Electrolytes - to feed or not to feed?

[sabinomare]

Since it’s summer now, I’ve noticed that even on hot days, my young horse isn’t drinking a whole lot. Every day, I find that she’s only drank one of her 20 quart buckets, she has two available to her.

The thing is that she has always only drank one bucket since I’ve had her. So, I don’t think anything is wrong with her, I’m just wondering if perhaps I should start making sure she drinks more water on hot days when she’s in her stall.

She is out for 8 to 10 hours, the rest of the time she is inside. She’s getting a full ration balancer with some hay pellets, along with as much hay as I can cram into her! She does not have salt right now, I used to have a lick up for her but she never seemed too terribly interested in it.

Should I get her a salt block? Powdered electrolytes?

[stb]

I feed loose salt (just iodized table salt) - 1 T twice daily on top of food. My horses will not lick a white salt block at all. They will lick a Redmond salt block but one of my horses has IR issues so I don’t want him ingesting iron.

[SonnysMom]

I have a Himalayan salt block for both my horses. One really likes it and the other one doesn’t seem to do much with it. I also feed electrolytes to both. Last spring and this spring Finnegan got mildly colicy when we had the first big heat wave. I added the electrolytes and it went away.
I feed 1 scoop to the older Arab/Paint cross and 1/2 scoop to the 5 YO OTTB. Both horses sweat a lot.

[tabula_rashah]

Yes, she absolutely needs salt. I do have a large white salt block out in my horse’s field but I also top dress the feed of the horses in work. As far as electrolytes, that’s a kind of like getting into the barefoot vrs shoes debate. I’ve done a lot of research (seriously if you want to know A LOT on electrolytes, look through endurance articles, esp anything written by Dr Susan Garlinghouse) and attended lectures etc on the subject. I don’t feel my horses need daily elytes even though we live in hot ,humid MD. I do give electrolytes when we do hard conditioning work or during competitions. I use Buckeye’s Preform and Win, along 10 cc’s kaopec and a couple of cc’s of calcium gluconate and give in a 60cc syringe followed by a syringe or two of water to rinse the mouth out. I’m not a big fan of giving them in food.

[Angela_Freda]

Tabulah Rashah can you explain the inclusion of Kaopectate?

[Dutchmare433]

My horse has one of the himalayan salt blocks all the time and electrolytes in one of his water buckets depending on circumstances. (Traveling, very hot/humid, or sick…he seems to really like the taste of the electrolyte water and drinks more when he has it.)

[tabula_rashah]

@Angela Freda looking for the exact article wording but in general as a stomach buffer. Also it’s KaoPec which is different from the human kaopectate. KaoPec is just kaolin and pectin, human kaopectate is bismuth subsalicylate.

[luvmyhackney]

I feed electrolytes year round, my pony likes them and he drinks more water than if I don’t. Apple flavor is his favorite. He has a salt block but never uses it.

[sabinomare]

Thanks everyone, I appreciate it. I’ll retry hanging up a Himalaya salt lick for her and hope she uses it!

[China_Doll]

I feed free choice salt. A 50 pound bag from the feed sore is about 5.00 The licks are hard for thrm as they are made for cattle with rough tongues.

[Scribbler]

I have a Redmond salt block that gets licked away quite fast plus put an ounce of white salt in marsey’s mash twice a day.

If she isn’t drinking water I give her water with salt and molasses in it. It tastes terrible to me a bit like blood but she likes it!

She will not touch the flavored electrolytes. Got some as a freebie sample, Apple flavor.

[Ceylon_Star]

I keep a redmond rock available year-round (pony can’t have other licks because he will bite and eat them. The redmond rock is the only one he can’t bite apart), and from early May to late September he gets electrolytes daily, plus a little extra after work on particularly hot days. Being mildy IR and metabolic, his thermo-regulation is iffy, and he will sweat just standing around in his shady paddock in the warmer months. He does drink a lot, even in the winter (a full muck bucket daily in the coldest months, and 2+ in the summer), so that’s good at least.

Pony gets a mix of iodized salt, “light” salt, and ground-up tums. No sugar, but still replenishes the stuff he needs. I run the whole mix through a grinder, and he will lick it up straight, whereas he turns his nose up at all but the sugariest commercial electrolyte blends.

[retrofit]

I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but I had 2 horses (at different times) who weren’t drinking much. Both ended up with impaction colics & a stay at the horspital. It turned out that both of them had severe ulcers that probably made it very painful to drink. (Before you think I’m an awful horse mom, one was on stall rest and seemed not-at-all stressed so I hadn’t been doing any ulcer prevention - lesson learned - and the other was a just-purchased OTTB.)

Point being, if you think there’s a possibility your horse might have ulcers, I would act pretty fast.

[GallopHer]

Quick question, Tabula Rashah - why do you prefer not to add the electrolytes to feed? Are they less effective?

Thanks.

[tabula_rashah]

@GallopHer

Quick question, Tabula Rashah - why do you prefer not to add the electrolytes to feed? Are they less effective?

Thanks.

Mostly because I like to know exactly how much they are getting, especially at a competition when my mare tends to decide she isn’t going to eat anything she normally eats lol. If I were going to do electrolytes on a daily basis, I’d add it to the feed because it’d be a total PIA to syringe it everyday.

[GallopHer]

In that case, feeding in grain is no problem for me. My horse will eat anything. Thanks.

[mkevent]

Odd as it sounds, my gelding prefers the rough shaped Himalayan salt blocks instead of the smooth finished ones. You may want to try a different salt block and see if that makes a difference.

I only feed electrolytes when he has worked hard enough to sweat (which is every day that I ride in this weather). I mix the electrolytes (I use Summer Games) in a handful of grain and feed it to him after he has cooled off. He has no problem finishing it right away. He doesn’t get electrolytes added to his grain on the days that I don’t ride but he does always have access to his salt blocks.