Details on Conditioning

Before I go onto regionals, I got questions about the conditioning process including the diet. I thought I'd answer those right now so they don't get lost in the shuffle because I can sure do a lot of shuffling here sometimes. Seems like I'm always trying to catch up on something.

We started off working the youngsters in a small round pen. As they got used to the process of lunging we gradually increased the size of that round pen. Currently I'm working them in a sixty foot in diameter round pen.

We work five minutes at the trot and the canter, both ways of the pen. That's a total of twenty minutes a day. I like to start out one direction on one day and then the opposite direction the next. Since the horse tires and works less hard the last part of the workout, this change back and forth helps build a balanced horse.

It had been my intention to pony the horse up and down hills the last six weeks before the show. This would really help build up over the topline and puts a nice finish on things.

The last time I did this with a yearling, I ended up with a beautifully conditioned horse. The only problem was I had no foot I could trim. Ponying wore the hoof down and I had the blood vessels right at the surface of the sole. I wanted to do a bit of shaping for the show and didn't have the foot to do it. Shoes or protective boots would protect against this.

My farrier didn't really want to nail shoes onto either of my yearlings........not to mention that I doubt at this time we could have nailed shoes onto Rhet. The other option was to glue them on but there was no guarantee we could get the horse to stand still long enough for the glue to dry. Putting protective boots on this colt didn't sound like a project I wanted to start each morning with either, so I passed on ponying this time around.

However, the whole thought of ponying Rhet behind Dandy must bring up some wild pictures in your mine. I know it does mine! I'm sure Dandy breathed a sigh of relief when I made the decision to skip the ponying. If there is a next time, I think I'll get a muzzle for Rhet first.

Normally I feed my horses grass hay. There are studies that suggest that alfalfa feed in conjunction with well water is what causes enteroliths Since we're on well water, I try to avoid alfalfa all together. Studies also suggest that alfalfa is not an ideal feed for horses. Since most of my herd are youngsters, I try to stay away from any feed with protein content as high as alfalfa since high protein consumption is linked to many of the growth deformities seen in young horses.

Now having said that along comes Rhet who was raised on alfalfa. Getting this horse to eat enough grass to get his weight up was a joke. I tried half alfalfa and half grass but that didn't work either. Currently he is on free choice alfalfa. I would guess he's consuming three flakes a day.

In addition to that he get a half a five gallon bucket of a chopped oat grass/alfalfa mix with molasses. I'm afraid I don't know the weight of my feed scoops but I use the standard feed scoop. Rhet gets a scoop of crimped oats, a scoop of Omelene 200 and a scoop of stabilized rice bran........all mixed in together, twice a day. AND I watch his legs like a hawk for any signs of growth deformities and changes in his growth pattern.

The things Rhet wouldn't eat were grass hay, crimped oats by themselves and beet pulp. I ruled out products like Grow Colt by Farnam because I couldn't use the Omelene and the Grow Colt together because of problems with over feeding some things. Since I couldn't get Rhet to eat any feed without mixing in the Omelene I needed to stick with what worked. Also I didn't want to feed straight Omelene because I was worried about that pushing his growth. I didn't want to push it, I just wanted to keep his weight up during the growth process.

So far so good. Rhet's weight is good and his growth seems to be the same. While he's a big boy, he hasn't taken any abnormal huge spurts. He's actually growing quite evenly.

I also played around some with trying to get him off the Omelene and the chopped oat grass/alfalfa product to see if cutting out the molasses would cool him out some. The result was I had the same hot horse only he dropped weight so I went back to using both products.






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