Just a reminder about drinking enough

[AppyLover2]

I took my dog in to be groomed this morning and asked the vet the usual "what's going on?". He commented that he was seeing a lot more colic than he should be. He said "It's cold, the horses aren't drinking enough and people aren't giving them salt so they will."

Just thought I'd mention it since I know it's cold about everywhere right now.

 

[Humhill]

I've noticed a lot of people don't feed salt.

We got one horse from someone and noticed he was urinating a lot. We thought he was drinking lots of water because he was bored in his stall. Then, we noticed when he would go out in the pasture (where we keep salt blocks) he would go straight to the salt and lick for several minutes. Come to find out, he hadn't been fed salt and was craving it. So he would just lick and lick, then drink water, then urinate all the time. Eventually he got used to it, and the cravings went away.

 

[Frankie]

What a great reminder.

When I was at Purdue on Monday, only there a few hours,

horse, after horse was being brought off of trailers with colic symptoms. They said it had been that way all morning.

We for sure need to be more aware in this type of weather.

 

[Jill]

Another thing too is to provide heated water containers if at all possible. Just breaking ice out of water may not be enough in a lot of cases, because a lot of horses will not drink near-freezing water (or may not drink enough of it, because it is not comfortable).

 

[Joyce]

We have heated buckets to all but two stallions. Those two stallions have their water checked a few times a day to make sure they both have drinking water or I add hot water to melt the ice in the bucket. They all have access to salt blocks year round.

Joyce L