Has anyone ever used the Cool Calories supplement to help a horse gain weight?

My 35 year old gelding is healthy other than needing to gain some weight (he always drops weight in the spring when he sheds his winter coat). His teeth are fine and he's regularly dewormed. He gets as much good grass hay as he wants and is fed close to the maximum of Superior Senior feed each day.

He's been on the supplement for about two weeks now and I've been tapering him up towards the maximum dose. We're about a third of the way there. I was just wondering how long it would be before we start to see results.

I've never used that one, but do feed and have success with Select the best Nu-Image.
My hard keepers also get beet pulp @ lunch, I've found that plus a bran mash once weekly keeps them in great BCS[body condition score]
Also by feeding 3x day, I'm actually feeding less volume both per meal and total volume, which is always a good thing for their systems.
You may also, if his kidney function is good, add a little Alfalfa or good legume hay in addition to his grass hay. Mega calories can be added with oils,corn and certain whole grains, but that gets a little tricky with maintaining vit/min balances.

Forgot the timeline part- Its extremely hard to eyeball a horse. Especially if you see them everyday. Use a weight tape and keep a calendar in the barn to to track. 3 weeks before you see a 15lb or more weight increase on average.
Of coarse extremely thin will improve much quicker, this is for a horse needing 50-175 lbs. And some amount of exercise is good. Alot of time its not weight but muscle atrophy.

I to have a gelding that is well into his 30's. His teeth are kept up, but he still never put the weight completely on like I like. So I have switched him to an alfalfa pellet, +/- his senior. As horses get older their gut is not able to digest the nutrients in the hay as needed even if their teeth are kept up. The intestinal lining is just worn out and were not designed to be working for 30 + years. Horses are now living longer because of the great medical care they are now recieving. Older horses need a high caloric intake almost like a foal. That is why when you feed senior you must feed it properly to work. I use Purina products and my gelding is 1000 lbs (on a good day, he's a little horse).

So now that he can't have regular hay I use hay pellets instead.
Purina Equine Senior says if fed with nothing else he would get 14.5 lbs of Senior per day, broke into 2 meals. But if you feed hay or hay pellets you need to decrease the senior 1 lb for every 2 lbs of hay/pellet fed. So I decrease his senior by 6 lbs.
But since I feed him pellets(or hay) his weight requires him to have 12 lbs of the roughage per day, this is how his meals break down.

Morning: 4 lbs senior and 6 lbs of hay pellets
Evening: 4 lbs senior and 6lbs of hay pellets

Since we (the vet and I ) changed his diet and taken him completely off hay he has put so much weight on I now have taken him off the senior and just give him the pellets. He doesn't look his age at all. The great thing with the senior and pellets is that everything is pre processed so really they just swallow the senior and pellets ( I soak mine so they are soft) This way their gut doesn't have to work as hard to get the needed nutrients since the gut is worn out anyway.

Another great and cheap source of pure fat is using 1-2 cups poured over the top of hay and or grain of veggie, corn oil. ( I would only use this if your horse has no feet problems)
Commercial products, my friend uses Purina's Amplify which is a top dressing crumble that goes on their food and is a pure fat source. She uses it on an appendix bred horse that runs barrels and is a hard keeper.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the suggestions! I thought about alfalfa but have not switched because my two horses eat together and my other old guy should be on grass hay only. I might try hay cubes for the hard keeper, though, because they eat their grain separately...

I love the idea of three meals but unfortunately I'm gone from 7:30 AM until 6:00PM so that's not an option. I do give them hay 3x in the winter (they get a late snack). Maybe I'll add beet pulp or hay cubes if I don't see an improvement.

He's not so thin around his barrel - the worse part is actually below his hip. He looks like a rescue case! Once he puts on a few more pounds I might start riding him again (I was riding him and ponying the other on easy two mile trail rides last summer) to build up some muscle. They are turned out 24/7 on about 3 acres so moving around all day isn't really an issue for them.

I was a full time grass hay only in the begining, but have forced myself to switch. The hardest thing also was to make him a pen that he could be in seperately as They were in a big turn out together. But it took some time but I finally got him a pen made, now we have the barn done and he has his own stall. The nice thing about the alfafla pellets is that they are a consistant level since they are process, where when you feed the hay or hay cubes one batch might be richer than the next and could cause upset tummies if you have a sensitive horse, (which my guy was). The pellets are processed to be within a certain protien percentage. As far as his body condition. Older horses begin to lose that topline and begin to look hollow in the hip. Some can build up that muscle and some can't. But in any horse if you notice the hollowness in the hips it is generally a lack of adaquate protien. My guy was hollow, like you said looked like a rescue case, the alfalfa pellets did him wonders since alfalfa is higher in protien then grass. But you also need the right amount of fats which they get from the senior. The hardest thing is getting the diet balanced right, which takes time.

I don't like to feed tons of supplements and my horses make it easy because they don't like stuff on their food. Tried to give the oral joint supplements but couldn't get them to eat it even mixed with their grain, they'd just turn their noses up and go eat their hay. So now I just give them the injections, works better anyway. So it took a while for me to find the diet that gave them what they needed . They some times get a little corn/veggie oil for their coats but other than their Psyillium they don't get supplements.

Hope this helps
Nutrietion and Reproduction/Genetics some of my favorite things.

They eat their grain in their stalls but the hay outside. Separating them for that really isn't an option (time and herd bound issues - which I know can be retrained but at 30+, I'm not going to start now).

They are certainly getting enough good quality senior feed, and more from the supplement, so I will look into the alfalfa pellets if he doesn't improve. Good to know that the hollowness could be coming from a deficiency rather than just him going downhill fast.

While I consider/search for the pellets I'm going to get some better-quality grass hay in the meantime. The stuff I have now is fine for maintenance horses (my other guy mostly needs to eat to keep busy!) but now that they're getting older they actually do need the nutrients.

Hopefully it'll rain and the grass will finally start to grow, too! Then I can start weaning them back onto pasture. That'll probably also work wonders. They've always slimmed down this time of year, but this year just seems worse than others.