You want what is best for your horse and you want them to be comfortable and happy. When weight management - or health issues that require limited access to forage - comes into the picture, it can be a rude awakening and an unpleasant transition for horse and owner. Occasionally, the stars align and we get one-season wonders like Rollins.
For overweight horses, especially ones who have never had their grazing restricted, adjusting to a muzzle can be a challenge. It’s challenging for horse owners, too, particularly if they have never had a horse in a muzzle before. Some of the best customer stories we hear are from owners who are consistent with muzzling from day one. We’re grateful to Ashley for sharing her experience with Rollins and his GreenGuard Grazing Muzzle during the 2024 grazing muzzle season
Meet Rollins, a Roly-Poly Pony
We first met Ashley and Rollins in late May, almost 3 months into their grazing muzzle journey. In fact, that journey began pretty much from the moment they met. Ashley says that she adopted Rollins, “a 12-year-old Morgan gelding,” on “March 10th of this year,” and that “he was obese when I adopted him.”
The impact of Rollins's new restricted grazing routine was noticeable.
Getting to know and become comfortable with a new horse presents its own set of challenges. Many of our clients and customers, though, go through exactly this process. You get a new horse and find that there are risk factors associated with their weight, or, after onboarding the new horse with your equine vet, that they have a metabolic disorder. One way or another, a grazing muzzle is usually one of a series of recommendations to follow.
Of course, a grazing muzzle is only one piece of the puzzle. Wearing a muzzle can be a turnout-time obligation for an obese horse like Rollins, but there are commitments you and your family must make to ensure that any weight-loss or diet-management plan is effective. It means committing to dietary restrictions, exercising and training with them, and doing these things consistently over time.
Dramatic changes are rare, but they can happen
We try to let folks know that it takes a concerted plan and consistent effort over time to achieve noticeable body changes in overweight horses. That’s typically how it works. Progress usually should be slow and steady. Every once in a while, as we mentioned at the start, we do get a one-season wonder, where everything just seems to come together.
In the 3 months between adopting Rollins and reaching out to us, Ashley says that “hand walking, appropriate diet, and the GreenGuard Muzzle helped make a drastic difference” in Rollins’s health and conditioning. It was just about to be June and Rollins was “now a 5 on the body scale” and the vet came back with “wonderful insulin and metabolic bloodwork.” Some horses have that great genetic luck, where just making consistent effort is sufficient to turn their lives around.
By November, the difference in Rollins's body and deportment were startling.
Ashley admits it was anything but easy. “We have lush pasture at home, so the muzzle is absolutely keeping him at a wonderful weight while allowing him to live out 24/7 in a herd” with his friends. That’s another massive piece of the weight-management equation for horses.
Rollins had all the tools and circumstances for a successful weight-management journey. Comfort in a herd provided Rollins with emotional support. Daily turnout with his buddies put him in a situation where he got natural exercise. The GreenGuard muzzle limited his forage so that Rollins’s digestive system could work regularly and effectively.
Rollins’s Successful Summer turns to a Fruitful Fall
In mid-September, Ashley reached out again to provide another update on Rollins. Ashley is fairly certain at this point that Rollins might have recorded a new achievement on the body scale. She told us “I can slightly see, but also feel, ribs!” And this was still on 24/7 turnout while wearing his muzzle consistently.
Rollins's first season in a grazing muzzle has been a success.
If you haven’t guessed, at GG Equine, we love and live for this level of documentation and customer outreach. We heard from Ashley and Rollins again a couple months later. Fast forward to the middle of November, 2024. Log into our social media accounts on a Monday morning and see new before and after photos from Ashley and Rollins. Now the differences are very clear between where they started and where they stand now.
In the past, it felt like there was a clearly demarcated and circumscribed notion of “grazing muzzle season.” From March to October, horses would wear them and then the muzzles would get chucked into storage in the tack room. Depending on where folks live, though, and the health needs of their horses, we’re seeing more and more horses depending on their GreenGuard muzzles for forage restriction year-round.
At various points in their 2024 grazing muzzle journey, Ashley has seen fit to “shoutout GG Equine,” but really, we are privileged simply to supply the tools. It is Ashley who’s done the work. She’s given Rollins - whom she affectionately calls "my perfect Morgan man" - a loving home, a place in an active herd, and he has had the horse sense to adapt to wearing the muzzle and get on with the business of being a horse.
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Our thanks to Ashley (stormcatcollector on IG and Bluesky) for being so assiduous about detailing and chronicling every step of Rollins's grazing muzzle journey.
