nutritional & exercise advice needed!

[clare]

I have a four yr old gelding, around 16hh and roughly 550kg. He is in light work and has only ever had soaked hay. Up until now he has been great with this but this winter he seems to need something extra. I'm not really sure what to feed him - it needs to be basic as he is hyper sensitive to changes. I was thinking hi fi lite with a broad based vitamin & mineral supplement - would this be ok?
Also i want to increase his fitness levels as i would like to take him to prelim dressage competitions in the summer. How can i go about this? He is ridden 3 - 4 times a week but is quite unbalanced on his left rein, i also lunge him, longline, do pole work with him (in hand), walk him in hand and the occasional hack. Hacking is limited in our area and it is difficult to go out for longer than about 40mins.
Any suggestions welcome! Thanks...

[KoLaTo]

The diet you are thinking of sounds fine, many competition horses are now fed forage only diets and do very well on it, for brilliant advice, give Nicola at Top Spec a call, she can talk you thru a whole diet regime for him if needed. Mine are on Hi Fi Lite and Top Spec Balancer. They also have some A & P quiet pencils, a handful each in this freezin weather as a treat or when we ride. The Balancer is very good for sensitive horses and has replaced all the seperates i used to feed including oils and magnesium, it sounds more expensive but isn't when you work all the seperate costs out and is mega tasty or my two think so anyway!

I'm sure someone else will advise on the fitness issue as my two are ponies and only in pleasure hacking at the moment so need a very different fittening program to yours to keep them happy.

[clare]

Hi Ponypit, thanks for the feed advice, will take a look at Top Spec

[KoLaTo]

clare - don't be put off by the price of the Balancer, I was at first but when I sat down and worked out what and how I was feeding, it did really work out cheaper, as I am on a very tight budget, I couldn't afford to make mistakes but the Top Spec is superb, loads of us on here use it