If your pony is an easy keeper and overweight then it may be a good idea to take your vet's advice & keep him off grass. Here our ponies (and the Minis as well) get a grass/alfalfa mix hay. Some bales have more alfalfa, others have more grass--and they pretty much get all they can eat. They do get pasture as well, but our pastures here aren't real good--we don't have a lot of land & it's very sandy soil, so grass is never real lush. The past 6 weeks our Mini mares (and one Shetland) have been on self feed. Some of them walked over the fence into the hay yard so I opened the gate & let the others out there too--they've been eating free choice off the round bales and saves me the work of feeding that group. I've been kicking myself for not putting some of the bales out in the gelding pasture, so I wouldn't have to feed them either! I will say that none of the mares are over fat--most are just in nice shape--so they are not overeating on this self feed method.
I have one pony who is dropping off weight the last few weeks--he's been getting more grass hay and he's one that needs the alfalfa to maintain his ideal weight. He's not hurting yet, but I don't want him getting thin so am going to have to figure out a way to feed him extra--he's in with 4 mini boys who benefit from more grass/less alfalfa, so I can't just give him alfalfa where he's at.
As far as clipping...you don't have to clip, especially if you're not showing. My ponies shed out very slick--I sometimes clip some of the long hair off early in the spring, just to get rid of it a little sooner, but I don't shave them--I just clip with the hair to remove the longest hair, then they are left with pretty much a normal coat. With grooming my ponies get a nice tight coat & I show them full coated in June & July (might have to do more clipping this year....they're all VERY slow to start shedding this spring! Normally they start in January and here it is mid-March and some of them still haven't really got started on shedding.) For showing I just clip legs, jaws, ears, bridlepath, etc--no body clipping. So, if you're not showing, no clipping is required--most likely your pony will shed out to have a nice summer coat--you might want to knock some hair off early on if he's not shedding out real fast, but then again you may find that with grooming he sheds out quite quickly.
