A hardy breed with a metabolic catch
The Morgan's legend is efficiency: the breed descends from one small stallion who outworked horses twice his size on New England farm rations, and modern Morgans kept the trait of doing more on less. In old age that thrift becomes the central management problem. Morgans are among the breeds recognised as predisposed to equine metabolic syndrome — a pattern of easy weight gain, regional fat deposits, and a heightened risk of laminitis — and the risk climbs as work decreases with age. So his senior plan inverts the usual script: you are not coaxing calories into a fading horse, you are defending a vigorous one against his own appetite for the next twenty years, because a Morgan's old age is typically long, sound, and active if his weight is governed.
The weekly hands-on check
Build a two-minute ritual and keep it for life: stand him square, run your hand along the top of his neck for the firm, thickened crest that is this breed's earliest metabolic warning, feel his ribs with flat pressure, and glance at the fat pads that gather behind the shoulders and around the tailhead. Back it with numbers — a weight tape on the same day each month, and a side-on photograph each season — because metabolic change in a Morgan is a slow tide, and tides are only visible against fixed marks. Note his water intake and urination if they climb, and any change in how his coat sheds in spring; in an older Morgan these can be early threads of pituitary trouble overlapping the metabolic picture, and both belong in the vet conversation at his annual bloodwork.
Feeding the senior Morgan
His ration should look like his ancestors': forage first, and forage chosen with its sugar content in mind. Later-cut, stemmier hay suits him better than soft, rich, early hay; soaking is a useful tool when the hay runs sweet. Hard feed, if he needs it at all, should be a low-sugar, low-starch option measured by weight, and treats shrink to a token — a single small piece of carrot rather than a pocketful of sweetened nuggets. Pasture is managed like feed, because to a Morgan it is: muzzle or restricted hours during the grass's sugary seasons, and a dry paddock with soaked hay as the safe alternative. Regular light work is part of the answer, not a hobby; a Morgan kept gently active burns the fuel his breed is too good at storing.
Feet and laminitis vigilance
His feet are typically excellent — hard, well-shaped, slow to crack — which makes it easy to forget that his laminitis risk comes from inside, not from the ground. The signs to act on are subtle at first: a stronger-than-usual pulse at the fetlock, warmth in the hoof wall, shortened stride on hard ground, reluctance to turn. In a metabolically prone Morgan, foot-soreness appearing after a spell on good grass is a call to the vet that day, with the horse off pasture and on deep bedding while you wait — not a few days of watching to see whether it passes. Trimming stays on its normal cycle, and his trimmer should hear about any episode. Every blood result, weight-tape reading, and episode note filed in his KinsLe Pet Passport turns his long senior story into trends a vet can act on early.