Apple juice to encourage drinking water???

[Hels_Bells]

Someone has suggested to me that adding apple juice to your horses water is a great way to encourage drinking before/during/after competitions. Does anyone here do this? And if so what sort of apple juice would you recommend?? A lot of them seem to be from concentrate and contain loads of sugar so not sure they are a good idea?

 

[Santa Clause]

Someone has suggested to me that adding apple juice to your horses water is a great way to encourage drinking before/during/after competitions. Does anyone here do this? And if so what sort of apple juice would you recommend?? A lot of them seem to be from concentrate and contain loads of sugar so not sure they are a good idea?

worked for me
cheap tesoc value although don't add too much esp. if their tb tpye as it sends them a bit fruitloop

 

[miss_bird]

Same when my horse was ill she needed to be encouraged to drink more, nearest place was co-op, their cheap stuff added about 1/4 of bottle and thank fully tub trug of water drunk by next morning.
Kept horse on it for about a week thengradually put less in, typical TB but done her no harm and got her better

 

[celia]

We used it when we moved house as they were reluctant to drink at first as the water was different. We put 1/3 carton of apple juice per tub trug for the first two days then gradually reduced the amount. Worked well for us - it's well diluted and not there all the time so I don't think you need to worry about the sugar.

 

[potty_4_piebalds]

I have never heard of this before but will remember it in case i need to encourage a horse to drink. its a great idea

 

[Keltic]

I tried quartering apples for my mare and floating them in her bucket so she had to bob for them! It worked a treat.

 

[Penniless]

I don't know if this would be of interest, but log into http://www.horsequencher.co.uk It is a new product which is aimed at getting your horses to drink after competitions, etc. The details are, I'm sure, all on the website.

All I can say about the product is, that the lady who has come up with the product came along to our show in Newmarket the other week and apart from handing out samples, was going around the showground offering the product for the horses. Amazingly I had a couple of competitors come up to me afterwards to say how brilliant the product was - they said they always had a problem in getting their horses to drink after an event but with this product, the horse was offered the bucket of water with the quencher in it, they put their heads down, had a sniff and then drunk. Everyone seemed thrilled with the product. Lucinda who owns the company had two flavours to offer (apple and mint).

I've not had a chance to try it myself, but judging from what I heard on the day, everyone seemed very impressed with it.

 

[Oberon]

I have used cartons of fresh apple juice with beet at endurance competitions to try and drag my horse's attention from his haynet.

I keep a few cartons in stock and mix them with feeds as a treat occasionally.

 

[welshyrider]

I have tried this and changed to cranberry juice, horse wasnt drinking much, liked apple juice but had very stinky wees, cranberry is very alkaline and they actually liked it more...... Its now a regular treat!
I got mine in bulk from makro.

 

[Hels_Bells]

Thanks so much for the tips and advice everyone - will def give this a try!

 

[paulineh]

Horsequencher is in fact an America company and was made in the USA.

Lucinda is the UK distributor for the product not the owner.

The product is very good and they now have more flavors to try.

 

[Birker2020]

Someone has suggested to me that adding apple juice to your horses water is a great way to encourage drinking before/during/after competitions. Does anyone here do this? And if so what sort of apple juice would you recommend?? A lot of them seem to be from concentrate and contain loads of sugar so not sure they are a good idea?

I use 'Perfectly Clear' Red Apple flavoured water to disguise the taste of bute in my horses feed. It is on sale in Iceland in 2 litre bottles and costs 50p. My horse adores the taste. You'd have to use a lot to encourage drinking at shows and the like though.

How about speedi beet water. Speedi beet is ready in about ten minutes if you use cold water and five if you use boiling. If you take a small container of speedi beet with you to a comp and add to bucket of water the horse will drink the speedi beet water. This works well at summer shows so long as the speedi beet is not left in the water too long in the heat as it will start to ferment.

http://www.silverspring.co.uk/pages/products/prod_det.aspx?tpc=AA&fmc=AI&fnc=AA