does anyone feed salt year round? my previous barn did this and i’m now moving barns, considering adding on salt as a smartpak, especially in winter for hydration
I put a scoop of white salt in the daily mash and provide a stall saltblock which the horses go through quite fast. Sometimes I run out of loose salt but I always have a salt block.
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i always have a white salt and himalayan salt block too but notice my girl doesn’t really touch it
Yes I feed loose salt year round
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Mine have a salt block in their stalls year round. Some lick theirs more than others but that’s ok
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himalayan salt block
my wife collected twenty of those hanging Himalayan salt things from the stalls at the Morgan Nationals, the trendy show barns just left them hanging in the stalls after moving out at the end of the show
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I used to just provide salt blocks, but last year started adding salt to their grain at the end of the day. I will up it a little when it gets really cold to keep them drinking well, and they seem to use their blocks less.
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If your horse is getting a nutritionally “complete” manifactured grain ration, in adequate amounts, salt and required minerals are included in that. If you add more, you may be oversupplying these minerals. Which can be not too much of a problem, or it may become a problem with some minerals, selenium being one of those, calcium phosphorus ratios may be another. If your horse is on a forage based diet, without a manifactured grain ration, you will find that the horse will be happy to use a salt block with trace minerals in it, and will use it to the required level. If you are supplying mineralized salt blocks for your horses, make sure that they are out of the weather, minerals will leach out of them if they get wet.
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Jackpot !!! What a great idea - she should be receiving some nice Christmas gifts !
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she is getting some T-111 siding for her goat barn 
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Nice - hoping her stocking has some cable ties and gorilla duct tape - she should be thrilled ! 
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Adding salt is only good if they eat it. Some prefer regular iodized table salt, some like Himalayan pink salt, or sea salt better.
Check the salt content in the feed concentrate before adding loose salt to feed, especially if it’s a different feed. Most commercial feeds have plenty of salt in the feed, and adding it can make more picky horses turn up their noses. I don’t like adding salt to feed directly because I don’t want to force my horse to eat it or refuse a meal.
If possible, free choice loose salt is more ideal. I offer Himalayan salt licks for enrichment, but they don’t get a lot of salt from them. A small study done by KER found that while horses with access to blocks have more consistent intake, while loose salt had increased total consumption accompanied by notable increased water intake. See the article I’m referring to HERE
At the end of the day, any salt your horse will eat is good.
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This sounds like something that should go in that “you know you’re a farm girl when…” thread!
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believe me she is the true farm girl…at 16 she graduated high school then ran off to north California were she and her sister bought 20 acres on the Feather River, built a log cabin (sister is still in northern Cal …she lives up where today’s earthquake happened, she OK
We met at horse show in West Virginia working for different Kentucky Saddlehorse barns, everything I was handling was in harness while everything she was working with was under saddle…we kept passing each other going to/from the warm up ring
Here is the grain storage bin she built a few months ago
she is the reason our kids were such excellent riders as she was a Gold Medal Equation rider as teenager
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I feed loose salt in the soaked stew I feed. lol. They also have a salt block.
I have the Himalayan blocks (on a rope) in each of the 2 horse-sized stalls.
And they hang there until licked down to next-to-nothing, so Yes, year-round.
The mini gets the tailend of a block when I put a new one in a stall.
I prefer these as no holder is required.
IME, a lot of the brick type is wasted when it gets licked down to concavity in the holder.
I tried putting these “stubs” in their on-the-ground feedpans, but that didn’t seem to work.
They’d eat the grain & I’d find the salt on the floor of the stall.
Yes I feed a tablespoon of salt am and pm in the feed. More in the summer. But my horse only gets 1 lb ration balancer per day. So not a lot of salt in the feed.
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I throw a tablespoon of loose table salt in his supplement baggies - more if it’s very hot or very cold. I was surprised at how little salt there really was in my full serving of complete grain. Ration balancers in general are pretty low too. Salt is something that can’t really hurt unless they stop eating all together - they’re big animals. An old barn had little feeders in the stalls they filled just with loose white salt, which I really liked!
TL;DR check your feed label, you might be surprised
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I do not put salt in their feed but mine always have access to a couple different types of salt lick.
I have two extremes of salt eating too. One gleefully licks their 50lb white block like it is candy. Another basically never touches any of the salt options.
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Me too. This way I know the salt is getting down. Plus, in the colder weather it encourages drinking.
