Transition Tuesday Week 15

Week 15:

Adjusting Diet To Ensure A Sound and Healthy Barefoot Horse

Tom’s Thumb: our new favorite trail accessible from our own back yard.

The path to natural horse care has had several surprises for me. The last 15 weeks has been a fascinating journey: one of the biggest discoveries was how closely connected diet is to soundness. In his Checklist for Success, Dr. Tomas Teskey lists nutrition well above natural hoof care. He suggests the most important element of a healthy horse is feeding a high fiber, low carbohydrate diet.

Rocky and Redford heading back down a trail in the McDowell Mountains. You can see the city of Phoenix off to the distance.

Our feeding regime has definitely changed since we pulled the shoes on our horses. Rocky and Redford are easy keepers – prone to a healthy layer of fat over the ribs. They both showed some sensitivity to rocks and hard ground, even when they had shoes and pads.

Rocky: we are heading up to the top of the thumb visible just above his eye.

They showed similar sensitivity to hard ground when we pulled their shoes, although it seemed to come and go. Over the last month, we have changed the way we feed. We continue to feed good quality Bermuda hay. We have found a supplier whose hay is consistently long in stem and nice and leafy. The horses like it, too. They get enough to keep them busy all day and all night. I would like to feed it out three times a day, but a full time job in the city dictates a twice daily feed schedule. We try to balance it such that they do not leave any hay, but they also do not go so long without food that they become hungry. It seems to work out to about two good sized flakes per feed per horse, twice a day.

Far enjoys a morning feed of Bermuda hay. We feed in tubs to reduce the amount of sand ingested from the desert floor.

We also feed them a beet pulp/supplement mix twice a day. We buy the beet pulp in pellet form and soak it in the hours between feeding. We rinse out the soaked beet pulp just before we feed it so as to remove the sugars present in the molasses in many of the bags we buy. The easy keepers get a small scoop and the challenging keeper gets two small scoops per feed.

One of the descents on the training ride this weekend on the McDowell Mountain range.

Each horse also gets a low starch pelleted feed. We were feeding whole oats for some time but we eliminated that in an effort to reduce their carbs they were ingesting. We have been trying out a few different brands. We tried Cool Stance for a while – made from coconut meal. The horses were not overly impressed. We are currently trying the Triple Crown low starch feed. Each horse gets half a small scoop and they eat it willingly.   We add Equerry Choice as the vitamin supplement and during the summer we add about a tablespoon of salt to each feed. We also grind flax seed and feed about three tablespoons per horse per feed.

Our cache of Bermuda hay.

The most sensitive footed horses are showing the greatest change on the low carb diet with barely so much as a flinch when barefoot over rocky ground. We have been integrating one or two rides per week without any hoof protection. It really seems to encourage growth of the hoof and speed up their ability to go without protection. Their feet are looking better with each passing week; they are all showing a nice concave shape to the foot and better angles and stronger hoof wall with better angles. We look for more challenging training trails on the weekends and use the Easyboot Gloves.

Redford makes the climb up towards Tom’s Thumb: an 1,800 foot climb in three miles.

This week we found a new and very challenging trail just a few miles from our place that boasts more than 6,000 feet of climbing in less than 14 miles. At least half of the trail is very rocky. I think the climbing on this trail was more challenging than climbing up to Devil’s Thumb at Tevis! We were using older boots on some of the steepest and rockiest trails I have been on in recent memory. The tread on the boots just does not wear out and the boots did not twist or come off, even on these ridiculous trails. We continue to use athletic tape on the hinds which is an added insurance policy on the rocky, mountainous trails. The front boots go on straight out of the box and are holding up really well to any trail we throw at them. 

These boots have done about 15 miles of the Tevis trail in training, as well as more than 25 miles at Prescott and another 22 miles this weekend at Tom’s Thumb. There is lots of life left in them.

We’re taking Rocky and Redford to Bryce XP in a couple of weeks. Far is heading into week four of a three-month lay-off after Tevis. I’m finding it really hard to resist the temptation to ride him.

Keep up the boot legging!

Kevin

Comments

[Garrett Ford]

Kevin- It's amazing what the right diet does. I struggle with that in Durango due to the grass. The grass requires more exercise and more regular exercise.

Garrett

[Dian Woodward]

HI Kevin,
We've been having great success with Purina Ultium, Maxi-glo rice bran and unsweetened beet pulp. A really good salt supplement is Moorman's metabolic mineral pellet. We have a mare that i've had ty-up problems with, which has made competing her hard. No problems so far on this diet. We'll see how she does at Bryce and then on to the AREC Nat. Championships.
Dian GETC