Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Nigel Weight Gain: One Month

This isn't a terribly exciting post, just some pictures about Nigel's weight gain.  I can at least TELL he's gaining weight at this point but its a bit depressing to see how far we have to go.  I'm considering an additive in the next month or so like Nutrena Boost, so we'll see where we get in the meantime.  He's steadily eating more hay and we had added alfalfa but we're moving on from that as it was too rough for his stomach right now.

Enjoy :)



And for good measure he managed to mangle two of his legs mysteriously in the pasture that has nothing to hurt himself on.  Awesome.


Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Red Horse Update!

So red horse has a name now:  Nigel.  Yes, I know he's not a dark horse but Nigel also means Champion in some languages and well, he's a Nigel.  I don't know how to explain it.

Boy has a ways to go with his weight but we've been slowly and methodically taking care of that.  I don't normally keep track of how well they're gaining weight as I don't like to drive myself anymore crazy over things I can't really control than I have to.  Since some people on Facebook asked about how long this will take, I decided to track his progress to some degree.

Right now he's on 12-8 pellets, the same as my other guys and we worked up to 6 qts 2x a day.  I don't recall the actual weight, but its a crap ton of feed.  Since he was getting hardly any roughage, we've been adding that in too slowly but I know that's what would help him the most.  One step at a time, right?

His previous ulcers are present to some degree but again, I don't want to throw the book at him right away so here we are.  Early November and Zero Body Fat horse is blanketed in a 350 fill blanket.  Here we go winter!

For training, he's been doing my patented "working in the pasture" work and he's doing great when its not feeding time.  During feeding time, he's a demon and we're working on that at this time.  First game I play?  "Where's your bucket?"  So he has to find the bucket FIRST before I'll approach. He's super smart and clever so he's getting this quickly.  Now to work on the ear pinning, kicking out, and shoving during this time (y)

Nigel about a month in here.