When I first got Fatty he truly lived up to his name! Fatty is a 16.2hh Thoroughbred gelding who had all the symptoms of Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS):

• He was very overweight, had an eight inch crest as well as thick fat across the top of his body. The fat over his ribs seemed to be about two inches thick!,
• He was very herd bound and had been know to randomly lash out at feed time due to being ravenously hungry due to his EMS,
• He would barge through gate ways in a panic to get to his friends, and
• He was no longer the pleasant hack that he had been two years previous and could not be just saddled up and taken for a ride.

One word would sum him up that time. It starts with 'A' and ends with hole!! Fatty also had big hoof problems. He had a stretched white line, white line separation (which meant his hoof wall would flare out about 10mm from the bottom and never grew down), coffin bone rotation and dropped soles. Small, regular trims were as much as he could handle. He was very tender footed even on dirt, which made hoof boots essential. I had to put hoof boots on him in the paddock at times to keep him comfortable. He would never canter in the paddock.

A gradual process of losing weight.

It took about six weeks to see any sign of weight loss but accelerated after that. I could have sped this up by soaking the hay, but time was an issue so I thought I'd see how he went. Fatty was removed from 99% of grass and lives on a 600m track with three other horses.

He is fed ad lib hay (around a bale a day), a blend of top quality, well balanced vitamins and minerals, highly absorbable organic magnesium with boron plus extra organic calcium, a toxin-binder that doesn't bind nutrition, a small amount of feed and in the last month he has one to two hours of long grass per day with no ill effects.

He has to be kept really trim now as he has had tendon issues from the past and less than perfect conformation means he has thinner legs than would be ideal! His temperament is awesome. He is a real nanna horse and can be ridden on the buckle. Very happy and contented!

What a transformation!

Approximately 10mm of concavity is now present. Pictured below is the same hoof six months later. The white line is completely tight with no separation with the hoof wall now growing down. He can now be ridden on the road (carefully) with no boots. He has developed a toe callous, but has been seen cantering around the paddock.

Emma Kay - Waiuku, New Zealand.