Re: [RC] Boy have we come a long way - Heidi Smith
>One type of feeding program was described as
"one small flake of oat hay and one of alfalfa morning and night." One part
rolled oats, half part rolled corn and rolled barely and one quarter part
soybean meal. While traveling or competing the feeding program changes to just
oat hay. The night before a ride 3 flakes, but none the morning of the ride as
the rider doesn't want the horse running on a full stomach. However, the horse
get 2 pounds of grain in the am, 2 at lunch and 2 in the evening.
How much things change, and yet how much they
remain the same. Even "back then" these riders had figured out that you
COULD feed more grain on race day, if you fed it in small increments--something
Susan has been telling us repeatedly the past few years. And if you
don't have grass hay, oat hay remains a reasonable complement to alfalfa,
as they tend to offset the overages and deficiencies in each other--maybe not
ideal, but likely the best they could do with what they had available. We
HAVE learned a lot more about keeping a good roughage fill.
>Another feeding program was top quality
alfalfa hay fed free choice at all times during the working months with grain
being stared only in early summer. The horse on this particular feeding schedule
won the Tevis 4 years in a row. He won 8-100 mile rides and finished Top 10 in
17. Interesting.
And many horses still eat only alfalfa hay, because
the riders have access to nothing else. Interesting to look again at the
breeding of these horses--all old-style breeding--that tended to have the
metabolic capability to deal with feeding progams that were less than
ideal. And that is something else that hasn't changed--the horses bred
like that often still have that ability, even though we prefer not to make them
push the envelope that way. I do find it interesting that "back then"
riders had already figured out that the forage was the base of the ration and
that one didn't add grain until the work load became excessive.
>All three horses were 14.3 or smaller. One
training schedule was described as starting in early spring, covering 10, then
15 and 20 miles EVERY OTHER DAY! The rider said it was important that this
portion of training be strictly adhered to as the horse and rider are
conditioning each other. Wow!
Nothing has changed about that--most of the top
horses are still 14.3 or smaller, and we've figured out the science behind why
horses do better if conditioned only every other day, instead of daily--has
to do with recovery time of tissues. We've found out that some rides can
be shorter, but that sort of training program really isn't all that different to
many good training programs today.
>One rider said the key to her success was to
losing 35 pounds and switching to a lighter english saddle. ( A lot of pictures
show riders in big western saddles and western gear) This horse was the 1974
Presidents cup winner. He was ridden over 1,000 mile that year and never lost a
shoe, was sick or lame.
And how many seminars do we see now on rider
fitness? Another thing that has remained the same....
What I find interesting is the fact that many of
these riders were already discovering so many of the things that we seem to
think we just found out. :-)
