Why Wait? Using Winter To Your Advantage With Weight Loss.

A key point to remember is as the weather gets colder, it does not automatically mean your horse need an increase in the amount of feed they have. If your horse is a good doer and maintains their weight well, they may well do perfectly fine continuing on a low-calorie feed such as a balancer all through winter. The most important factor is to remember horses should consume a minimum of 1.5% of their bodyweight in dry forage per day. Ensuring a minimum of 1.5% of their bodyweight in dry forage per day will help to maintain good gut function but also help to keep them warm as the way it is digested provides a kind of internal radiator. For good doers, their forage may still need to be restricted to 1.5% of their bodyweight, even through winter, to help manage their weight.

Clipping can help a horse to lose weight. Fat is a very good insulator so when you have an overweight horse paired with a very thick coat, there is a lot of insulation occurring. This means their energy expenditure to keep warm may be less than normal, so it is easier for them to maintain their excess weight or in some cases gain even more. Horses have evolved to lose the weight over winter that they gained during the spring/summer. When they are overweight going into winter, it can be a necessity for them to lose some weight. Clipping horses with thick coats can also help them by facilitating better thermoregulation.

Rugging can play a very important role in the health and wellbeing of horses, as well as aiding in weight loss. As mentioned above, fat is a very good insulator, so it is important to consider how much excess fat your horse has (as well as their coat) when thinking about what rug to put on them. Over rugging can have an impact on the horse’s capability to regulate their body temperature. Allowing a horse to be able to naturally regulate their temperature and use energy to keep themselves warm can help them to lose weight. It is important to remember just because we as humans are cold does not necessarily mean our horses are cold.

Keeping a close eye on your horse’s body condition throughout the whole year is an important factor in keeping them healthy. We would regularly recommend body fat scoring your horse as well as using a weigh tape and taking photos of their condition every couple of weeks as photos offer good comparisons for you to see that you may not notice when seeing your horse every day. When looking at the body fat score of a horse, each number on the 1-9 fat scoring chart equates to approximately 23kg of bodyweight, so for example if your horse was a 6 going into winter, to get down to a body fat score of a 5, they would need to lose approximately 23kg to bring them down to a 5.