Your Horse reader Becky Gowers bought Fell x Dales pony Murphy as an eight-year-old in 2007, when he was already overweight. Six months later she still hadn’t managed to shift the pounds, so she called on the help of Your Horse magazine and equine nutritionist Dr Teresa Hollands.

That was back in the autumn of 2007, when she won the chance to receive support from Dr Hollands and have Murphy’s progress monitored on our website. In the following blogs, Becky shares the highs and lows of Murphy’s weight loss journey through her emailed questions and answers with Dr Hollands.

Blog one

Becky says:

“I've had my pony for six months - he arrived on the 24th March 2007. Murphy is a 14.1hh 8 year old Fell Pony Cross and was, and still is, very overweight - and I quickly learnt that spring is the worst time of year to buy an overweight native pony. Despite being ridden 4 days a week, his weight shot up and in June he came in at 538kg on the weightape and so he went on a strict diet. He had a grazing muzzle, which he worked out how to remove, and then he went into a piggy paddock, which worked really well until all the rain we had in July turned it into a mudbath!!
 
Since then he's been back out with all the other horses, but I've increased his work - he's been ridden 5 or 6 days a week, for nearly an hour a day, throughout August and September. His weight has dropped down to 490kg but now appears to have reached a plateau.
 
I really need some help and advice over the winter, as I am acutely aware of the fact that winter is my best chance to get the weight off and that I need to get it off before the spring grass comes through.
 
My main problem is that it's unlikely I'll be able to ride in the week once the nights draw in, so he can only be ridden at weekends, so his workload will decrease a lot. He will be turned out in the day, but stabled at night and so I think he will need to have some hay at night to keep him occupied - but I don't know if that's the right thing to do or how much to give him!
 
 
He's a complete star to ride and handle and has given me back my confidence - I love him to pieces and want the best for him, so I'm really keen for him to lose the weight. I am not an experienced horse owner, and would really appreciate any help I was offered!”

Dr Hollands’ replies:

Dr Teresa Hollands, nutritionist with Dodson & Horrell, visited Murphy and Becky to take some vital measurements before coming up with her recommendations. This was her assessment:

The measurements:
1. Murphy was weighed
2. Murphy was fat scored
3. Everything that Murphy ate was weighed
4. Becky then rode Murphy so we could estimate how much energy he expended when he was being ridden.
5. Grass and hay samples were taken to be analysed

Murphy’s vital statistics:
Breed: Fell X Dale
Height: 14.1
Gender: Gelding
Age: 8yrs
Weight: 532kg

Workload:
Light/Leisure rider
Schooled ½ hr -1hr 5 days/week
Hacked out once a fortnight
Occasional jumping over lowish fences
Out at grass in winter between 0730-1630.
Summer out 24hrs

Feed:
Grazing on 1 acre with 2 others
Grass has a lot of clover in it, about 70% but when we sampled it, there was very little dry matter available. It took 20mins to collect 50g of grass which was less than 0.5cm high, so Murphy will need to exert quite a lot of effort to eat the grass. 
Happy Hoof 90g
Hay 5kg

Fat Score: (some of you might be used to seeing this described as condition score)
Neck: 4
Ribs and back: 5
Bottom: 5

Solution:
Most of Murphy’s calories have been obtained from grass; certainly until recently when the grass growth (thank goodness) has started to slow. As Becky acknowledged now is the ideal time to think about a change in lifestyle to help Murphy become slimmer, as it is easier to control his calorie intake when grass is more scarce.

However because Murphy is such a good doer, the main solution will not be dietary at this stage but a mix of diet and, most importantly, exercise.

1. Hay

It may seem counter-intuitive but we need to either feed more hay to Murphy or look for other ways of keeping his bulk intake up. If we restrict calories too much, then Murphy will do what he has evolved to do and become insulin resistance so he saves what calories he has for the vital process of keeping his brain and organs working. Insulin resistance increases the risk of many obesity related diseases.  Murphy stands in his stable for over 8hrs in the winter and it is vital that we can trickle feed him for most of that time.

Restricting hay (or bulk) too much means:-
Less saliva produced
More time standing around
Less food going through his gut

This might result in
Gastric ulcers
Choke
Stereotypy behaviour or simply boredom
Colic

So we are going to double the amount of hay Murphy is allowed but soak it for 12hrs.

Soaking for 12hrs removes most of the calories but also vitamins and minerals, so we will need to address that through diet.

2. Exercise

Time or lack of is always the line of first defence as to why we can’t put more work into our horses. But Becky is already riding 5 days a week and her field is quite a distance from the stables, so all we have to do is to maximise the time available.

The maxim I believe in ‘work smarter not harder’ although in this situation we are going to get Murphy to work harder but through the amount of energy he uses, not by increasing the hours Becky has to find.

Murphy takes 83 seconds to do one circuit of the school in walk and after 2 circuits at this speed he was puffing.

The challenge

1. Time the fastest/most active horse on the yard on 1 circuit around the school
2. Set this as a target
3. Increase the stride and get Murphy to walk more actively (not trotting) to increase the time he gets round the school by 10% every week until he meets the target
4. Increase the number of circuits he does at this speed every week
5. It might be interesting to measure his heart rate and his recovery rate, (how long does it take for his heart rate to return to normal?)
6. do ½ hr of this active walking every time you exercise

Walking burns up more fat compared to cantering and trotting.

3. Vitamins

Equi-Bites to re-balance the loss of vits and mins from soaking hay and also because Murphy has less daylight hours so Vitamin D will be lower. Green grass is higher in vits but as soon as it goes browny, that’s a sign that it is low in vitamins.

We also know from recent research that certain minerals will be lacking even in good grass and these need balancing.