OK..Help!!

[CarrieO]

I am a horse owner, an arabian. Well she is my daughters but ... :)
This is our first winter with her (Jazzy) and she is boarded at a large facility. She has a good set up. Indoor arena etc...anyway....
she has lost weight. Now she had lost before winter and so they added to her diet and she put some back, we got her a blanket, everything that was suggested to take the best care. So winter has been hard around here and we could not really ride her the last 3 months. Well she dropped a lot. I would say on the scale for health she is a 4. her ribs show, her face is somewhat sunken, you can see her tail bone...(forgive me i am not great at proper names) she is too boney I think....I was told by the stable owner that it is muscle loss due to lack of riding.....
is that at all possible?????????? I think she needs to gain 100 lbs!

[P8ntCrazy]

If you have not floated your horses teeth within the past two years, I would start there first. Horses teeth continuously grow and with the way they grind their food it creates sharp points on the outside of the uppers and the inside of the lowers. Horses get the nutrients out of their food by grinding it. When the teeth get sharp they can cause terrible ulcers in the mouth on the cheeks and on the tongue. Making the horse swallow the food more whole and not getting the nutrients out that they need. How old is your Arab? Horses need to be checked and floated yearly from age two to five years old and every other year after the age of five. In their younger years they are shedding caps (baby teeth) until the age of five, and this leaves sharp points. If you have an older horse (tooth growth slows as they get older, late teens-20's), it could be having teeth problems missing teeth, not a lot of tooth left, etc. If the horse has never been done the mouth could be in bad condition. Bad teeth will cause horses to lose weight quickly. It is an easy place to start. Also if you Arab is older you could put him on Equine Senior, Just make sure that you feed in properly and don't under feed or it will not help. Even if your horse is younger you can use the senior. It is a high fat diet, and is highly digestable, they really don't have to chew it to get the nutrients out of it. I have put some of my hard keepers who are young on this with great results. Hope this information helps and if you have any other question feel free to email me.

[Elana55]

One thing that will cause weight loss is lack of fresh water. Eating snow doesn't cut it and it burns calories cuz the horse has to heat the snow to melt it. Water freezes in winter so a stock tank de-icer is necessary.

This also sounds like a simple lack of feed. If winter is hard horses need more hay (hay digestion create heat). You can add fat to the diet as well, such as Wheat Germ Oil but you will need to supplement with vitamins A,D and E as Wheat Germ opil can interfere with the absorption of these vitamins.

When someone tells me a horse lost weight because he has lost muscle it sounds like an excuse for not having fed and watered the animal adequately.