Water buckets - does colour matter?

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gallopingby

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I use large dustbins to hold water for my field ponies and they’re topped up regularly.
Originally they were black but last year l had to replace one and used a spare red dustbin; normally there are two black dustbins and a red one. I’ve had someone checking the bins for me, in view of the weather, and she has noticed that the red bin is the least popular and the ponies much prefer the black bins.
As an experiment we’ve added a blue bin to the mix, it’s been popular within a short time.
Do ponies have colour preferences? Has anyone researched colours psychology in relation to feed or water buckets?
 
My field has a black water trough but I read somewhere that horses prefer drinking from blue vessels so, when I moved fields, I put a large blue trug in for her water. She refused to drink from it 🙄 and I had to put the black trough back in the field… which she happily drank from as soon as I filled it 😂

Interestingly she has a blue drinker in her stable which she does drink from so, maybe she’s just spoiled and fussy 😂
 
Horses don’t see the colour red so red things look less distinct to them. From what I’ve read, yellow and pale blue tend to be the most popular colours among horses. But the black bins would be more visible to them, especially as they are used to them.
 
I used blue giant lick buckets (100kg) for water in pens.
One refused to drink out of it at all, had to change that to black.

Bought two black small water troughs, it's taken a year for them to use them 🙄.

Regular black water trough is absolutely fine.
No rhyme or reason.

Big horse as a youngster would have a meltdown if you changed the colour of his feed or water bucket 🙄
 
It's quite interesting to take a look at -

I've recently moved yards and whilst I was waiting for my big field buckets to arrive, I used 2 large red gorilla buckets - one blue and one red.

I found that my boys drank from both equally, but now my big field buckets have arrived they seem to be drinking a lot more from them - they're both yellow.
 
When I hand reared the two colts (anyone remember Freddy and Harry? they wouldn't put their heads into anything dark but would happily use a red or blue bucket just as deep - but then they were a bit special :rolleyes: Most foals avoid anything dark or deep.
 
Although mine will drink and eat out of the standard black buckets, he does like the Aldi yellow one.

Also spooks more at darker poles, likes the pink and white, is wary of the purple and white, hates the black and white
 
Mine have had black and been happy, they are also happy with the current yellow ones. Don't think I've ever tried red.

The dogs on the other hand dont like black buckets, but they love drinking out of my red (yard) buckets.

The downside I find with the yellow buckets is that I have to do several bee sweeps a day as they seem to be attracted to them.
 
I'm sure there's been an actual study on this🤔
Mine prefers black and blue, will not drink from yellow. Yellow seems to be preferred by insects.
 
I'm not sure about buckets but there's a horse on my yard that hates a lot of white objects, white poles and blocks in the arena are particularly bad to him. He cut his hind leg badly and had to have the vet out, after dealing with the cut she put a white bandage on and he totally panicked when he saw it - racing round the stable as if he didn't recognise his own leg and thought the white bandage was chasing him. We quickly grabbed him and put a red vetwrap over the white bandage and he settled immediately! The vet said she wouldn't have believed it had she not seen it with her own eyes and she was a hugely experienced vet who had worked all over the world.
 
Yes absolutely.

I have two square edged buckets that are clipped to the side of my stable. My horse always favours the yellow over the white, despite having scrubbed the white to within an inch of its life. Both are scrubbed thoroughly every evening before rinsing out and refilling.

Both have the same width and depth as the other. Neither have had anything die inside I.e mouse or bird. I've never found any horse poo in there either.

Another livery used to use a blue and white bucket, again hanging like mine and her horse hated the white one too.

I suppose it is more transparent than the yellow but even so!

I've also noticed Lari leaves water in favour of the giant water tub in his field which we scrubbed and empty and refil every other day. When we refill it he will drink a good two inches of water which is equal to 3/4 bucket even though he's not touched his water buckets much in his stable. Presume it's because its fresh and cold!
 

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Had this conversation recently with my trimmer. We jokingly agreed we have buckets to swap as hers like the ones mine doesn’t!
 
I am changing my blue trugs in the fields for black as bees seem to much prefer the blue.

I prefer the blue for being able to see that they are scrubbed clean better than black.

The horses don't seem to mind!
 
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