Scenario: New very large horse (just under 18 hands) is a worry wart and terrible hauler. He hardly eats on the trailer and won’t drink a drop of water. This continues for the first 24-36 hours once reaching a show grounds. Once he settles in, he’s fine. Drinks moderately well, consumes ALLLL the food and cookies, drinks a ton after a work out.
A few weeks ago we were at a show in Tulsa. You can imagine what Tulsa is like in mid-August. He did fine while showing, and mind you this horse sweats like a beast. No issues with sweating. He traveled 16 hours home over night so as to avoid the heat. But he got off the trailer with a 104.3 fever (related, or unrelated, no one knows) and terribly dehydrated. The vet was already at the barn for something else, luckily. $1100 in fluids and blood tests later, he was fine. About half way through his fluids he was bright eyed and eating ALLLL the things.
Nothing conclusive came back as to why the fever; maybe he had an unknown bug of sorts. We are certainly going down the asthma/allergies route for various reasons. But the problem remains that this horse has a tendency to let himself get dehydrated.
He is a SUPER picky eater and will simply not eat his concentrate if there’s something funny in there. Not sort around it; he simply won’t eat. He needs a bit of weight and cannot afford to be off his feed at all. So I don’t foresee being able to put electrolytes on his feed. I’ll probably need to force syringe it.
What is a good concentrated electrolyte these days? During my undergrad, I remember doing calculations on how much electrolytes a horse would lose in sweat during various environmental conditions. The activity was to prove that average electrolyte supplements don’t make a dent in how much the horse actually loses. But I don’t remember how to do the calculations. Anyways, it made me aware that most supplements are ineffective at replacing what is lost during work. If I can find an appropriate electrolyte, I’ll probably mix with apple sauce or something and syringe it.
Any luck with getting a horse to drink water with molasses added? I’m wondering about making a tasty water leading up to a trip get him appropriately hydrated and while on the trailer.
Like seriously, horse. Water is free, bagged fluids are not 
apples
I will try things on his feed when I visit throughout the fall and if I can find a salt that he’ll eat, I’ll certainly find a way to add it to his daily ration. But I can just about guarantee that at the close to 1500 pounds that he is/should be, 3 tbsp will not go over well with him. He does love beet pulp; but the couple times I tried adding some concentrate to it, he said “no”. So salt very well make his beet pulp unacceptable too.