The Challenges of Chronic Weight Loss

issue must first be treated and resolved.
As most horse owners have witnessed horses can be very aggressive toward each other. If you are group feeding horses
you have the added complication of the natural hierarchy of dominance. Not only can younger smaller more timid horses be pushed away from the feeders but they may be experiencing high levels of stress which not only includes expending more energy but can predispose to health problems including stomach ulcers and colic. In general it is important that underweight horses be fed separately. This will ensure they are actually getting the amount of feed which is intended for them. 
Monitoring Weight loss
Before any nutritional intervention is imposed a proper estimate of the horses body weight and body condition score is needed. Estimating body weight and body condition on a routine monthly basis should be a key component of any horse management program. Tracking the weight of a horse will allow the owner to properly calculate the amount of feed required by the horse in order to gain lose or maintain body weight as well as indicate how much weight the horse has lost or gained over a certain period of time.
There are many feed ingredients that we can add to the diet to increase a horses body weight including oats rice bran beet pulp alfalfa and oil. It is important to understand the caloric content of each of these ingredients in order to evaluate how much will need to be fed to achieve the desired weight gain. Table 1 outlines how much of each of the chosen calorie sources would need to be fed over a 60 day period to achieve 18 kg 40 lb of weight gain in an average sized 500 kg 1100 lb horse. This is in addition to the horses maintenance diet e g. if the horse was currently being maintained on 7 kg 15 lb of hay and 1 8 kg 4 lb of sweet feed and you chose to use beet pulp as your additional calorie source you would need to feed an additional 2 1 kg 4 6 lb of beet pulp before soaking weight for 60 days to gain around 18 kg 40 lb.
Typically we recommend first increasing the amount and quality of forage available to the horse. Adding alfalfa hay chaff or pellets will increase the calories content of the diet as well as supplying other