Feeding salt + electrolyte vs. one or the other?

[Amy3996]

My senior gelding is a poor drinker year-round. After an especially difficult couple of weeks this past summer requiring treatment for dehydration and heat stress, the vet recommended a daily electrolyte.

When the weather cooled off, he seemed better so I discontinued the powdered electrolyte and swapped to 2 tablespoons of salt in his grain. Now he seems to be drinking less and less despite the salt, so I’m wondering if adding Apple-A-Day in addition to the salt would be overdoing it?

He has access to one heated water bucket and one regular bucket - no significant difference in amount of water he’ll drink from each. I’ve tried adding a little grain, or molasses, or other flavoring to try to entice him to drink. Nothing seems to be working, and I’m concerned about the risk of impaction colic with the extreme weather shifts we’ve had lately (45° and sunny one day, 10° and snowing the next).

[stb]

I am interested to see other’s opinions on this. I feed salt daily but have wondered if electrolytes would be better.

[mroades]

We do both year round here in coastal SC

[Angela_Freda]

Salt is part of e’lytes, no?

How about alfalfa tea, a couple cubes soaked in 5 gallons of water?

[JB]

Try it and see. Theoretically, e-lytes don’t encourage drinking, but some horses say otherwise.

Just reduce the amount of salt you feed by the amount in the e-lyte, if it’s more than “just a little”.

[clanter]

what is the source of the water? might have it tested to see if there is a concatenation since this is a year round problem

[theresak]

My vet says electrolytes can be hard on the stomach if you have an ulcery horse, so I do just plain salt unless there’s a specific reason for electrolytes.

[JB]

Also - color of bucket matters to some horses. The real JB drank much more water when I swapped him to yellow buckets, from blue. One of mine now drinks better out of red, over blue.

[tabula_rashah]

Yes, that should be fine.
Apple A Day has 13-14g of salt per serving (1/2 oz), and each of your tablespoons is also approximately 1/2 oz so added together (elytes plus salt) you are at 1.5 oz. Horses generally require 1-2 oz per day, so you would be in normal limits feeding them together.
I’d be inclined to feed that much salt/ elyte broken up over two meals and buffered a little with Outlast of ProCMC

[clanter]

@JB

Also - color of bucket matters to some horses. The real JB drank much more water when I swapped him to yellow buckets, from blue. One of mine now drinks better out of red, over blue.

I have seen that also, just assumed it was our picky horses… I was at one of the large horse supply places we around here, I needed some new buckets that were flat back that would hang in our bucket holders…none were there but they had some in the warehouse s the manger is going to get them he asked about what color, any is fine but the manger who knows my daughter he came back with maroon buckets and smile on his face saying these are Texas A&M color for your daughter

[Jarpur]

@JB

Also - color of bucket matters to some horses. The real JB drank much more water when I swapped him to yellow buckets, from blue. One of mine now drinks better out of red, over blue.

This is also my experience, although my old horse preferred blue (green as a second choice), and hated yellow or red. He had this preference for thirty-four years, through a number of different buckets.

I find that of my current horses, one doesn’t care, while the other clearly drinks more from the EquiFit AgSilver Clean Bucket (I own an earlier version of the current product).

[Lusoluv]

OK, this is really weird. My horse’s stall has a red and black bucket. She prefers the red. At shows, we have pink and green - she prefers pink. I thought I had the only weird horse

[stb]

I have found that my horses drink more from a light colored bucket as well. I use yellow buckets in my stalls. The yellow buckets also keep me honest - every little bit of dust, dirt, and grunge shows, so they are easier to keep clean than the dark blue ones I had used previously.