Brrr....It's A Frozen Tundra Out There!

Well, the last month as been just lovely in the terms of weather but I can assure you that Lola is handling it very well!! Her and JD have been making very good use out of their shelter and they both have the feed routine down as to which station they need to go into! Lola on the left and JD on the right! Sometimes though you have to watch JD because he will like to be sneaky and pop on over to Lola's and get some Strategy!

Oh, that is the other change over the last month! Lola is now on Strategy rather than Equine Senior! The transition to all Strategy took about 10 days and was completed right before I took off to Florida; this helped make feeding time much simpler for the folks and Danyn while I was away. Oh and in case you were wondering Florida was just fabulous, I apologize for not bringing the nice weather home with me as a souvenir! Anyways, Lola's feeding plan is now 8lbs of Strategy with 15+ lbs of hay a day. How does this compare to the 8lbs of Equine Senior? Well, though our volume of feed is still the same the calories we are providing is not! On 8lbs of Equine Senior Lola was being provided a total of 9,800 kcals versus 8lbs of Strategy that supplies a total of 12,000 kcals!! WOW...go ahead say it...WOW! That is a difference of 2,200 kcals! Remember that we started Lola on Equine Senior because of the high quality roughage sources to get her gut movin' and groovin' again but once we had her up in weight it was necessary to move to a feed that was more calories dense, like Strategy. Eventually, we will begin to slowly decease the volume of Strategy because as she gets to weight it will not be necessary to provide that many calories a day otherwise we will make her fat (obese) and a fat horse is just as unhealthy and can be prone to some equine metabolic diseases. Our goal is to maintain Lola's weight so she is at a body condition score of 5 to 6. Right now Lola is sitting at about a 4. I suspect in early to mid February we will begin to decrease the amount of Strategy to 6 lbs and at maintenance in March she will receive about 4 lbs of Strategy per day.

You maybe wondering why we would not decrease the amount of Strategy to maintenance in January or February if she is up to an ideal body condition by that time. Well, it is winter and it is darn cold out there!! Karen E. Davidson, Ph.D for Purina Mills informs us that all animals have a critical temperature, this is the temperature at which the animal has to produce additional heat in order to maintain their normal body temperature. In horses, at adequate weight with their winter coat, the critical temperature is about 15 degrees F. However, if the horse is young, thin, or did not develop a winter coat the critical temperature can go up to 40 degrees F!!! The critical temperature can also be increased if it is wet and windy outside. So how much more do we have to feed if we drop below the critical temperature? According to Dr. Davidson horses can require up to 15 to 20% more calories per day in order to produce the extra body heat needed! Take Lola as an example. Right now our goal is to feed about 20,000 kcals per day but if we need to feed 15% more calories per day because we dropped below the critical temperature our total daily requirement would be...23,000 kcals!! This is why we will continue to feed a higher volume of Strategy through out the winter because it has a higher energy density and will help provide those extra calories we need. Plus Lola will continue to get larger amounts of hay. The digestion of the hay will also help produce extra internal heat in the animal! To read more from Karen E. Davidson Ph.D about winter care go to: Horse: Purina Mills

Happy Holidays!