Preparing your miniatures for show season

[minigirl2]

Hi all new to this, just wondering how you all prepare your miniatures for show season.

- When and what you hard feed

- When you cover

- Amount of exercise

Things like that, would love to hear how you do so.

Thanks =)

 

[Jill]

For my show horses, I lunge them in the round pen every other day. Adult horses, I work up to 20-25 minutes at a trot, split into about equal time in each direction. For yearlings, I round pen them working up to 15-20 minutes every other day.

All my show horses are out most of the time. I only really stall them the night before a show. Most of them play a lot which helps to keep them in shape. However, if I was being more disciplined, they would be stalled either every night or every day (basically in 1/2 the time) so they could wear the sweat wraps I bought years ago and don't use like I should OH!

My show horses have a simple diet. Mine get a complete senior pellet and soft orchard grass hay. Leading up to and during show season, they get more pellets than hay. They also get ground flax seed 1x a day as a coat enhancer and have free access to minerals.

 

[Fred]

Mine are worked 6 days a weeks, the amount of time depends on the horse. We do a lot of extended trotting, both directions in the round pen. The horses here are out every day no matter what but are stabled at night and each and every horse has its own individual feed program. [Purina products, omelene 200 and Pure Pride 100, and whole oats.] At no time do we feed senior feed. We feed local grass hay and right now the only supplements are Super 14 which is a coat conditioner.

 

[Katiean]

My show horse is a driving horse. She gets Safe Choice, COB (with molasas) 1 TB spoon corn or canola oil. She is worked in harness every day with sundays off. However since we are going to a show she will have to work that sunday.

 

[Reignmaker Miniatures]

Right now all my show horses are yearlings so I don't really work them much. They run and play together and that keeps them pretty fit. I feed a good quality alfalfa/grass mix hay and a small amount of BOSS and whole flax as well as a mineral mix(powder) and all the fresh clean water they want. There are various things I do to tweak the individual diets if the horses need a bit more weight but that is the basic diet.

Sorry to hijack but I wanted to ask Fred what it is about senior feed that he(she?) doesn't like?

 

[whitney]

Jill how to you get the horses to eat the ground flaxseed do you mix it will the pellets and if so do you wet it to get it to stick?