HELP - Drinking Problems

T

Toby773

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 August 2008
Messages
319
Visit site
Over the last 24 hrs my horse has stopped drinking her water properly; instead she's slapping her lips at it as if eating it! She is getting water down her but probably not really enought. She's eating her haylage ok and everything else appears ok (droppings etc) at the moment.

Am concerned so will ring vet in morn if no improvement.

Any thoughts + other things to look for. Thank you:)

Also in New Lounge
 
You could try adding apple juice or something similar into her feed to get her drinking, also adding apples into the water sometimes work, feeding her some type of sugar beet or similar as well with lots of water in it.
 
^^ that will be it - the cold water is perhaps numbing her muzzle!

I offer my 4 lads warmed water - I fill up the trough and then add a bucket of very hot water to lift the temperature. It is not hot, probably about 15C.

They all know the drill now and queue up to fill up before it goes cold.

Between them they will drain the trough.
 
Don't mean to sound harsh and uncaring but if she's fine in every other way then she will drink when she needs to! It may be that she's getting plenty of water eating newly thawed out and absolutely sodden grass. Or it may be as others have said, that she's a nellie about v cold water. Lots of horses just wibble their lips in their water bucket - I wouldn't worry. You can do a pinch test to reassure yourself. Grab a good pinch of skin on the side of her neck, pull it up into a little tent shape then let it go. In a healthy horse it should ping straight back to where it was. If a horse is dehydrated, the little tent will take a long time to go down.

My new mare is picky about her water. Only had her a few weeks so don't know enough about her to be blase yet but her previous owner has confirmed this. Last week, when all the water in the universe was frozen solid I had to bring water from home in 2 huge containers. I had to fill the containers in my kitchen tipping washing up bowls full of tepid water into a huge funnel thing. I rinsed the washing up bowl carefully (I thought) and the 3 other neds were ok about it but Bridie refused to touch it for 2 days. She didn't die, obviously found enough liquid elsewhere (stream in their field) but at least it's made me rinse the bowl much more carefully!
 
It’s a little known fact that horses can be thirstier in the winter than they are in the summer. A horse’s drive to drink is dictated by his thirst. This thirst mechanism doesn’t always function as efficiently in the winter as it does in the summer. In fact the colder it gets, the less your horse feels like drinking – even when his body really needs fluid.
Drinking water in the winter lowers your horse's body temperature - ‘it’s already cold – why drink and get colder?’ His body then has to work double to warm itself back up from the heat loss that is incurred so he will instinctively drink less.
This is a problem because water is one of the most important items a horse needs to be healthy. Horses need quite a bit of water to wash all the food they ingest through their intestinal tract. If horses don't drink enough they can get a really bad colic or intestinal impaction. In fact the main reason the incidence of colic increases from December to March is that many horses don’t drink enough water in the winter months.
There's a good feature in this week's Horse & Hound saying how vets have seen a glut of cold weather colic recently and they recommend horse owners "make sure their horses drink plenty of water".
The problem is water is often not noticed by some horse owners as the reason for this disruption in gut activity. Some people associate drinking and dehydration in their horses with only hot weather - it seems more of a natural corrolation - when in fact the opposite is true. Older horses too often suffer from sensitive teeth and gum disease that restricts them from drinking enough in winter and as horses age, their bodies contain less water, making them more susceptible to dehydration and impaction colic.
The other thing to watch out for if your horse is not drinking enough is malnutrition. If your horse is not drinking sufficient water, it will not produce enough saliva to mix with its feed as it is being chewed. It will then back off eating and perhaps not produce enough energy to keep itself warm in the cold weather and this may result in weight loss despite adequate nutrition. A normal adult horse will secrete 10 gallons of saliva per day to help soften its food as it is chewed and swallowed.
Five years ago you'd never see human beings walking around with water bottles in their hands as a matter of course. Now it is common place. Horse owners are becoming much more aware nowadays about the importance of hydration with their horses health and performance and are wise to their horses if they are not drinking enough. This is especially true in winter when most health problems from horses not drinking enough occur, so you are wise to be worried and it would be a good idea to be proactive in doing something about this before you possibly run into serious health problems, especially as the ultra cold snap is due back at the end of this week.
There are products available that will get your horse to drink when you need him to, google 'help horse to drink' or some such. Or, as others have said here try warm water although sometimes horses will still prefer the cold stuff and you might need to be more proactive than just offering warm water.
Vet David L Marshall from the University of Delaware did a paper 'Horse Health Depends on Water'. He concluded: "What horses prefer, however, does not always add up to increased water intake. For example in very cold weather, when drinking water temperatures approach freezing, a horse’s water intake will decrease. This decrease in daily water intake may lead to problems, frequently impaction colic. Early recommendations to promote increased water intake were to provide the horse with a bucket of warmed water alongside its regular water. We discovered the horse preferred drinking from the cold water, leaving only the warm, and continued to drink too little water per day. When we took away the cold water, leaving only the warm, the horse drank the warm water, actually consuming a great quantity of water per day. So next winter, to increase your horse’s daily water intake, warm up its water (warm to 60-70 degrees F) and remove cold water sources."
Hope all of this helps!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top