When should I stop feeding my horse?

[Rosey04]

I bought my 7year old, 16hh thoroughbred mare in January and she was too thin. I slowly introduced her to a new diet of unmolassed sugarbeat pulp, Allen page calm and condition and Alfa A charf, as well as hay. It has taken a while but she is now looking fantastic, she is a good size and he coat is shiney and beautiful. She is ridden regularly and if she is not ridden she is lunged, she has a lot of go in her and is not lazy, but I do not want to make her too fat and lazy. She obviously enjoys her feed as she always greets me at the gate and neighs when she see's me. I'm unsure weather her feeds need to be cut out or cut down? I don't want to make too many sudden changes to her diet. She is living out all of the time now but has access to stable at all times.

Regards,

Jemma

[pukkapony]

Being the size and breed she is she will always need the extra feed ontop of hay and grass. Begin by slowly reducing her feed, you don't mention how much you have been feeding but to build horses up you generally need to use considerable amounts of the calm and condition I have found (wonderfull stuff - used it on all my neglected rescue ponies/horses).

As with any feed change make all changes very gradual - you are aiming to reduce the amount first then begin to change over to a feed you feel suits her needs. Do this over a period of a few weeks and only make small variations on a consistent basis, ie reduce the calm and condition over a period of 7 days, the next 7 days continue with the lower amount of c&c but introduce a handful of pasture mix for example. Continue this decrease of beet and c&c with the increase of cereal mix to gradually cut out the rest. Remember if your horse looks like she needs a little extra you can always to back to adding a scoop of C&C back into the feed. Also (not all at the same time) consider changing to a chaff with less oil content - such as hi-fi. Just introduce a 70/30 mix to start with using the same amount of chaff but making up the amount with the two varieties. After a week or so you could mix the two to regularly 50/50 then whittle down over the following week to be 100% hi-fi.
Best of luck!

[Rosey04]

Excellent stuff thanks for your advice. The c&c has now been reduced...I've never owned a thoroughbred before so it's all a bit new. Thank you