Ex-racehorse prone to fizzy behaviour

When Aimi Clark first started riding King, he had been in little to no work, but she gradually increased his workload until they were hacking out at least five times a week for several hours at a time doing lots of trot and canter work as part of the Your Horse #Hack1000Miles challenge. Being an ex-racehorse, King thrived on work and having a job to do but as his workload increased, he started to drop weight.

“King’s hard feed was increased but unbeknown to me, as I didn’t own him at the time, he was being fed a high starch mix which would have been better suited to his racing days.” says Aimi. “It gave him so much energy that I suddenly found my calm, level-headed Thoroughbred had become very sharp, and tricky to sit on. I found myself starting to feel a bit nervous before I got on, so I knew I needed to do something quickly. I knew King needed to have additional feed to help him keep his condition, but I didn’t know what would be best to avoid the fizzy behaviour.

The first thing I did was email the Dengie nutrition team and ask for help. I very quickly got a reply explaining King would be best suited to a slow-release energy feed that was low starch and sugar. Dengie suggested trying him on Healthy Tummy and explained that if this was fed at the correct levels for his weight, it would provide him with the vitamins and minerals he needed for a balanced diet. The nutritionist I spoke to also explained that I could add soaked Alfa-Beet too if additional calories were required. I went straight out to buy these the next day!

I gradually introduced Healthy Tummy & Alfa-Beet to King over a few weeks and immediately his behaviour went back to normal, and I found I was confident and happy hacking him out again. He had plenty of energy to walk, trot and canter for miles, while also looking and feeling well in himself.

When I first met King, he could be stressy and unsettled in his stable. He was a fussy eater too, often not finishing his bucket feed. Once I had him in regular work and on a Dengie diet all that changed; he looked well and was more relaxed in his stable.

I have fed Healthy Tummy to all of the Thoroughbreds I have owned over the years and had had good results on it. At our peak, my family had 8 ex-racehorses on the yard who did a variety of jobs — all of them hunted, some of them went point-to-pointing while others did Riding Club and grassroots-level eventing. They all had Healthy Tummy as their baseline diet, which we added to as and when required.”