Does putting salt in water make it not freeze?

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niagaraduval

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We have about a foot of snow and it has been about -13 all week, all the water buckets are frozen so neds can't have a drink and I can't soak my hay
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Does putting salt in it de-freeze it? and also, Is too much salt bad for a horse?
 
Too much salt could kill your horse
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Quite simply, your horse will not drink the water if it has enough salt in it to stop it freezing as it will be 100% unpalatable!
 
i wouldnt have thought so. the sea still freezes lol
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too much salt can be bad. you only need to supplement them with salt or elctrolytes if they loose lots when sweatng etc
 
I wouldn't put salt in your horses drinking water, as a very small amount of salt in their diet is fine but they get that from other sources, so be very careful. You'd probably need quite a high salt concentration too to stop a water bucket from freezing.

You can help prevent it from freezing in other ways though. Some people say insulating from the ground underneath helps, with either wood or a wodge of newspaper. You could also wrap/tie newspaper around the sides for the same reason, or try floating a ball in it so that the surface moves and hopefully is less inclined to freeze over. Even if that doesn't work, the tennis ball is easier to take out and smash the ice than breaking a solid layer!
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stick a foot ball in it so they can push it down, or pad the sides of your bucket in with beadding..

Dont put salt in it.. would you like to drink salt water.. thought not.. It wil make them more thirsty and mess with the osmosis and defussion of the body..

Lou x
 
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Umm put a tennis ball in there? not sure if that will help in temps of -13 though. Yikes.

O christ, i'll have to pack me thermals!

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More than just thermals!! 20 pairs of socks might do it
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How about putting the water bucket inside another larger bucket and stuffing something insulating down the gap? I've seen this done using hay and also with muck (yum... depends how fussy your horses are I suppose!) I'm not sure whether that would be frostproof at -13 but it might help to keep it liquid for longer.
 
I would not personally add salt to water and have it as the only supply over a long period of time. There are times when giving salt water as an electrolyte might be appropriate, but not in the concentration or over a sustained time period.

read this the other day
 
No there's nothing you will be able to use to keep it from freezing except thermostatically controlled heaters in your troughs/buckets like we have available to us over here. Most of my fields have heated automatic waterers however one field just has a massive trough in it. I fill this trough up using my standpipe which is directly above the trough, so just have to lift the syphon handle up and hey presto! The standpipe goes down to 8ft below ground level as the ground freezes down to 4ft here most winters.

Once temperatures go down to below -10, you are beggared unless you have an electrical heated element in them. Don't be tempted to use boiling water as it will freeze to a block MUCH quicker than if you put out warm water due to speeded up heat loss and evaporation of hot versus warm. So warm water will remain liquid for a bit longer than boiling water, but in the end it will still freeze.

Salt will not work very well. It will defrost some of the water in your buckets, but not enough to make it worthwhile, and you'd have to put so much salt in to make this happen that it would be unsafe.
 
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