Now for my new favorite horse thing. After last week's near-colic scare, I got myself some Horse Quencher. (They didn't send me this, I bought it from Valley Vet. This review is entirely unsolicited.)
You guys. GO GET SOME OF THIS STUFF. I should have taken a video of Lex drinking the water right down. Yesterday, I put a scoop of this stuff in a bucket, filled it with water, held it up, and her eyes (well, the one I could see) lit up like a kid's on Christmas. She put her perfect nose in the bucket and sucked it dry. Today I tried it again, just for fun. I wanted to see if it was a fluke, and I wanted to watch her drink a bucket of water in one go again. It worked! This is too expensive for me to give her on the daily, but I'll reserve it for the times when she needs it - trailering, shows, super hot days, times when she doesn't feel good. But it will always have a place in my tack room, especially now that I'm obsessed with horse hydration.
Speaking of horse hydration, do you have opinions on electrolytes? Horse Quencher isn't an electrolyte, but now that it is summer and Lex is about to get back into some serious work, I'm thinking of adding SmartLytes to her SmartPak. There's not really a downside. Anything I can do to keep this girl happy and healthy is okay by me.
My only comment on hydration is that my research-obsessed physical therapist friend told me that the research indicates that electrolyte loading can teach the horse's body to just get rid of excess and thereby negate any benefit.
ReplyDeleteI give Cuna about a tablespoon of loose salt with his grain and supps and save electrolyte loading for conditioning and shows.
You know, back when we did that stuff. Good luck! Hydration is so important. :)
Interesting!! I knew that some horses, like HYPP horses, can't handle the electrolytes and should just have salt. I've never owned a horse in Florida before, and it is CRAZY HOT here all the time. Lex is often sweaty in the morning when I bring her in after she's been out overnight. She needs a fan in her stall. In Virginia, it would be cool overnight, at least. Last summer I'd have to hose Duchess off before I could tack her up because she'd be drenched just from standing around in the field. That kind of thing never happened in VA. I'm trying to figure out how to manage a horse who will, I hope, be in work soon and eventually getting fit.
DeleteIt's not that electrolytes trick the body into getting rid of excess its that when you are properly hydrated your body expects there to be water and therefore does not hold onto excess meaning that if you stop drinking you get dehydrated, its a mechanism of the body, all bodies. My body does it all the time, its why people carry and lose water weight.
DeleteI feed electrolytes all year round, our weather is wacky and can fluctuate from tepid to hot or tepid to really cold (for CA) I used to use the Smart Lytes but switched to just regular Apple-A-Day in a bucket because it went farther for the price.
I love this stuff. Back in S FL we had nasty brown well water at the barn that remained a shade of brown despite being filtered. My mare was not a good drinker AND she was anhydrotic. Very, very bad combination. This stuff got her to drink when added electrolytes & salt didn't.
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