is it bad for a horse to drink algea

jackessex

jackessex

Well-Known Member
Joined
15 April 2008
Messages
310
Visit site
hi all as in title,we have those large cubes for holding water and ive noticed that in one of them the water is coming out slightly green.The cubes are wrapped in black plastic to try and restrict the sun on them.i just wondered if its harmfull??
 
No idea (though I'm quite sure that lots of horses regularly drink slightly green water, but something like blue-green algae is poisonous, but rare) but black plastic will make the boxes hotter as it absorbs the heat of the sun - don't know if that promotes algal growth.
 
A farmer up my way has the most horrible green slimey bathtubs that he uses to water his ponies. I think he cleans them about once a year. As far as I know none of his ponies have keeled over from drinking out of them.

..All I know is that I wouldn't like to drink out of it myself!!
 
Algae in the growth phase is not too bad but when it dies and starts to decompose it can give off harmful toxins. There are various different solutionns but to my knowledge they are all designed for troughs with flowing water as opposed to your cubes which are storing water. We use several gallops which use those cubes for storing water to wash off horses and drink but as a rule we will not let the horses drink from them we bring water for them to drink. Water quality is very important as it can affect the feed utilisation and vitamin/mineral absorption in the horse.
 
Depends on what the algae type is.

I know I wouldn't want my horse to drink it - I prefer to provide clearn, fresh water.
 
cant be that bad as i clean the water trough out once a week and while im scrubbing it taz scrapes it off the side with his teeth... but then he is a bit strange but the water is always clear, i hate them having green water :o
 
We have two troughs in our field, one which is filled by mains water and one which is old and fills with rain.
Our horses are often caught drinking out of the old trough, especially in dry spells when the water has gone green and most has evaporated! Even a dead snail didn't put them off... Yuck! My horse much prefers, in winter, to drink from the muddy puddles that form in the field after a long spell of rain. Even the mains-filled trough contains duckweed and those little beetles you find in ponds...
VERY rarely when they are in at night do they touch their freshly scrubbed and daily filled water buckets. I usually end up tipping mine out full in the morning.

I think they like their water to have different flavours - green slime one day, dead snail another, soil and grass the next. Council pop as a last resort.
 
I don't know what harm if any it might cause, but I do know that I wouldn't expect our mares to drink anything I wouldn't drink myself. An old dishwashing brush and a bucket to bale out, along with a bit of elbow grease will leave you with good clean troughs!
 
amymay said:
Depends on what the algae type is.

I know I wouldn't want my horse to drink it - I prefer to provide clearn, fresh water.
Click to expand...

out of choice i would rather they had clean fresh water but as we have no mains water we have no choice,it doesnt seem to bother him i just wondered :)
 
jackessex said:
out of choice i would rather they had clean fresh water but as we have no mains water we have no choice,it doesnt seem to bother him i just wondered :)
Click to expand...

Can't you take some up in a jerry can each day? I need to do that with ours (is a pita though!) so that they always have clean fresh water. Particularly when it starts getting cooler I am mega paranoid that they always drink enough so I don't want any tiny thing putting them off.
 
ThePony said:
Can't you take some up in a jerry can each day? I need to do that with ours (is a pita though!) so that they always have clean fresh water. Particularly when it starts getting cooler I am mega paranoid that they always drink enough so I don't want any tiny thing putting them off.
Click to expand...

the prob i have is that the track going to field is a 10 min walk and gets undrivable once it starts raining :( even pushing a barrow is a nightmare,which is why we use those big cubes they are set up to collect rain water but seem to be "greening" up this yr.
 
Mine love the green water.....I really wouldnt worry about it.....I shouldn't imagine the ponies on the NF have someone cleaning water troughs for them! I should imagine they drink from any old watering hole!!!
 
In summer our trough (when we used to have troughs that worked oh the luxury) used to go green in a short time, I remember feeling sorry for the hosses that it wasn't pristine so I lugged a couple of tub trugs and filled them with clean water fresh from the tap, quess which they preferred? :D

Nowadays of course the troughs are all switched off so we spend our lives carting water to the field to fill tub trugs, but I've seen them leave the clean water and drink from puddles on the ground too!
 
I have no idea whether the algae will do any harm. I do however use the cube water containers - I presume you mean the IBC containers with the hole in the top and tap at the bottom. Mine drove me mad for going green and covering it just didn't work, I then tried lots of ways to try and clean it but nothing worked. I then bought a sweeping brush that you can screw the head off, you can put the brush head through the hole in the top keeping hold of it and then screw the stave back on, this cleans the container fantastic and takes about 10 minutes every 10 days or so. I purchased it from Wilkinson's, it is an outdoor sweeping brush and cost about £4 . Hope this helps
 
horseymummy said:
I have no idea whether the algae will do any harm. I do however use the cube water containers - I presume you mean the IBC containers with the hole in the top and tap at the bottom. Mine drove me mad for going green and covering it just didn't work, I then tried lots of ways to try and clean it but nothing worked. I then bought a sweeping brush that you can screw the head off, you can put the brush head through the hole in the top keeping hold of it and then screw the stave back on, this cleans the container fantastic and takes about 10 minutes every 10 days or so. I purchased it from Wilkinson's, it is an outdoor sweeping brush and cost about £4 . Hope this helps
Click to expand...

hi yes those are the cubes,i can clean them when they get low but my worry is that through the winter they stay fairly full as they fill up from the rain water and we are unable to get the bowser to the field to fully fill them with fresh water so the water will stay in them untill the spring,do you drain yours every 10 days then fill them back up??
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top