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.

Changing Feeding Routines for Older Horses

I try not to give too narrow of advice about feeding horses as there are just too many factors to consider. There are cases were something needs to change and this usually pertains to the amount of feed a horse is getting - much too little, or too much. Over the years, with my horses and managing a public barn for 6 years where we had an average of 40 horses, I saw just about every problem you could think of concerning feeding programs. When I was running that barn I contracted for a Equine nutrition doctoral student at nearby New Mexico State University to some in and give a seminar on nutritional requirements and developing a sound feeding program based on the individual horse. He too was careful not to give too narrow of advice, but he succeeded in reducing the incidences of colic and founder. Perhaps the best advice he did give was routine dental exams on all horses, especially the older horses.

Horses have individual needs based on their age, health, condition of teeth, and activity so those needs to be taken into consideration in their feeding program. And older horses can have rapidly changing conditions and nutritional requirements. Long ago, we started feeding a mix of alfalfa and grass hays. Some horse's get 70% alfalfa and 30% grass (in weight) and others the reverse ratio. Horse's generally don't need that high of a protein content that comes with alfalfa, and the grass helps balance out the minerals. So the horse I am describing below, Charlie, was getting about 6 lbs of alfalfa and 14 pounds of grass (Bermuda) each day.

Charlie is a big stout Quarterhorse type, 15.1 hands and around 1,300 lbs. In the picture above right, he is the sorrel horse with the white socks and one stocking. Although the young man I bought him from couldn't produce papers, Charlie came from substantially good breeding and had really good feet. Despite my advice to this young man, Charlie was on a straight alfalfa hay diet, also receiving one large coffee can of dry wheat bran on odd numbered days and a large coffee can of Strategy pelleted feed on even numbered days - see? I told you I have seen quite a bit of different, if not odd feeding programs. This young man never succeeded in being able to load him to take him to any ropings, which he had his Pa send Charlie to him for. He never asked me for help nor did I offer......as I kinda liked that horse.

Eventually this young man approached me about buying Charlie. He started asking $2,700 and ended over a few days settling for $800. He tried to pass Charlie off as an 11-12 year old, but I could tell he was near to 20. But knowing how resilient that horse was by surviving the odd feeding program and his obvious excellent conformation and good nature, I bought him for my wife.

Fast forward 12 years later, Charlie is near to 30 years old. My wife rides him often and even rode him in a Randy Rieman clinic where Randy called Charlie the Old Campaigner. He is animated as ever, especially at feeding time, trotting around with is head shaking wanting you to hurry up with the feed, but never aggressive or disrespectful when you are in his pen with the feed.

Lately Charlie would drop bolts of partially chewed hay and his manure was pretty loose as his gut absorbed more water trying to move the bigger pieces of lesser chewed hay through his system. We feed in huge box feeders, but it doesn't stop Charlie from throwing his feed out onto the ground most of the time. Thinking that the symptoms were a result of ingesting too much sand, I just upped the interval on him getting Sand Clear. Half the time this would clear up his less than formed manure. But the years have taken their toll. Despite dental exams and teeth floating every 12 months his molars are worn down where he can't masticate the longer stemmed hay anymore which causes some distress in his gut and sometimes, colic type symptoms. In the last couple months we changed his feed where more than half his grass hay needs are received using Standlee Timothy grass pellets soaked pretty good in warm to hot water to avoid so much of the long stemmed hay that he has a hard time chewing. We had other older horses but none of them had the problem with the longer stemmed forage that Charlie had, so this was a new problem for us.

Since we made the feeding change, Charlie's manure is well formed and moist. He has lost just a little weight, which he needed to do anyway, and his energy level is much higher. He gets about 3 lbs of alfalfa in the morning, along with 5 lbs (dry weight) of soaked Standlee Timothy grass pellets. Around noon he gets about 6 lbs of mixed Bermuda and Timothy grass. In the evening he gets about 3 more lbs of alfalfa, following by another 5 more lbs (dry weight) of soaked Standlee Timothy grass pellets and his Glucosamine supplement.

So really the whole purpose of this article is to pass on a lesson learned or maybe just a reminder that older horses can have rapidly changing conditions and needs, including routine or even a shorter interval for dental exams. And never having been a big proponent for pelleted feeds being a large part of my horses diet, I am very much pleased with the quality of the Standlee products. They make a wide variety of products from compressed bales of alfalfa and timothy hays; pelleted and cubed timothy and alfalfa-timothy blends; and much more. Plus their web site offers a ton of good information on equine nutrition which we all could benefit from.