Whether a horse is older and struggling to keep weight on or is just a difficult keeper and always seems underweight, there are specific food supplements to help. Weight gain feeds provide horses with high fat, protein, and fiber supplements usually combined with a probiotic to help aid in the horse’s digestion of the supplement.
Maintaining a horses healthy body weight will prolong the horses life and help them build a healthy, muscular body to support their joints. Evaluating whether or not a horse needs to gain weight is the first step.
The next step is to help identify if there is a specific factor in the horse’s life that is causing them to be underweight, such as teeth or digestive problems. Once you know the horse needs to gain weight and have ruled out any underlying health problems, a weight gain supplement should be added to a horse’s diet.
Signs A Horse Needs To Gain Weight
A horse needs to maintain a certain level of body fat and muscle to support their bones and joints. When a horse is too skinny, they are much more fragile and can get injured more easily because of the lack of ‘cushion’ provided from body fat.
Some signs that a horse needs to gain weight include:
- Ribs showing: If you can see all of the horses ribs, that is a sign they need to gain weight. Typically seeing the last 2 ribs is normal and not a sign of an underweight horse.
- Spine showing: A horse’s boney spine showing is a sign that the horse needs to build more muscle. Exercise combined with proper weight gain feed will help increase muscle and body fat build to support the horse’s spine.
- Aging horse: As horses age their digestive system becomes less efficient in transferring the calories and fat into body fat. Their body works harder to have to create body fat and muscle. It’s important to provide them with correct food that will support their digestive system while giving them the nutrients they need.
- High Energy Horses: Specific breeds of horses also tend to have more problems with keeping weight on their body. Horses that are hot blooded typically have higher energy and require more calories to maintain a balanced weight. Cold blooded horse breeds include arabians, thoroughbreds, akhal-teke, and barb. However, each horse is different and must be evaluated case by case.
Why A Horse Needs Weight Gain Supplements
Before adding weight gain supplements, rule out any underlying health problems such as worms in their gut affecting proper digestion, teeth problems, digestive tract problems, and the horses overall lifestyle. After ensuring a horse has a supportive lifestyle and physical health to gain weight, add a weight gain supplement to effectively have the horse gain weight.
- Deworming: A horse needs to be dewormed frequently, up to 2 times a year throughout their entire lives. A vet can test their manure to see if there are any parasites present in their gut that are absorbing the horse’s food and affecting their weight.
Once determined, the vet will provide the horse with a proper deworming solution to clear the gut of any parasites. This is very important as if there are any parasites in the gut, the horse is not going to receive the proper nutrients from any food, grain, or weight gain supplement.
- Teeth problems: Domesticated horses need to have their teeth filed down every couple of years as they age. Overtime, they can develop teeth problems such as sharp pointed teeth that prevent them from properly chewing their food.
Signs that a horse isn’t able to eat their food is if you can see food visibly chewed up and spit out in the horse’s living area. A vet or specific equine dentist can check your horse’s teeth health.
- Digestive Tract: Horse’s have a very sensitive digestive tract that can easily be damaged or have ulcers. Ulcers, parasite scar tissue, clinical conditions, and bacteria imbalances cause digestive problems in a horse and need to be taken care of immediately.
Diarrhea is the most common symptom of a digestive tract problem. A vet can help determine the root of the problem with a variety of tests. Most supplements also include a probiotic for digestive tract health. If not, finding and adding an equine probiotic is important to the horse’s diet.
- Lifestyle: Evaluate how often the horse is exercised and work and if their food can maintain that amount of work. Balancing the horse’s diet with the workload is key and done by trial to find the best match.
Evaluate where the horse lives and how often the horse eats. A horse living in a small space or a stressful situation may have anxiety leading to weight loss. Horses are designed to graze continuously throughout the day in small amounts. If a horse is only fed once or twice a day in large amounts, this can cause many problems.
Finding a way to feed the horse in small increments is key to a healthy digestive tract. There are hay bags designed to be slow feeding, making it difficult for the horse to eat a lot in one bite.
When a horse is perfectly healthy and has a suitable lifestyle, some horses sometimes still have a hard time keeping weight on because of a fast metabolism. When that is the case, having a consistent weight gain supplement added to their diet for a prolonged time will keep their weight in check and off of your mind.
How To Make A Horse Gain Weight Quickly
Understanding what to feed a horse to have a horse gain weight will help you choose the best diet to increase weight gain. The amount of time the horse gains weight will only be determined by how properly you feed the horse. Overfeeding the horse too quickly will shock the horse’s digestive system, leading to colic, and potentially death. Some horses gain weight very quickly, while others may take a lot of time and patience.
Factors that accelerate weight gain include:
- Fat Content: Vegetable fats aid in fast weight gain and must be fed with a high fiber to be easily digested.
- Fiber Content: Fiber is the most important, natural, and safest way for a horse to gain weight. Fiber is found in grass and alfalfa hays and pasture grass. Feeding high fibrous food increases digestion and helps the horse break down other supplements and nutrients from grains. Feeding high fiber supplements is very important.
- Starch: Starch is found in grains and increases weight in a horse, but must be fed carefully as to not harm the digestive system. Feeding starches with fibers and probiotics is best.
- Probiotics: Feeding live cultures and healthy bacteria will help aid in the digestive process of all of the horses supplements and food. Without healthy digestion, the horse will not get all the benefits from supplements and feed.
Finding a supplement that includes a healthy balance of these factors will help in weight gain. However, carefully add any new supplements and weigh out what feed the horse has already been getting. See what ingredients and nutrients the horse’s current diet provides.
For example, a horse that grazes on a lush green pasture will already have a high fiber diet. If you aren’t sure what your horse currently eats, find out from the barn, do some online research, and ask a vet for help.
Best Weight Gain Supplements For Horses
Adding a supplement with fiber, starch, fat, probiotics, flax, and oils will provide the extra boost in nutrients to gain body fat that the horse needs. There are many options in the market today marketed as weight gain supplements for horses.
With such a large variety to choose from, which is the best weight gain horse feed? These are 3 that stand out to include all the necessary ingredients for proper weight gain while including probiotics for digestive tract health.
Best horse feed for weight gain: Animed Weight-Up Horse Supplement for providing an overall balanced supplement with probiotics for effective weight gain.
- Animed Weight-Up Horse Supplement
This supplement has 40% fat from flaxseed meal and vegetable oil, 11% fiber, 14% protein, 5% omega 3 fatty acids, and probiotics. With great reviews, this is a simple supplement to add into the horses diet.
Find Animed Weight-Up on Amazon
- Formula 707 LifeCare Weight Gain
With 14% protein, 35% fat, 8% fiber, and added vitamins, this supplement aids in weight gain and weight maintenance.
Find Formula 707 LifeCare Weight Gain for sale on Horse.com
- Manna Pro Senior Weight Accelerator
This is a great all-around weight gain accelerator to help your horse gain weight quickly. With 80% fat, 3% protein, 5% fiber, vitamins, 5% omega 3 fatty acids, and probiotics, this provides a well rounded high fat supplement for fast weight gain.
Find Manna Pro Senior Weight Accelerator on Amazon
It is very important to introduce any new feeds to the horse gradually mixed with the current horse’s diet. Any sudden changes can shock the horse’s system and cause them to colic.
Slowly start to introduce the new supplement overtime, adding a little bit more every 2 or 3 days until you are giving the horse the desired and suggested amount of weight gain supplements.
What To Do After A Horse Has Gained Weight Back
Once it is noticeable that a horse is gaining weight, continuing the weight gain supplement is important. Only when the horse is at a suitable weight should you start to decrease the weight gain supplement slowly over time, taking note if the horse begins to drop weight again.
Some horses will need to stay on a weight gain supplement for most of their life, so figuring out what is best for your individual horse is key. Talking with an equine vet or equine dietician will help come up with a suitable long term plan to keep your horse at a health weight.