04/04/2025
Letâs pretend you have a toothless great grandma and itâs your job to take care of her.
What if all you handed her to eat day after day was a whole raw cabbage?
What if, when she struggled to bite into it and chew and swallow, you just shrugged your shoulders?
What if you did this for months and watched her get skinnier andd skinnier?
Youâd be, at best, a big jerk.
It wouldnât take a nutritionist to tell us that our human meemaw isnât getting the food she needs to surviveâŚso why is adjusting nutrition such a hard concept to grasp when it comes to our senior horses?
As our human relatives get older, we (hopefully) cater to their aging bodies, dental issues, and caloric needs.
We provide adequate and adjusted nutrition, understanding that this means access to good foods that our senior citizens can consume efficiently.
As our human grannies age, we donât just throw tough food they canât chew at them and then say âwell sheâs old, after all, thatâs why sheâs skinnyâ.
If you let your grandma starve in this way, it would be a crime.
Yet, âsheâs just oldâ is an excuse we hear time and time again when standing in front of an emaciated old horse.
The reality? These old horses usually arenât being given appropriate nutrition. It can be expensive to feed a senior horse, no doubt. This added cost also adds to the likelihood that a senior horse will not receive palatable food in many situations, unfortunately.
It does not, however, change the fact that what is required to survive is simply what is required.
Sure, incurable medical reasons could explain poor body condition. Heart failure, cancer, etc could absolutely cause a senior horse to be skinny. Of course weâve seen those cases.
The thing is though, weâve found that the majority of the people who tend to lean heavily on the âitâs an old horse thatâs why itâs skinnyâ excuse are the same people who feed a slimy and blackened round bale to the grandma horse with no molars.
Sheâs not skinny because sheâs old.
Sheâs skinny because sheâs being starved.
Stop justifying her condition by blaming her age.
More often than not, we can rule out extreme medical conditions with a vet exam (and follow up diagnostics if needed) and find that the majority of old horses who come here are skinny simply because there was a lack of palatable, nutritious food in front of them before their arrival.
So please, letâs all agree to stop saying âthey are skinny because they are oldâ.
Itâs really as asinine as giving great grandma a raw cabbage and pretending like youâre not a neglectful caretaker when she loses weight.
Feed your senior horses like they are seniors.
Help them thrive in their last years.
Stop normalizing emaciated old horses.
Please.
If you have a senior horse you are proud of, please post a photo in the comments! The more we can show healthy seniors at a good weight, the more we can normalize THAT instead!
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(Pictured is Edna, a mare who came to Bella Run Equine a couple months ago, who the owner claimed was âskinny because she is oldâ. Now that sheâs being fed appropriately, she is coming right along. Youâll see her glow-up soon.)
