We had a bit of a scare with Tucker. With the cold spell that we just experienced, she went from 1150 pounds down to 925 in nothing flat. Her eating rate slowed to about 30% of the other horses and it looked like we were going to lose her. With segregation and an extra heavy feeding I managed to get 75 pounds back on her. The vet came up and floated her teeth which seemed to help, but we both figured this would be her last winter. However, with the weight gain, it looks like she will make it. Tucker is now 26 years old and that's getting long in the tooth.
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| Weight at 1000 pds, 150 to go |
Tucker has always been prone to abscesses in the front feet, probably due to foundering before we got her. With that history, I have to be careful not to feed her too much sweet feed or beet pulp, or risk another break out. So, extra hay, a half gallon of sweet feed once a day and some tender love and care. My vet donated the horse blanket for the next few months to keep her body temp up, and to prevent a chill. Our neighbour donated some left over sweet feed ( above what I bought) and some used horse blankets to lay on should she want to. This is what I really like about country living...great vets and great neighbours.
I took the precaution of letting Tucker smell the blanket, and rubbed her with it before putting it on, just in case she had never been blanketed before. The precaution was not required and she took to it well. Today, she was her normal cranky self and pinned her ears to move Biz out of her space.
I have a whole bunch of funny looking trees. Bad horses!
Boots takes it all in stride. Find a sunny spot in the hay and let the world go by. Smart dog.
On the plus side, I took Biz out for an hours ride (+2 C}, but could not get into the fields due to the snow pack. She decided to go any way and left the plowed road to go through the grader bank and entered belly deep in the ditch. It's really neat to be sitting on a bounding horse trying to extricate herself from an almost stuck situation! Love it!
