A few warm days are coming!
A horse loses much more minerals through sweating than people, these have to be replenished via the ration. After all, a horse cannot opt for a bag of crisps or put some extra salt on his dinner. In addition, the horse will start sweating at lower temperatures than we do: the fermentation of their roughage ensures a lot of heat production, above 25 degrees horses are already actively cooling down. If horses sweat a lot during training or do not get a balancer or vitamin or mineral pellet, then you can start adding salt at 20+ degrees. They wont sweat extremely, but do sweat a little bit throughout the day. That also causes loss of minerals.
You can supplement in several ways, over normal food, with a salt lick or simply offering salt separately, through water or in a bucket. A horse senses when it needs salt, they will certainly absorb this independently if it is available. There are some horses that like salt very much and continue to eat it, so it is better not to give it unlimited.
Pony up to 250 kg: 2-5 grams
Pony up to 450 kg: 3-10 grams
Horse up to 700 kg: 5-15 grams
Horse over 700 kg: 5-20 grams
The minimum amounts are what the horse needs on a normal day, the food that is given can already meet this need. On warm days, especially if the horse also works and sweats more, the need can be up to 3 times higher. Make sure that your horse has the highest amount on days that the temperature exceeds 25 degrees. If you feed it through the feed, do not immediately give the highest amount, but give the basic need and let the horse choose whether it wants more.
A lick is often used, but these are not always practical. For example, the horse has to lick it for a long time to get to 10 grams of salt. Loose or dissolved salt is easier to absorb. Always provide sufficient drinking water, so when dissolving in a water bucket, always offer a bucket of water without salt.
The type of salt is also important: standard table salt contains iodine. People often have an iodine deficiency. This is absolutely not the case with horses, so you certainly do not want to feed extra iodine. One salt is not the other, standard salt only has sodium and chloride, other minerals are not in it. These are also important to supplement! For example, choose Celtic sea salt, which contains a wide range of minerals. Celtic Sea Salt is now also available at The Horse Therapist.
Anouk & Jente from HorseComplete
Translated by Sharon The Horse Therapist