Sandy, thank you for your feedback and sharing your story! That’s interesting, we are doing the ACTH test for Cushings on him next week as well. He doesn’t have any other symptoms, but our vet wants to check because he also feels there could be a link. Bandit is pretty comfortable in his eye saver mask, so we just keep him in it full time now… Read more

Bandit is our beloved 30-year-old quarter horse. I was never looking to change anything about his diet or lifestyle because he’s been doing remarkably well for his age despite mild arthritis and chronic uveitis in one eye that was manageable. But this past July he got a corneal ulcer in the eye with the uveitis. It took much longer than e… Read more

Here are more hay soaking set-up details for anyone wanting to try something like this. The piping is galvanized steel (from the local home store), which was both heavier and cheaper than the other pipe in the plumbing section. It comes in every type of fitting you could want, so my son just cut and fitted it to the size of our water trough,… Read more

We are two weeks in and we have continued fat loss in the mustangs. Time will tell if its my imagination or not, but it really looks as if they are loosing at a faster rate now. We have been working at achieving fat loss for almost six months now, but the rate has been slow before the recent changes of eliminating ration balancer, soaking and… Read more

The system seems to be working well so far. We are feeding the soaked, rinsed and drained hay in 3 feedings a day to hopefully cut down on mold growth while the hay is being eaten. My son built a pipe frame to keep the hay well submerged so that it’s possible to use a garden timer to begin the soaking at times when no one is around or we are s… Read more

Thanks for the continued feedback!

We are trying out a new system this week and I’ll report back on if it works. We’re using a programmable garden watering timer to fill our soaking trough at 3:30am for a 5:30am feeding. Also building a contraption that keeps the hay submerged and doubles as a screen for rinsing and draining.

Are we concerned about mold growth if soaking hay for several hours or more, or is there a best set of practices to maintain sanitation? I’ve heard mention on the podcast of the guy who’s soaking a bale overnight.

Obviously, the early morning feeding is the most problematic because I’d rather not get up at 3am to soak the hay. 😃

I’ve been fe… Read more

We are on the 5th day of trading ration balancer for soy bean meal, soaking our hay, and implementing a longer period at night without food in front of the horses. We have five of them who all live together, four of which are mustangs who’ve struggled to loose fat (I take responsibility for making them fat to begin with). Tonight when I c… Read more

Thank you very much for your reply and clarifications! I really appreciate it.

Hi Dr T,

I wonder if you could tell me if you think I’m on the right track here, or if I’m misunderstanding anything?

Prior to hearing your podcast, which led me to your blog, and now to joining this community, this is what I was doing to try to help my horse loose weight and get healthy:

5-6 days a week of exercise, gradually increasing int… Read more

Hello, I’m Emily from California and I’ve got five horses and six children who love horses. I’ve found my way here on my search for the best way to feed these guys. Four of our horses are mustangs, just off the range, and right away they showed us that the typical domesticated horse diet was not working for them. Looking forward to more learning.