Any tricks to get a hauled horse to drink/take in liquids?

[eightpondfarm]

when i added hydrated beet shreds with molasses to a 5gal red gorilla pail, the first couple of times, they drank it. Then they stopped drinking the following weeks and just splashed around and tried to tip it over. So, i went to just plain hydrated beet shreds with molassas and a little bit of water there at the training barn. They ate all the shreds and left the liquid.

I’ll try some of my sheep’s grain mix next time.

and i’ll try some gatoraid mix in their home water buckets and see which flavor is most popular

[SharonA1]

I have had luck with Stabul1 tea. (I would take a Stabul 1 treat or two or three, which are intensely flavored, and throw them in the bucket to flavor the water. My late horse would get mad if there were no actual treats to munch on, but he’d accept the compromise of drinking the tea and then having a few treats thrown in to the bucket at the end, so they didn’t dissolve before he got to them.

[carman_liz]

Soak hay for them in their nets for the ride home? See if they will drink any of the water from the hay’s soaking bucket when you pull the nets out of it to hang them in the trailer?

The soaked hay will get water in them at least a little bit, and I know my mare loved to drink her soaking water from the chopped hay we wet down for her. It was like molasses candy water crack to her lol. Just my very limited experience 2 cents, good luck though!

[fivestrideline]

This has been very helpful for me - my guy refuses water in the trailer. And generally for a good while at a new place. I’m going to start offering him water in his “trailer sipping” bucket every day after work to see if that helps!

Also, a friend has a pony that thinks Gatorade (straight out of the bottle) is the BEST treat ever. I’m wondering if you could teach horses to think of Gatorade in a bucket as a “treat”

[SuzieQNutter]

Adding just molasses to the water is the go to here.