her front legs could move more freely and the width between her front legs looks much more normal.  If you compare the pictures of her chest before the diet with that taken after 7 weeks, you can see that her front feet no longer stand outside her back feet.  She seemed to lose most weight over her topline;  crest, wither and shoulders and the top of her rump.  By now it was also possible to feel ribs even though there was still a huge amount of excess fat spread over her body.  We did feel that the internal fat round her intestines and internal organs must have melted away to a much less dangerous amount.


Her weight on the weighbridge was 471kg on 21 September compared with the weigh-tape measurement of 455kg.


Here are some photos of how she looked after 7 weeks of her strict diet and exercise regime.  She had lost an estimated amount of 70+ kg by this stage.  That is a weekly loss of around 10 kilos.  This is the weekly amount that we have typically managed to get off fat horses.  Her weight (by the weigh tape) was then 455 kg which meant an excess of about 80 kg.  So, she was about halfway to her fit weight.  As she gets closer to her fit weight we expect her rate of loss to reduce but we hope to balance this by increasing the amount of ridden work.


These pictures were taken on 20 September.  Weight 471 kg


      


                                                                      


                          471 kg                                                                                        540 kg


After 7 weeks of dieting and a weight loss of approx 70 kg the front feet now stand in front of the back feet instead of being forced apart by excess fat as you can see in the original photo.  This is the halfway point in her expected weight loss.  She still has approx 80 kg to lose. 


At this point we stopped feeding the straw and replaced the Laminitis supplement with Blue Chip Lami-light.


13 Weeks into diet and her rate of weight loss has slowed down.  With the tape she is registering as 435kg and she has lost 5 inches (15cm) from round her girth.  We have noticed that the area round the girth where the weigh tape goes seems to have stayed fairly static for a while however there does seem to be weight coming off her shoulders, gut and hindquarters.  Last week she was finally slim enough for the Physiotherapist, Fiona Johnstone, to be able to examine her.  Fiona found that her shoulders and chest muscles were very painful, possibly due to being forced to walk with her front feet so far apart due to the vast amount of fat around her shoulders and also partly due to discomfort in her front feet through carrying such a massive overload.   Fiona massaged the muscles and left us with instructions for stretch exercises to be done every day.


Two days after Fiona's treatment we took the mare out for a ride and we were delighted to find that she was forward going and moving very nicely.  The next day she was again a bit sore around the shoulders so she found her stretches a little more difficult for a day or two.  She is now doing some faster work in the round pen so that she gets her heart rate up.  She is continuing to walk in the exerciser but she is also being gently ridden a few days a week and is also doing the faster work and work over poles in the round pen.  This variety in exercise is beginning to tone her a bit more and she is now looking like a normal horse that is a bit fat rather than a hugely obese animal unable to move correctly.  We are heartened by this vast improvement.


The physiotherapist will examine her again in a few weeks time and we hope that enough excess weight will be melted off her hindquarters for the physiotherapist to be able to see and feel if any manipulations need to be made.  At the moment there is still too much fat for all of the essential reflexes to be stimulated.


By the weigh tape she has lost just over 100 Kg of weight and she now looks ready for work.  Here she is, clipped and alert.  Notice that she is also standing in a much better way.  She still has to lose the equivalent of a small adult but we feel that she is now out of imminent danger of metabolic upsets.


                                      


Photos taken on 29 October.  Weight by tape 435 Kg


FEET  Until now I have not mentioned feet.  This mare was carrying a staggering amount of excess weight on fairly small feet.  The horse's feet are made up of bone and soft tissue.  The bones are surrounded by soft tissue and this in turn is enclosed in the hoof horn.  When horses are hugely overweight or they are subjected to extremely hard work on unyielding surfaces the soft tissue, or laminae become inflamed as the bones are literally pushed down against the soft tissue.  This leads to tearing of the laminae.  In the extreme case this becomes laminitis and can result in the pedal bone sinking through the sole as the laminae are torn apart.


When this mare arrived she had been newly shod.  After 7 weeks we had her shoes removed and reset.  The farrier found some bruising at the quarters and we could clearly see the shadow of the pedal bones on the soles of her front feet.   She appeared to have had a very close shave with laminitis.  Now, after a further 6 weeks she was shod again.  This time we could clearly see the bruising coming out at her toes where the laminae had been subjected to tearing.  The 'white line' should be of equal thickness around the whole of the foot, from the heel to the toe when looked at in section.  This time I remembered the camera and the photos below show this bruising and the stretched width of the white line at the toes.  She is now shod with quarter clips, and the toes on the front shoes have been rolled slightly to make her a little more comfortable.


This discomfort in her feet will no doubt have contributed to the painful shoulder and chest muscles and to her shortened stride.   This mare had a very close call and could easily have ended up with sinking pedal bones.  She has been lucky and there are no signs of distortion on the front of her hooves or changes in her heels that would signify more sinister pathology.  As she loses more weight she will become more comfortable in her feet and this will be accelerated as the bruising grows out.


                         


The foot on the left is this mare's foot.   Note that the white line is wider at the toe and it should be the same width all round.


The picture on the right which shows a typical healthy white line.




24 November  Weight on the weigh bridge:  434 Kg.  (Weight by the tape was 428 Kg).  She has lost 106 Kg since 1st August.  Her rate of weight loss has slowed dramatically.  She is still carrying pockets of fat, over her shoulders, on her crest and on her hind quarters.  Her body cavity is still deeper than it should be so her gut obviously needs to shrink down to normal and there may also be pockets of fat internally.  She still sometimes eats her droppings and she also eats the wood on the fence.  Her system is obviously telling her that she needs more fibre in her gut.  When her gut actually shrinks back to a more normal volume then these cravings should, we hope, lessen. 


In the meantime we continue to weigh all of her food and maintain her at around 9 kg per day.  She is also walking in the exerciser, being ridden or working in the round pen on a rotational basis.  She lives in a yard with no access to grass but where she can move about freely.  Her stride has lengthened and she is moving much more freely without as much of a rolling or waddling gait.  We have begun to introduce the occasional canter to her ridden work but it is still mainly steady work and straight lines or big circles.  Her gaits are improving all of the time and she is now showing rather good trot and a good beat of slow to medium speed tölt.


18 December   Weight on the weigh bridge:  413 kg.  The weather has turned much colder and the temperature is under zero at night and not much more during the day.  We have finished the Blue Chip supplement and we have now put her on Formula4Feet.  As her weight loss has once again increased, due to the colder weather, we have increased her feed.  We have added a further 2 kg of haylage split equally between her evening and night time hay nets.  We are still feeding her straw to discourage her from chewing wood and eating droppings.                                                 


February 2010  Her weight has now stabilized at 409kg.  She is out with the other mares and is being fed a normal diet.  Her workload has been increased so that we continue to tone her muscles.  She is still carrying pockets of fat, notably behind her shoulders and over her hindquarters.  However, we expect this to go with correct work and she no longer needs to be dieted.  We will of course maintain a very close watch on her weight as we go into spring but for now we can relax and treat her like a normal horse.  In fact we were extremely pleased that she managed to compete successfully in the January Winter Tolt competition.  She came in a creditable 4th.


Over a period of just six months this mare has been transformed from a waddling 540kg to a much more athletic and almost svelte 396g.  Such a transformation does take dedication and attention to detail, especially in weighing the food and keeping strict control of intake and exercise.  We hope that this success story will give you heart and some useful tips, if you have a fatty that needs to lose weight.


Here are the details of her weight loss:


1 August:     539kg

14 August:    503kg

21 August:    495kg

30 August:    482kg

6 Sept:           475kg

13 Sept:        468kg

20 Sept:        455kg       (7 weeks)

29 Oct           435kg      (13 Weeks)

24 Nov          428kg      (17 weeks)

18 Dec           413kg    (20 weeks)

1 Jan              409kg    (22 weeks)

1 Feb             396kg    (26 weeks) 

1 Mch            384kg    (30 weeks)


Click here for some photos of her progression of weight loss.  


In seven months she lost 156kg.  Here she is in March.



Finally, June 2010.  She is now slim and fit and weighs 380kg.  An overall weight loss of 160kg.





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