Horse Talk

[abigalerose]

Abigale, instead of quoting your last post and having to filter through all of it, per the withholding water comment...

A common way to gentle a Mustang, an untouched youngster, or other extreme "can't catch" horses is to take the water or of their pen/ no free access to water. Then you either have water in a corral (for horses you truly can't touch/ approach) or you carry a bucket out (for a horse that is tame, but just doesn't want to be caught) and twice or 3 times a day you open the corral or hold the bucket for the horse. A horse can smell the water, and after a couple days they will begin approaching for water. Thirst is a great motivator. This gets the horse looking to you for its needs. Of course, this is only in extreme cases, where other things haven't worked. Also, in the wild, horses generally only go to water once a day or every other day.

Lol. Exactly. I would never do this. And I don't think it's an appropriate way to "train" a horse, no matter how difficult the horse is. And saying "where other things haven't worked" is ridiculous, if someone knows what they're doing there will ALWAYS be a better way than this, it might take a lot of patience, but that's just part of training horses. Withholding water from an animal to "train" it is cruel, dangerous, and lazy. And as far as I'm concerned it's not a common way to gentle a mustang at all, I've never talked to a mustang owner who has done something like this.
This blows my mind.

 

[res]

Impaction colics are very common, and a good reason to always stay on top of your horse's water consumption each day.

We top dress our horse's feed with loose salt in the winter, to encourage them to drink. In the summer, when they are sweating enough just standing around/grazing that they leave sweat tracks and "salt" on their coats, I start top dressing the feed with electrolytes to encourage drinking. I "pinch skin" quite frequently in the heat and cold, and I know what is a normal "snap back" for each horse. Horses that are not drinking enough get tempted with warm molasses water and soaked sloppy feed in winter, and fresh cool flavored water and sloppy feed in the summer. My senior horses ALWAYS get soaked feed year-round, partly because of their poor teeth, and partly to ensure that they are taking in enough water.

A lot of people do not realize that when you increase hay consumption in the winter, you also need to increase the water consumption. You have to be committed to "going to extremes" to get that water into them. You cannot sit back and think, "oh, they will break the ice on the tank/buckets and drink when they are thirsty enough." While it is true that *some* horses have enough self-preservation that they WILL break ice and drink ice cold water, many WILL NOT. Amish horses do not have the luxury of heated water in the winter, and growing up, neither did my horses - tank heaters just were not the "norm" 40 years ago... We actually did the "lead them to water twice daily" thing for YEARS - and the water source was a creek that we had to chop a hole in with an axe! The horses DID get 10g of water in their stalls overnight, but it froze pretty fast at -20*. They also ate snow... But, I would not feel comfortable in this day and age, asking any of my horses to live like that, now that I do have the option of tank heaters.

I would never ever ever suggest withholding water as a "training method". I would think that would be a great way to end up with a vet call for a horse you can't handle...

 

[moomoodiddy]

Impaction colics are very common, and a good reason to always stay on top of your horse's water consumption each day.

We top dress our horse's feed with loose salt in the winter, to encourage them to drink. In the summer, when they are sweating enough just standing around/grazing that they leave sweat tracks and "salt" on their coats, I start top dressing the feed with electrolytes to encourage drinking. I "pinch skin" quite frequently in the heat and cold, and I know what is a normal "snap back" for each horse. Horses that are not drinking enough get tempted with warm molasses water and soaked sloppy feed in winter, and fresh cool flavored water and sloppy feed in the summer. My senior horses ALWAYS get soaked feed year-round, partly because of their poor teeth, and partly to ensure that they are taking in enough water.

A lot of people do not realize that when you increase hay consumption in the winter, you also need to increase the water consumption. You have to be committed to "going to extremes" to get that water into them. You cannot sit back and think, "oh, they will break the ice on the tank/buckets and drink when they are thirsty enough." While it is true that *some* horses have enough self-preservation that they WILL break ice and drink ice cold water, many WILL NOT. Amish horses do not have the luxury of heated water in the winter, and growing up, neither did my horses - tank heaters just were not the "norm" 40 years ago... We actually did the "lead them to water twice daily" thing for YEARS - and the water source was a creek that we had to chop a hole in with an axe! The horses DID get 10g of water in their stalls overnight, but it froze pretty fast at -20*. They also ate snow... But, I would not feel comfortable in this day and age, asking any of my horses to live like that, now that I do have the option of tank heaters.

I would never ever ever suggest withholding water as a "training method". I would think that would be a great way to end up with a vet call for a horse you can't handle...

Wouldn't adding salt to the diet to encourage the consumption of water just cancel out the extra water? The more salt consumed, the more water should be consumed, unless it is making them drink an extremely high additional amount of water over the normal ratio.

 

[abigalerose]

​Wouldn't adding salt to the diet to encourage the consumption of water just cancel out the extra water? The more salt consumed, the more water should be consumed, unless it is making them drink an extremely high additional amount of water over the normal ratio.

I was wondering about this too?

 

[res]

Wouldn't adding salt to the diet to encourage the consumption of water just cancel out the extra water? The more salt consumed, the more water should be consumed, unless it is making them drink an extremely high additional amount of water over the normal ratio.

No, because you are not adding that much additional salt. Total per day is roughly 1 teaspoon per 1000# horse, less for ponies, more for drafts... It has been added under the direction of the vet - every vet, in every state we have lived in, has advocated adding salt to increase water intake.

It isn't enough salt to add stress to the digestive system or kidneys. It is just enough to encourage them to drink, and they do consistently go tank up after they finish their meals. I am assuming to get the salty taste out of their mouths, no different than most horses drinking after licking a salt block.

 

[Kusanar]

Quote:
I don't do it, but I have heard of people salting their hay when they put it up, stack one layer and broadcast salt, stack another layer, etc. This makes the horses clean up the hay better and makes them drink better in the winter. I salt my colic prone horses feed in the winter as well, and sometimes put salt in one water tub (they have access to 2 so they can choose) and usually the salt water is consumed faster than the normal water.

 

[res]

I don't do it, but I have heard of people salting their hay when they put it up, stack one layer and broadcast salt, stack another layer, etc. This makes the horses clean up the hay better and makes them drink better in the winter. I salt my colic prone horses feed in the winter as well, and sometimes put salt in one water tub (they have access to 2 so they can choose) and usually the salt water is consumed faster than the normal water.

I have never heard of anyone salting hay to improve consumption, but instead have heard of salting layers of stacked hay in the barn in attempt to "dry down" hay that has been baled too wet and is at risk of spontaneous combustion.

There are also dessicant sprays available that can be used on winrows of hay in wet climates, before baling, to hasten the drying process. Some horse owners report issues with "treated" hay such as colic, heaves, dust, and horses refusing to eat it. I have never found any concrete evidence or studies of these issues, and assume most of it is just anecdotal stories... Many horse owners have to have *something* to blame for problems they have, and will grasp at anything that seems plausible.

 

[Kusanar]

Quote:
They may do it as a desiccant, like I said, I don't do it, so I haven't seen first hand, but the people that have told me about it say that the horses lick the ground to get it all after it has been salted.

Yeah, horse owners are a special breed, they have livestock but treat it like a delicate pampered house cat most of the time... Mine are horses, yes, they are a little more delicate than cows, but, the first several years I had horses they were in a cow field, eating cow quality hay that was round baled and left outside, in barbed wire fences... No problems...

We even had a few bales that got rained on (we still feed rolls) so we didn't want to put it in the barn with the dry stuff while it was wet, left it outside in an effort to let it dry... it rained for a month... we ended up having to feed it eventually and it was the nastiest hay I've EVER seen, we would cut the strings and peel a good foot of black slime off of the outside before setting it down... There was grass and mushrooms growing on it... and at least one lizard living IN the bale... that stuff was gross... But the 2 horses we fed it to ate it without any problems (they scrapped a good bit, but they did eat about half the bale). The only time I've ever had a sick horse was when my Arabian was having tons of feed pumped into him over the winter, developed a fatty liver condition from all of the feed (while he still dropped weight...) and stopped drinking, so he colicked... tubed him, IV'd him, kept him hopped up on bannimine and didn't feed him but a handful or 2 of hay each day for about 3 days and finally he pooped out the impaction and has been heathy ever since... So, in my experience, grain makes them sick, moldy hay doesn't...

Now, most of my hay is barn kept, we round bale 95% of our hay to make it easier to manage, but it is all stacked in the barn and the bale only lasts about a week once put outside so it doesn't have time to get moldy before it's eaten.

 

[Bunnylady]

We have very humid conditions here. I have had hay in a closed in building with a concrete floor, on pallets, and still had the lowest layers letting off clouds of spores if I try to keep it more than a few months. The "dust" in "dusty" hay usually isn't dirt, it's fungus spores - trust me, I know what I'm breathing! I have handled several horses that had to have their hay wet down before it was fed to them, or they wound up coughing and hacking from breathing the spores. I remember one that was having colic episodes every week to two weeks: when we switched him from Coastal (Bermuda) hay to Timothy, he stopped colicing. I don't know what might have been the cause, but "having a problem" with Bermuda hay isn't uncommon, which is really strange because a lot of the same horses graze Bermuda in the pastures with no ill effects at all.

Frankly, I couldn't imagine salting hay here - salt absorbs moisture, so salted hay here would wind up even wetter.

 

[Kusanar]

Frankly, I couldn't imagine salting hay here - salt absorbs moisture, so salted hay here would wind up even wetter.

I wonder if the salt preserves the hay much the same as a salt cured ham, country ham doesn't mold at room temp, wonder if it helps keep the mold down by lightly pickling the hay? Would be interesting to research.