Nutrition for KIWI, my horse

Question
I have a 23 year old Tennessee Walker gelding who is on pasture most of the time 24 hours a day and is about 150 pounds overweight!!! HELP!! We are planning to move to the farm soon but right now with gas prices so high I have to go every other day to check on him. I have been given too much advice and dont know what is best. He gets plenty of fresh water of course 10% sweetfeed. I had been mixig oats and sweetfeed. I cant get him to drop the weight. He is older and seems happy enough, just that he is too fat......I am at my wits end. I can manage better when we are there as I can pasture and stall but what about the feed. In the winter I feed a slice of hay and quart of 10% sweetfeed twice a day, leave him on pasture unless it was below 32degrees then I would stall him with feed! He was doing great like this. Unless he is stalled he will not eat hay! We have orchard and other good grass 6 acre pasture. HELP!! I am nuts with the nutrition advice!!! Everyone I know tells me something different. I dont have the money right now to get another fenced in area for him to be up but still on some pasture so I could then limit his grass. What do you recommend on getting 150 pounds off of him...I cant ride him daily because I work and am trying ready our home for sale and build another. I wont have someone else on the property to ride due to insurance purposes. I do have up signs for trespassers though. I appreciate your time!! I also dont have a round pen right now...but plan on getting one asap.  

Answer
Hi Lisa, In my opinion it seems pretty simple to remedy.  I would just cut the grain out totally.  Obviously he has no problem keeping weight on unlike many older horses.  If you need to feed him supplements just give him a hand full of grain (just enough to add his supplement to).  I still have my first pony who is 30 years old.  He gets nothing but grass even through the winter he only gets a round bale and this is how he's lived all of his life and he's always had an overweight problem.  Granted ponies are usually tougher and more hardy, however, if your horse is as easy a keeper as he sounds like and you can't ride the weight off of him your only other option is to cut his grain out.  Horses are much better off if they only eat roughage, if they're not young ones or older ones who are hard keepers, seeing how their digestive system is designed to break down natural forage.  Unfortunately most horses have to be supplemented with grain in order to keep their weight while in work or just because they're hard keepers.  I've also had horses who were super easy keepers who I had no idea how in the world they could stay fat seeing how they were on very depleted pastures, but I just considered myself lucky and made sure I had a mineral block for them at all times.  Horses don't have to have grain in order to be healthy and in this case I would say it's doing him more harm than good,  being that he's older the extra weight is putting extra strain on his joints and tendons which could cause more arthritis than what he may already have, as most older horses have some arthritis at that age.  So I would rather one go without the nutrients of the grain, give him a mineral block, and vitamin supplement only if you feel like you need to (with only a hand full of grain once a day) and be done with it.  You can also run into a higher risk of founder being that he's that overweight.  If you have 6 acres of pasture and it's in pretty good shape, I wouldn't feed him any hay for now.  I would just let him have the grass and the salt block/vit. supplement (if you feel he needs it).  You will need to alter this in the fall once the grass stops growing and put him back on his winter feed regimen. If he still too fat after all that the only other option you have is to either take him off the pasture for part of the day or ride him.  Good luck. Jessica