Care of Feeding of Older Horse - Charlie's example

Recently we had a couple dozen people over for the annual Arena Challenge, some whom we have known for decades. They saw my wife's horse Charlie, a big (15.2 HH) stout sorrel Quarterhorse gelding with 3 white socks and a white stocking. That's him in the picture at right. 

Some of our friends have been seeing him for years and years as my wife rode him in competitions, trail rides and even doing some western dressage. Invariably we were asked "Good Lord, Charlie's been around forever. Just how old is he now?" Well, Charlie is 35 years old. And despite bowing both front tendons a couple years ago, he is doing well. His teeth are all worn down and he is missing a molar or two, but he maintains his weight, and you can even call him heavy, as you can tell from the photo.

Due to his inability to chew long stem hay, it's a colic risk for him to swallow hay that hasn't been chewed fully, Charlie's main diet consists of pellets and alfalfa leaves. He gets fed five times a day and always has fresh, clean water, as should all horses. We really don't turn him out with other horses anymore as we don't want him to get ran around and stress him mentally and to limit stress on his already degraded front end.   So anyway, this is his feeding program, and it has been working well for several years now. The pellets are measured dry prior to soaking.

Morning: 32 ounces of Standlee Timothy Grass pellets and 16 ounces of Standlee Alfalfa pellets, soaked in water. Some days he'll get an apple or carrot diced up small and mixed in.

Mid Morning: 32 ounces of Standlee Timothy Grass pellets soaked in water and about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds of alfalfa leaves. We spread these around several feeders so he keeps busy walking around to find the alfalfa leaves. If the alfalfa has small short stems, we'll feed that but try to limit his consumption of stems.

Mid Day: 32 ounces of Standlee Timothy Grass pellets soaked in water.

Mid Afternoon: Another 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds of alfalfa leaves.

Evening: 32 ounces of Standlee Timothy Grass pellets and 16 ounces of Standlee Alfalfa pellets, soaked in water.

Supplements: About a year ago, I stopped giving him Devils Claw powder and started putting Charlie on a half daily dose of Platinum Performance Complete Joint (CJ) since I use this on a couple other using horses and have had great results.

Medications: For the last two years we have had Carlie on Equioxx daily pain and anti-inflammatory medications - just a small tablet dropper into his pellets which dissolves when the pellets are soaked.  Lately, we have been giving him just a half of an Equioxx tablet on most days as we have concerns over years long use of pain meds. He also receives a dose of Pro-Bios once a week and additionally when the weather changes significantly.

Charlie is an intelligence horse, as most are, but he is special. He has learned to open gates that we have never seen other escape artist horses do, and when he escapes, he runs around our property like mountain lions are chasing him. We have took to chaining up his gates, but sometimes forget........as we do with leaving water hoses on. Sound familiar? We always cringe when he runs around at a full gallop as he'll be lame the next few days, but since we started him on Platinum Performance CJ, he doesn't get lame when he escapes, or when he throws a bucking fit in his paddock, nor does he show chronic front end lameness when he turns in a short radius. The only issue he has is with comfort is when standing for a period on time on the hard rubber padded shoeing or wash stand when being washed, groomed or trimmed. But we solved that problem using Wendy Murdoch's Sure Foot pads. I'll write a product review about those in the near future. We don't know just how long Charlie will be with us, but we do know that he'll be with us for the rest of his natural life. He has paid his dues to us, especially my wife, and we'll do what we can to help him be as mentally and physically sound as he can be.