Kinika "Nina" Wild Horse Diet

Kanika AKA "Nina" until recently was the youngest of our crew.

Cloud went off to be best buds with a 13 year old boy with special needs, and Nina came to our house, being too high energy for working with special needs. Nina was having a very hard time keeping on weight and at the age of 6, the owner put her on a senior feed. As her body was already very out of whack, the senior feed caused her to have a very cresty neck and I am sure she was on the way to foundering. Since being with our herd (April 2020) she has gone through a lot of changes. She put on a lot of weight, gained fatty pockets, and the cresty neck has gone up and down. This is expected changes as Cloud went through the same process so I was prepared for Nina to go through this as well. My farrier Michael (who has been working with us for a year and a half at this point) was telling me I needed to put Nina on a starvation diet because she was overweight (he doesnt get what I do yet) and I said "wait and see". Two trims ago, when Nina was finally looking like she was coming into "balance" and he was impressed. Her feet never got hot, and while she went through an "ugly" stage, she has constantly been changing. Unfortunately during this winter (2021) we have had issues that caused Nina to backtrack a bit but now she is back to making progress and hopefully by next year we will have her in balance and ready to have a baby. At 7 years of age, Nina is full of spunk and would have a very lovely baby. 
Nina's current diet (feed two times a day)
  • 2 cups soaked Teff or orchard pellets
  • Rotation of Cushings Calm and Sugar Down 2 tsp
  • Kelp granules (about 1 tbs a day)
  • Mineral salt (about 1 tbs a day)
  • Rice bran Pellets (about 1/4 cup a day) 
  • Grazing on short grass when weather allows
  • Local Grass  hay blend
During the winter months instead of her own blend of herbs she was on Sugar Down, Cushings Calm and Worm Gone Max (4 days a month) While this was mostly effected, I chose to take her back to her own mix of herbs as that seemed to be more effective for her.  
UPDATE NINA
Nina has been struggling this last year with laminitis. She came to us with severe stomach issues and a huge cresty neck (sugar issues) but was doing well. Unfortunately, my farrier was not doing a good job with the minis and ended up mechanically foundering Nina. We have been struggling to straighten out her feet ever since. She is now with a new farrier who has gotten the rotation out of her feet, but the laminitis persists. However, in the last few months of working on her feet, I have also changed her diet. As with the rest of the horses, I have been doing a heavy detox with Cootie Kicker. Interestingly, the heavy detoxing is causing her cresty neck to finally shrink and is about half the size it was before starting the detox. Though I have given her detox herbs in the past, the horses all just seemed very "toxic" so I have been doing a much heavier detox than I normally would, which seems to be exactly what Nina needed to really address that huge neck! She is still having some pretty serious foot pain but we are making progress...its just slow going. Though I have had several other laminitic horses (came to me in various stages) I haven't struggled with other horses and their feet the way I have struggled with Nina so it took some trial and error to figure out what was going on with her (including the time it took to figure out part of her problem was the last farrier)  Interestingly, she came to me a very nervous and unhappy horse, but had no feet problems. She may have feet problems now, and is in pain, but she is still a happy calm little horse.