Feeding Salt- A Must Have In Your Horses Diet.
A note from the Billy Allen Horse Feed® Team
Every feed tag you read will have a disclaimer about giving your horse clean, freshwater, and plain white salt as part of their diet. While we have the water part down pat, salt, it seems, is the one thing that is often left out at feeding time. Knowing how and why salt is a must-have can be the jump start we need to implement salt into our daily feed routine.
Some things to consider when deciding what salt to pick. When feeding a salt block, do they lick it or does it end up covered in dirt or manure? Does the same block sit in the feeder forever? Is adding loose salt sprinkled over their feed to ensure consumption best for your horse? Maybe it's worth the added cost to offer "fancy salts" like rope salts or rock salts because your horse prefers the taste and texture?
Whichever salt variety you choose, it's imperative to monitor your horse's intake to ensure they are getting the salt they need in their diet.
Horses, like all animals, require both sodium and chloride in their diets. Together these two minerals form the common dietary ingredient – salt.
A mature (1,100 lbs), non-working horse requires 10 grams of sodium and 40 grams of chloride on a daily basis. When we ask the horse to exercise at a moderate intensity, the amount of sodium required per day increases to almost 18 grams and the requirement for chloride increases to approximately 53 grams per day.
Add in hot/humid weather and the requirements for sodium and chloride are even higher
Why Is Salt Important?
Salt is essential for all horses since both sodium and chloride have critical roles within the body. Salt is necessary to absorb and transport nutrients within the body.
Salt is critical for maintenance of blood pressure and fluid balance. Finally, salt is essential for transmission of nerve signals which control several important functions including muscle contraction.
When horses don’t receive enough dietary salt they can experience dehydration, impaction colic, muscle weakness, decreased blood volume and ultimately become intolerant to exercise.
Providing Salt in the Diet
Sodium and chloride are found in several common dietary ingredients fed to horses. Hay and grain (oats, corn, barley etc) contain small amounts of both minerals.
However, the amount of salt in these dietary ingredients often does not meet daily requirements. To satisfy minimum daily requirements for sodium and chloride, horses would need to consume approximately 1 ounce of salt per day. To satisfy this requirement, horse owners should provide salt free-choice to horses either in the form of loose salt or blocks.
While it is true that horses often have an appetite for sodium that will result in them consuming approximately 1 ounce per day of free-choice salt, some horses won’t voluntary consume enough salt. For these horses, loose salt would need to be top-dressed onto their daily grain ration to result in adequate intake.
Type of Salt
Selecting which salt to purchase at a feed store can be overwhelming. Salt blocks come in a variety of colors indicating the addition of other minerals along with the salt.
For example, yellow salt blocks contain added sulfur, blue salt blocks contain added cobalt and iodine, red blocks contain added iron and iodine and brown salt blocks are called trace mineral blocks indicating they have a host of added minerals along with salt. The color schemes and the added minerals are largely put together for cattle producers. For horses, a plain white salt block (with or without added iodine) or a brown trace mineral block is appropriate.
Finally, many horse owners worry that horses may consume too much salt. Over consumption of salt is generally not an issue as long as the horse has adequate amounts of clean, fresh water available. Horses that over consume salt will simply drink more water and flush the salt from the body.
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