Electrolytes or salt?

Beth206

Beth206

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My mare is currently fed half a scoop of Alfa A molasses free and 450g of Dodson & Horrell ultimate balancer. I was at Bramham Trials over the weekend with a friend and was speaking to a woman in the Dodson & Horrell tent who said that I should consider adding electrolytes to her feed.

My horse is a 4yo traditional gypsy cob weighing around 420kg. She is currently ridden around 4 times a week 2/3 times in our field and 1/2 hacks a week. She is a typical young horse and burns herself out after 30-40 mins of hacking so I keep our hacks within that time frame. She is never dripping in sweat when I have ridden her but it is visible she has been sweating. She is turned out 24/7 and a warm horse in general, in mild weather she can come down from the field and be quite sweaty. Occasionally she can feel a little sluggish - which the Dodson & Horrell lady said is typical of horses deficient in electrolytes - she will feel like she is working with a hangover.

She does have access to a salt lick which I occasionally catch her licking. Should I supplement electrolytes to her feed when she has sweated up from work or try adding salt to her feed every day and see how we get on?

There are a couple of links to pictures of her so you can see her condition
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTL9dvwFcY0/?taken-by=the_little_redbrick
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMMHxzcg7nH/?taken-by=bethgilman_x
 
I would start by adding salt to her feed, I feed around 1-2 tablespoons. Horses can't get enough salt from a lick so need it in their feed :)
 
xgemmax said:
I would start by adding salt to her feed, I feed around 1-2 tablespoons. Horses can't get enough salt from a lick so need it in their feed :)
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agree ^^

I feed one of mine electrolytes when she is in work, she is sweating freely at the moment when schooling and competing medium/advanced medium which is a considerable effort for her!

The other just gets salt in her tea. i only fed her electrolytes when we were 3 day eventing, she won't eat the damn stuff usually. The main requirement is for sodium so normal table salt will def help.
 
Thanks Gemma and Milliepops - i did think an electrolyte was quite hardcore for the anount of work she is doing but D&H lady said it didnt necesarily matter about workload. Salt it is then.
 
I've never fed salt or electrolytes to horses unless they were doing a lot of fast work and sweating freely; for instance I recently gave electrolytes to a horse which had travelled from Spain (to Ireland) and had been sweating a bit on the transport. Never had a problem with sluggishness, etc.

All my horses have free access to salt blocks, and use them, but I'm not sure I want to force feed salt to a horse in their feed?
 
Most feed reps will advocate that owners should splash out on all kinds of expensive things for their horses which may be in very average levels of work...

but virtually all of them agree that horses *in work* don't get their daily salt requirement from most UK forage... so if they are suggesting a penny's worth of bog standard table salt, that sounds good to me.

Most people on here seem to rate Forageplus, so here's a run down of their way of thinking, related to UK forage & performance of our horses
https://forageplus.co.uk/electrolyte-supplements-for-horses/
 
I feed salt to nugz - he has a plain salt lick but never touches it, I can't get any form of electrolytes in him but he will tolerate an amount of dry salt in dry feed. This is throughout the summer on hot days, and everytime after riding.
The only salt lick he will guarantee to use is the Himalayan salt blocks, but they are too high in iron, and he becomes like a crack addict with them so I've ended up with other issues.
 
I ONLY feed salt to mine if they've worked very hard and sweated a lot. If they have they only get 1 tablespoon full but if they haven't worked/sweated they don't get any.
 
There was a leaflet in our local Countrywide recently reminding all farmers that spring grass is high in potassium and low in sodium - so feed salt to cattle to avoid staggers.

Staggers isn't common in horses in the uk, but they are still eating grass high in potassium at this time of the year. A tablespoon of salt goes some way to addressing the potassium : sodium imbalance. They don't take much off a salt lick.
 
Thanks for all your comments. I have been looking into it a lot - she does have a himilayan salt lick which she sometines licks. I have bought some table salt and just popped a teaspoon (initially) in her feed after we had been out hacking and she was a sweaty mess. She seemed to really enjoy it.

I read that if they are deficient in sodium it tastes sweet to them and they cant get enough and if their sodium levels are fine the salt will taste bitter. Think i must be deficient in salt as i love it **covers eyes**

SEL i have also heard how it helps to balance the potassium bs sodium levels. There is a website called calm healthy horses which looks at the relationship between sodium and other minerals and how it affects the behaviour of your horse. An interesting read if you don't have anything better to do
 
luminart said:
I prefer to feed with salt, because I don't like to add something unnatural
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Electrolytes are natural - they are also essential, especially in hot weather when a horse may be sweating just standing around.

However, you do need to look for a suitable mix, one that doesn't contain glucose. A mix of Sodium, Chloride, Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium, all of which are available in a salt form, i.e. sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.
 
I did a little experiment this morning. My Ardennes has been sweating bucket loads over the past few days - he is not designed for this weather poor boy - so I split his breakfast into 2 and put a tablespoon of salt in one.

He tried both buckets (rather impressed to have breakfast x 2) and the salty one was the one he came back to and gobbled first.
 
My retired horse dislikes salt and and isn't keen on eating his feed if it's salty. The others prefer it. I add electrolytes if they have worked and got very sweaty but generally just salt.
I have however recently read that table salt isn't ideal as it's had some minerals removed and anti caking agent added. No idea if this is or isn't true but have purchased a bucket of crushed hymalayan sea salt instead!
 
poiuytrewq said:
My retired horse dislikes salt and and isn't keen on eating his feed if it's salty. The others prefer it. I add electrolytes if they have worked and got very sweaty but generally just salt.
I have however recently read that table salt isn't ideal as it's had some minerals removed and anti caking agent added. No idea if this is or isn't true but have purchased a bucket of crushed hymalayan sea salt instead!
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I've read mixed reviews on table salt - some saying its better because its had the minerals removed so you're not feeding anything you shouldn't!
 
poiuytrewq said:
My retired horse dislikes salt and and isn't keen on eating his feed if it's salty. The others prefer it. I add electrolytes if they have worked and got very sweaty but generally just salt.
I have however recently read that table salt isn't ideal as it's had some minerals removed and anti caking agent added. No idea if this is or isn't true but have purchased a bucket of crushed hymalayan sea salt instead!
Click to expand...

Himalayan salt isn't great for horses as it has a high concentration of iron in it (that's what makes it pink).

Ordinary table salt (without the anti-caking agent) is fine. It's pure NaCl (sodium chloride). Avoid iodized salt (most horses don't need supplemental iodine), though Lo Salt (a 50/50 mix of NaCl and KCl) is also OK to use.
 
Actually, the iron levels in Himalyan salt aren't particularly high, considering how much a horse would lick off it. On the other hand, none of the other minerals in there are at anything other than at minuscule levels either, so contribute virtually nothing to the daily trace mineral requirements of a horse.

I think "natural" mined rock salts are basically a rip-off. They cost much, much more than table salt, and you are potentially responsible for destroying landscapes (Himalaya) and a higher CO2 footprint to transport the salt halfway around the earth. The level of trace minerals is tiny - not enough to be beneficial, but equally not enough to be detrimental. Table salt is much purer, and the only "contaminant" (if you want to call it that) are anti-caking agents that are proven to be harmless in humans, while the contamination in mined rock salt is largely unknown for each chunk (and can include such fun things as arsenic, though as above, at tiny levels probably not harmful). On that basis, I'd say the risk of feeding table salt is lower than the risk of feeding rock salt.

As an aside, if you want salt with minerals in it, sea salt will provide those as well (alongside iodine, which may or may not be useful. I live far away from the coast, and using iodised table salt is actually a good thing to get some needed iodine into the diet).

IMO, regular table salt is a good bet in most cases because the other electrolytes (potassium, magnesium, calcium) are generally available at much higher levels in the diet. Sodium and chloride are most likely to be the short.
 
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