Re: RC: Foundering on grass

[Lynette Helgeson <helgeson@lansford.ndak.net>]

My dad's horse and a friends horse have both foundered on grass.
We watch our ponies closely, esp. in early spring when the grass
is the richest. I will pull them out of the green grass and put
them on hay if they are gaining weight too fast. Yes, horse can
founder from green grass. If we have a horse that has been on
hay and we want to turn them back out on green grass, we do it
slowly. I would not take any chances, esp. since the horse
foundered before. 

Lynette
If fact I have a pony in the barn now that I pulled off of the
pasture today. She has been gaining weight rapidly in just the
last three weeks, since all this rain has made the grass very
rich and green. 

Sarah Roxanne Zawacki wrote:
> 
>     Hi.  We have a twenty-something mare who foundered quite badly three
> years ago, after we sold her, because of being massively overweight and
> then getting Potomac.  She has been sound ever since, and corrective shoeing
> initially made all the difference.  Now she just needs to be a little more
> upright than before (she's at 59 degrees in the front), but is otherwise
> entirely sound.  We feed her a little less than a cup of straight oats
> twice a day, and she gets grass hay.  We just moved to a place with grass
> in the pasture (mostly because it's a new pasture...) and my mom has been
> wanting to limit Holly to about two hours of grazing daily, three days
> a week or so.  Because people expressed such surprise at someone else's
> horse foundering on grass, I was wondering if putting Holly on pasture for,
> say, five or six hours every day would be okay.  She hasn't shown any signs
> of foundering since her initial bout, and I'm starting to get the impression
> that she's not particularly susceptible to foundering--it took two extreme
> conditions (high fever from Potomac and being, literally, three hundred
> pounds overweight (she's a 14.3 hand quarter horse)) to cause her to founder
> in the first place.  In the meantime, so little grazing in the pasture is
> breaking her heart.  Does anyone have any experience letting a horse who has
> foundered go on pasture full time?  Thanks in advance,
> 
>                                     Sarah
> 
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.    
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp   
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=