The water is cool to my hand it’s not overly hot. She usually prefers the pink bucket so that’s the one I’m using in the run in.
well I had one mare that preferred beer to water, she was a hoot
might want to clean pony’s bucket with vinegar to remove any undesirable odor (if present) a horse’s sense of smell is just under that of a dog
I can clean with vinegar I did scrub with soap.
What kind of beer? Worth a shot lol
I decided I’m going to stall her at night with her pink plain water bucket and one flavored bucket each night to see if there’s anything out there flavored that she’ll drink.
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Have you tried apple juice?
I had one colic on me a few years ago and he wouldn’t drink because he felt so bad. The only thing he would drink was apple juice. I could mix it 50/50 with water and he would gulp a five gallon bucket down. The first time I gave it to him straight. Second time a little bit of water.
I haven’t yet apple juice is definitely on the list to try.
Southern states for the win. I bought a small bag of bran and ground flaxseed. She ate most of the bran mash and drank some warm water with flax on top. I know the bran isn’t a great long term solution but it might help me get a gut supplement and electrolytes in her. Unfortunately the goats loved the flax water too and were drowning it. I’ll lock her in tomm night to keep them out.
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Sugar free clear pop is what we have used to help entice a horse to drink. Sugar free tends to be sweeter and encourage more drinking.
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So I had a picky horse who liked his water warm in the winter. And he also had trouble drinking in new places. In the summer he liked Gatorade powder (lemon lime only). In the winter I kid you not but the only thing that worked was warm water and breaking open a few herbal mint tea bags into the water.
Glad you found something that worked!
I know this is similar to something you’ve already tried, but I put a small handful of triple crown senior in a bucket and add two tablespoons salt, then top with water hot enough to dissolve the salt. My mare INHALES it. I’ve tried just the grain, just the salt, etc and it’s a no go. There’s something about that combo that works for her.
Also, Horse Quencher has a few different flavors, including root beer. Might just need to play around to see if there’s one she likes.
Some horses really love the water from soaked hay for some reason?
Also try a bottle of Gatorade in a bucket of water.
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Lots of suggestions to try thank you!
My gelding will not eat mash, and unfortunate for me, we were in the same place two years ago. My gelding had a severe impaction colic two years ago, and when we had the green light to give a soup, he just would not eat it (despite being fasted for 72 hours at least). What worked for us was buying chopped hay, adding some senior feed to entice him, sprinkle of salt, and soaking it with hot water from our electric kettle I keep at the barn. It was much less mashy or soupy because of the chopped hay, and it was enough to get him going on feed again and boosting hydration at the same time. We offered it in a net to slow him down if he got porky about it. We also added marshmallow root powder to this mix in hopes of trying to coat the discomfort that tubing him multiple times had caused. The hot water + hay though lets off such a sweet, enticing smell, and it worked great.
Before we were able to offer the soaked, chopped hay mix, I hung four or five buckets with different offerings - water, water with a cup of grain dumped in, 50/50 apple juice to water, a few different flavors of water with Gatorade in it… The apple juice water mix is what got him drinking again, and once the drinking started again, water was his choice.
Luckily he learned to drink when it was cold after this whole ordeal.
Watermelon? Maybe add just the juice to the water.
I wanted to update this post…it’s been a hell of a few days. Weds night she started to seem a bit off, 3am she was down and full blown miserable colicing. My vet came out and tubed Thursday morning but basically said this is all I can do if she gets painful again you need to take her to the hospital. My husband and I really struggled with a decision but she’s a pasture pet, this isn’t her first colic and all hospitals around us were quoting minimum 3k for the first 24 hours. We already knew we wouldn’t be able to do surgery for her.
She became painful again about 5 hours after her tubing and banimine. I called out another vet practice and the owner came out. He was incredibly nice and gave me so so much more information just to have a better grip on a decision etc. He tubed her again and left the tube in. He rigged up up her halter and we put a muzzle on over it and he left all of the equipment to get fluids into her myself. I gave her warm water every hour on the hour. His visit and tubing was around noon. She was really really uncomrtable in the evening. A friend came over an we were struggling to keep her up from rolling. We had walked, and lunged and trailered and stood still and all of the things. Another chat with the vet on the phone and we just decided to do smaller doses of banimine much more frequently. Gave her the meds and she fell asleep and I let her rest for 2 hours. When she got up she passed her first pile very mucousy gross poop. She started pooping every 2 hours and I was able to stretch the fluids out to ever 2 hours and get a few naps in. She was done hand walking in the middle of the night/morning she’s just absolutely exhausted.
So many tears, so much stress. Zero food and sleep for almost 24 hours. I’m hoping she’s over the hump. She usually lives with a herd of goats but we’re going to move a small fenceline and gate so she will be by herself but share a fenceline with them. It’ll allow me to offer her better feed options and monitor her water intake. I’m still at a loss about getting her to drink anything flavored or eat a mash but will keep trying. We aren’t going to feed her any hay and try to make her hungry enough that she’ll try mashes or chaffehay which has 50% moisture in it. The first things we’ll offer is a senior feed mash and the chaffehay. If she’ll eat the chaffehay then she can live on that tbh.
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Ugh that’s just rough! 
Prayers that she’s really past all this! Hopefully she’ll eat chaffhaye, as that alone is wetter than normal hay.
I hope so I’m just not going to give her many options. I can hand graze her on the grass and she’ll have a senior mash and chaffehay in buckets to pick at and hopefully eventually she gets on the bandwagon.
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You are a wonderful horse parent! So many of us have been through the 24 hours of no sleep thing for a variety of reasons, so we know it is exhausting. She is a lucky pony to have you.
Thank you, especially considering my vet was basically saying hospital or euthanize her. The other vet 100% saved her life and I’ll be switching practices. I also shouldn’t have to beg my vet to come tube a colicing horse she tried telling me she was just being dramatic that she wasn’t actually impacted.
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I’m still running on no sleep. I think total I got 3 hours last night split out into power naps. The colic seemed to resolve and she was acting much more like herself but then she had a crazy high respiratory rate for 12ish hours. It finally broke and today was pretty good I was able to work on refeeding her every 3 hours. Still a slightly elevated respiratory rate. The vet had me give her smzs when she was doing poorly so we don’t know for sure if an infection is at play. They’re going to come tomorrow to pull blood, check her lungs etc.
What I’ve found for getting water into her is she will eat soaked hay out of an actual bucket of water. So part of her refeeding is a handful of hay soaked a few hours dropped into a new bucket of warm water and she slurps and pulls it out to eat. I will unfortunately probably have to soak her hay all winter most likely in our second bathroom tub 
I at least found beautiful green grass hay locally
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Also just for giggles here’s a list of what she refused to eat/drink even when she was starving
Triple crown senior gold mash
Purina senior mash
Alfalfa pellet mash
Timothy pellet mash
Alfalfa cube mash
Bran mash
Purina replenimash
Plain beet pulp mash
Sentinel performance mash
Apple juice
Lemon lime Gatorade
Guinness
Horse Quencher additive peppermint and apple flavors tried
Molasses water
Senior feed water
Peppermint water
Electrolyte Apple a day water
Chaffehay
