Bucket colours!

PapaverFollis

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Slightly mad one...

Does anyone find that their horses prefer particular colours of water buckets?

?

My little herd have three trugs of water, all in the same place. They are draining the blue and purple trugs dry before they touch the orange trug! I am going to go out and switch them around to see if it's just about the positions but I'm pretty sure it's the colour!

I once laughed like a drain when someone told me the "equine communicator" told them that their horse preferred a certain colour bucket by the way! ?
 

PapaverFollis

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Oh my. I wonder what the orange bucket did to offend my lot. The both had orange buckets at the last livery yard too!
 
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Yes, we used to have an old boy on retirement livery with us. He would not drink out of a bucket unless it was black. He had a black water trough in his stable until we sourced a big black trug bucket for him.

He was a rather special chap though, he was lame and we suspected an issue with his knee, so called the vet, vet walked into the stable and said to him "right, old man whats the matter?", he lifted his knee towards the vet. ? the vet was a bit like "what the heck?" and asked if we'd just witnessed what he did. It was no surprise to us as he was very good at communicating with us.
 

AShetlandBitMeOnce

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I have bought trugs of nearly every colour to test out what his preferences are, I buy them cheap and carry them full so the handles break often. He has two trugs of water at a time, and will drink one fully before drinking from the other.

I have discovered that he likes the thick silver ones the most, followed by the thick baby blue. He is indifferent to purple and green and shows no real preference between the two. He will drink from the white one first but only for a short while, as he soon gets his dinner in it (his nose is generally covered in it) he will then stop drinking from that one if it looks dirty. Yellow is next, he will drink from it if he has to - he prefers red to yellow, but prefers blue to red. He will not drink from the orange one unless I am holding it, he will dip hay in the pink one but will not drink from it and he will not drink from the black or navy ones under any circumstances.
 
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Thinking on it it is always the orange bucket that the mares touch last too!

We had an animal communicator "talk" to one of mine before. He went away the perfect kids pony, came back 4 months later unridable. She said that he didn't like where he went to and he wanted to be called Free and have a red food bucket. Well he is called Freebie and he has a black one! So long as there is food in it he doesn't care!
 

criso

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Mustangs will drink from any clean water source they come across regardless of whether they are thirsty in case there is no more water for miles. Domestic horses have a preference on colour ?

And mine has to have his special yellow bucket taken to shows to try and tempt him to drink especially on hot days
 

Chappie

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Interesting! There's a horse at the yard I'm at who apparently told an animal communicator that he likes blue buckets to drink from.
 

ILuvCowparsely

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Slightly mad one...

Does anyone find that their horses prefer particular colours of water buckets?

?

My little herd have three trugs of water, all in the same place. They are draining the blue and purple trugs dry before they touch the orange trug! I am going to go out and switch them around to see if it's just about the positions but I'm pretty sure it's the colour!

I once laughed like a drain when someone told me the "equine communicator" told them that their horse preferred a certain colour bucket by the way! ?
mine mostly have auto drinkers, but pony has one of my cross country colours ( yellow) but have blue set too

My late mare prefered light coloured buckets white first then yellow

that is because she had uveitis.
 

cindars

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Thinking on it it is always the orange bucket that the mares touch last too!

We had an animal communicator "talk" to one of mine before. He went away the perfect kids pony, came back 4 months later unridable. She said that he didn't like where he went to and he wanted to be called Free and have a red food bucket. Well he is called Freebie and he has a black one! So long as there is food in it he doesn't care!
 

cindars

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Sorry don't know what happened there my girl has two buckets one white one black she won't touch the black one
 

WandaMare

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I use the white containers which the supplements come in, the bigger ones obviously, they are about 3/4 of a normal bucket size. My horses always drink from these in preference to their normal round buckets. Suits me because they are lighter to carry to the field, not sure why they prefer them though but maybe the colour.
 

poiuytrewq

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I’ve got two holidaying race horses here and they had two big water buckets one blue one black. They will not touch the black one! ?‍♀️ It’s been used since new as a water bucket... I don’t get it!
 

PapaverFollis

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So horses have colour preferences but those preferences are not consistent across all horses! How weird. I thought if anything it would be that all horses preferred X and didn't like Y because of their eyesight or something... but no. Just different horses like different things.
 
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