Romy wrote:
Why does he get oat?
I started to feed oats when he lost all his energy during changing the coat. I was worried (
) because of his sudden listlessness and lack of energy, and a friend of mine suggested to try oats before worriyng too much, so I tried this and it seemed to help. But now, he's bursting of energy again and doesn't seem to need it anymore, so I decided to stop the oat now. I honestly didn't know that oat is used to feed horses fat, I always thought that barley or corn are used to do this (or some dubios mueslis). A friend of mine has an arabian gelding who needs "tons" of corn and muesli to keep his weight during wintertime. As I'm writing this, it just comes to my mind that she also feeds him some oat, though...
Three of the six icelandic horses of our herd also get oat, so this seemed to be quite normal for these kind of horses (I couldn't find ANY word for "leichtfuttrig", sorry
) so I decided to give it a try.
Well, now he'll only get his Aspero + mineral feed and I am quite sure that he will keep his energy and joy, and that this lack of energy was just because of the warm winter coat plus the warm temperatures which he had that days. It was really warm, around 18-20°C, and he's a horse that cannot handle warm weather as good as cold weather. (Just like me
)
And I can observe if this will change anything regarding his body and weight. But the more I think about it, the more I guess that it will indeed.
Romy wrote:
That said, I often wonder whether being overweight has really turned into such a HUGE and serious problem nowadays or whether many horse people just have enough time and energy so that they can create and sustain this worry for themselves. In my area, horses don't seem fatter than they used to be when I was a child, but back then almost nobody was worrying about it, and nowadays it seems like there hardly is a horse who can survive [...]
THAT thought came to my mind, too