Re: Riding after feeding

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> This has been plaguing me for some time, because I was also told time and
> time again to wait an hour after feeding before I rode.  Thinking about
it,
> though, it makes no sense.  The most my boys get in any one meal is 500
> grams of concentrates (when they're in a lot of work) and surely that
little
> food isn't going to cause colic if I school them straight away.  Bear in
> mind that schooling involves half an hour of flatwork in the ring, or a
slow
> outride for an hour.  If I were doing fast work like jumping or road work,
> waiting would probably be good.


Nah, even then it would be fine, assuming the horse isn't in some sort of
metabolic crisis or physiological shock or something.  But then, the problem
existed before, not because of, eating and the horse needs some down time to
recover and rehydrate regardless of whether he just ate or not.  If he were
colicking from anything other than a torsion, easy exercise would usually
improve the situation, not make it worse, since blood flow to the muscles
and hindgut is at it's maximum at around 20% VO2max---about a brisk walk or
an easy trot on flat ground. So horses digest better on the move than they
do just standing around.  Letting them eat small amounts often and then
moving on is the best thing you can do for them 99.999% of the time.

Susan G