October 11, 2012

Feeding, Diet & Turnout

First of all, I thought I'd share the diet I came up with for Woven Web using FeedXL. It's going to be changing a little soon. I need to adjust her weight, weigh the hay still and get the analysis from my 'custom' grain that my feed mill used based on TC Complete.

You can overall, ignore the salt level. I put it in there so that her sodium levels didn't show up in red and keep giving me warnings. She has a salt block in her stall and in the field so I'm not exactly worries about her salt intake. She also is currently on Mare Magic but doesn't provide nutritional value so I didn't add it.


This is by far my favorite graph. I can look at it and cut certain things out when her levels are above what's needed. Looking at this again, I need to cut back the amount of Red Cell, not sure why I didn't do that sooner. In creating her diet, the things I had the most difficulty in making sure her levels were okay was Folic Acid, Digestible Energy, Copper and Zinc.



She continues to show little interest in her hay. There was a slightly more green bale and I gave her a flake of that the other day and she loved it. I think she's just resisting the fact she's not on full grass field and not familiar with grass hay. I broke down and put up a hay net for her last night. She keeps blending it completely into her shavings and proceeding to use it as bedding. Normally I wouldn't care but 1) Right now she's in her stall 24/7 so there's a big mess and 2) We still are in a hay shortage. I can't afford to be wasting hay at a time like this.... soooo we have a hay net. She seemed to like the hay net actually. But she kept pulling the hay out one piece at a time and was still uninterested. 

With her lack in interest in the hay, I've been giving her about a pound of timothy hay pellets at night with some water added so that she's getting a few nutrients from the pellets and a little extra water. Again though, she eats a bite or two and then is done with the pellets and does the same to her grain. Far from being food motivated. I realize it's pretty chilly here, and she may not get super thirsty but I still am slightly concerned about her water intake. She's only drinking about a half a bucket a day. If by the end of the weekend she's still not drinking a ton I may explore the idea of adding a bit of apple juice to it or something along those lines until she adjust to the taste of our non limestone water. I guess in the big picture, her not being a huge eater isn't terrible since she can stand to loose at least 50lb. I'm also fairly certain she's not stressed out. She falls asleep way too easily in her stall and is super relaxed when I put her in the arena when I'm cleaning her stall and getting her dinner ready.

Last night also marked the first time I've tried putting her out with the other horses. We've got two fields. With her arrival we decided to do some field readjusting. The big field is now all geldings with Dakota and the other boys having one big bachelors club. The smaller field, has 2 mares and a pony in it so it's the best spot for her. The first of the two other mares are May (28yr old paint) and Ezzy (7yr old percheron paint). The pony, Indy, is a little trotting bred gelding that was rescued out of a kill pen in Shipshewana. I got to the barn about 6:30 and put Woven Web out, ran inside and turned on the electric fence. Her encounter with May and Indy were rather uneventful. Ezzy however had other plans for her. The plan was rather simple, pin ears, chase as fast as possible and keep away from May and Indy. Woven Web ended up standing in the farthest corner possible majority of the time. She got the urge to come near the group of three a few times but was chased away every time. She figured out the fence lines and pretty sure she hit the electric fence once but once she decided she wasn't going to leave the corner I went and quickly finished her stall so I could get her back in. I figure we'll try again tomorrow when I have more daylight time and weather should be a bit nicer so the ground isn't as muddy.

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