From: Gail
Subject: how to feed salt
Dear Jessica, Thank you so much for Horse-Sense. Your advice has helped me so much in the care of my horse. I didn't find the answer to my question in your archives so I hope you'll be able to answer it here. Is it o.k. to add table salt to the horses water supply? I'm kind of a new horse owner and the place where I board my mare recently hired someone to help take care of the horses. I've noticed that he puts salt in the water buckets to keep them from freezing as quickly and pours it on the ice that forms in the water tanks in the pasture to make it melt faster. It seems like I read somewhere that you aren't supposed to put the salt blocks near the water tanks because the horse might bite off a chunk and drop it in the tank. Is that true?
Thanks for taking time for my question. I live in Louisville and I look forward to seeing you at Equitana this year.
Gail
The short answer to your question is NO.
The longer answer -- the one with the full explanation -- is also NO.
Horses need salt. Horses need water. But horses need fresh, clean water at all times, and horses need to have salt available at all times, and that is not at all the same thing as putting salt in the water buckets.
If a horse isn't getting enough salt from its salt block, it may be offered free-choice loose salt. It's very rare to have a horse refuse to eat enough salt, if that salt is available in an easily-consumed form, and if the horse is otherwise healthy and has access to FRESH WATER.
It's NOT rare for horses to become dehydrated and/or very ill if they don't get enough water. Horses like their water clean -- oh, they'll dunk their hay in it sometimes, and most horses enjoy "hay tea", but unless they are desperate (and sometimes even then!) they won't drink water that is filthy, that contains manure or sour grain or a dissolving salt block.
Some well-meaning owners have made their horses very ill by putting electrolytes (mineral salts and sugar) into their horses' water buckets, hoping that the horses would benefit more from their water. In fact, many horses simply stopped drinking, and became dangerously dehydrated. YES, electolytes can be offered to a horse in a bucket of water, but that bucket should be hung next to the "normal" water bucket that contains clean, fresh water. If you're going to put anything other than water into a water bucket, offer the horse access to the bucket with the additives AND to its usual bucket of clean water.
If you want a live, healthy horse, keep the salt and water separate, ALWAYS.
A horse offered salted water will usually drink less or stop drinking entirely, and then you have a sick or possibly a dead horse. Someone who doesn't know horses might imagine that putting the salt in the water (and why not the feed as well?) might be a time-efficient way to fee. Not so. Horse management isn't amenable to this sort of time-study nonsense. You can try it yourself at home, if you're curious -- on your family. Instead of putting the salt shaker on the dinner table, just add salt to the water glasses. Then tell me what happens at dinner! Humans need salt too, and humans need water, but I'll bet that your group of humans will demonstrate reduced water consumption when you salt their water. (They'll probably demonstrate surprise and possibly bad language, and they're VERY unlikely to drink a lot of water and say "Gee, what a great idea, Mom!")
Here are some facts that even a non-horsey barn owner should be able to understand.
Putting salt into water cuts down on drinking and makes horses sick.
Putting salt into water isn't even effective from a time-efficiency standpoint! Salt dropped into water is wasted. Horses need their water buckets cleaned every day, so that their water doesn't get dirty. The salt at the bottom of the bucket will be thrown out every day -- and the bucket will probably stay full, because the horses won't want to drink the water. This wastes the water, too. This may SEEM efficient to a non-horsey human in charge of feeding the horses -- "Oh good, I don't have to fill/clean those pesky water buckets, what a great idea that salt was!" -- but it's not efficient at all.
It takes MUCH more time to deal with sick horses than it does to feed and water them properly. It also takes much more time AND MONEY to deal with lawsuits (brought by irate owners of sick or dead horses) than it does to feed and water those horses properly.
As for the notion of putting salt into stock tanks -- forget it. Again, it's bad for the horses, but what may make more of an impression on your barn owner is the fact that it's bad for the stock tanks. Salt corrodes metal, and salt will ruin the stock tank whether the tank is automatic or not, and whether the tank is heated or not. This isn't cost-effective -- even if the barn owner doesn't care about the horses' health, he may care about the stock tanks.
You need to talk to the barn owner, and do it quickly before this "helper" manages to "help" horses into ill-health or worse. It's not that difficult to put a salt block into the corner of a stall or a run-in shed. It's not much more difficult to find a place for a container of loose salt (many horses have trouble getting enough salt from salt blocks). It's not difficult to rinse an empty water bucket, or to scrub one quickly with a handful of baking soda and then rinse it. It's not difficult to give horses clean water when they need it, which is ALL THE TIME. It's more difficult to manage water buckets in winter, yes, but the answer to the problem is to WARM the water, not to salt it! It takes longer to water horses in winter, because ice has to be emptied out of buckets, then buckets have to be filled with warmish water, and then the horses will typically drink most of the bucket immediately, and need a refill. ;-) If the water is made undrinkable, the horses won't want to drink it (duh), and the buckets will stay full. The difference between horse people and other people is that other people may say "Oh good, the bucket's still full", whereas horse people will be horrified and want to find out why the horse isn't drinking. (Similarly, someone who doesn't know horses might be delighted to find that several stalls were clean -- no manure added overnight -- whereas a horseman's reaction would be to take the horse's vital signs and call the vet.)
The point of giving horses water is for the horses to DRINK the water, not for the water to remain in the buckets, whether in solid or liquid form. I know this is obvious to YOU, but it is apparently not obvious to whomever is feeding the horses.
Talk to the barn owner -- don't assume that he knows what is going on, or that he approves. If he knows horses and knows anything about horse health, he will be horrified, and he will hire someone else who is willing to do the job properly. Give him a chance to put things right, but do it now before a real problem arises.
You need to get this situation changed IMMEDIATELY, and if you can't change it, look for somewhere else to keep your horse while you still have a horse. You should also talk to the other horse owners, who may not be aware of what is going on. Lazy barn staff can kill horses -- it's happened before. People who don't know anything about horses, or who are in a hurry to get their job over with and get on with the "fun" part of their lives, are capable of incredibly stupid and dangerous behaviour. Sadly, as always, it's the horses that are put at risk.
Jessica
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