Horse Trauma

Our chubby mare Ingrid has Equine Metabolic Syndrome. (Look it up so you understand) This is very painful, but if we follow the vet's advice she should be ok. It's going to take awhile and it's going to be more work, but we're going to get her well. This affects her feet and can lead to other problems. So she has to lose weight and can no longer graze on pasture or eat hay freely. The vet said it is like diabetes and she needs to get off the plant sugar. This affects overweight horses and those like Fjiords who are easy keepers. Our pastures and hay are too rich and they don't get enough exercise. You work hard rotating, mowing and dragging pastures to make them nice and then find out they're too nice. So she has to be in the barn for awhile and get pain meds. She can only have 1% of her body weight in hay a day and it has to be soaked in water for a half hour to leach out the sugar. So no more bale feeder for her, she will have to get fed twice daily and it has to be weighed. When her feet are better she will have to be exercised regularly. I'm going to try and find someone who puts up meadow hay or other marginal hay so we don't have to always soak it. Aksel is not happy. Guess we should have got some Quarter Horses with big butts. NOT!