Winter is the season elderly horses lose ground. Cold burns energy on simple warmth, mud makes every trip to hay and water costlier, and teeth worn by a lifetime of chewing extract less from every mouthful just when the horse needs more from it. Keeping weight on is therefore not one feed decision; it is a system of forage, protection, dental care and measurement, judged by how the horse's condition moves across the season rather than by any single week's impression.
Forage First, Available for Hours
Build the winter ration on forage. Good hay, available for as much of the day as the horse will keep eating, does the central work: digestion of forage itself generates internal warmth, and steady intake protects the gut as well as the waistline. Feed forage in shelter or on firm, drained ground where an elderly horse is not standing fetlock-deep in cold mud to eat, and in more than one pile or station if companions push it away — an old horse bullied off the hay loses twice, in food and in the energy spent moving off and returning. Where worn teeth make long forage hard work, soaked, softer forage-based feeds give the horse material it can actually process; the test of any forage is not what you put down but what the horse demonstrably gets through and swallows.
Added Feeds, Blanketing and Shelter
Added feeds sit on top of that forage foundation, chosen with your vet: options suited to the horse's teeth, digestion and history, introduced gradually and increased in step with the trend you are recording rather than in a rush after one alarming look. Rich, sudden changes unsettle older guts, so every adjustment earns a few days of watching before the next.
Stop the horse spending condition on weather it need not fight. Blanketing in cold, wet and windy spells reduces the energy an elderly horse — especially a thinner one carrying less natural insulation — must burn to hold body temperature, provided blankets are checked daily for fit, rubs and dampness underneath. Shelter matters in the same ledger: a dry place out of wind and driving rain where the horse can stand, lie and eat in peace, with bedding that keeps it off frozen or sodden ground. A horse that rests properly eats better, moves better and wastes less of what it takes in.
Teeth, Trend and When to Call the Vet
Route a dental check through your vet as winter approaches, and again if eating slows, feed is dropped or partly chewed balls of forage appear. Worn, loose or painful teeth quietly shrink every meal, and no ration compensates for a mouth that cannot process it. Weigh or condition-score the horse on a steady rhythm — the same method, the same points of the body, recorded each time — and enter each reading into its Pet Passport alongside notes on appetite, forage intake and blanket or shelter changes. The run of entries, not any single reading, tells you whether the system is holding: flat across a cold month is success in an elderly horse, while a gentle slide caught in the record is an early, fixable warning. Call your vet promptly, rather than waiting for the next routine entry, if weight falls fast, the horse goes off its feed, leaves forage it normally eats, or seems dull or uncomfortable alongside the loss — rapid change in an old horse deserves a professional look at what might be driving it. Read as a run of entries, the Pet Passport weight file on KinsLe flags steady shrinkage while there is still time to adjust forage and shelter.