Replacing electrolytes

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You are here: Home / Articles / Horse care

Veteran's need plenty of quality food especially during the winter

Ruth Bishop

16 July, 2004

We all know that our horses need electrolytes after hard work, but overdosing with them is at best a waste of money and at worst counterproductive.

Present in tiny amounts, dissolved in the blood and the fluid between cells, electrolytes are responsible for the correct function of nerves and muscles. Electrolyte loss is closely linked to exercise. Heat is generated by the muscles during work, and a fit horse efficiently removes this out to the skin, to be lost as sweat.

When a horse sweats, water is shed through the skin and evaporates, so that heat is lost to the atmosphere. However, the evaporated water contains dissolved electrolytes which are therefore also lost from the system.

The main electrolytes are calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium and potassium. Most horses receive the majority of their daily electrolytes from forage. Horses on low-forage diets, such as those receiving a lot of hard feed or those on restricted diets, will have a lower electrolyte supply than horses consuming good fibre levels.

Calcium and phosphorus are also commonly added to compound feeds and mixes. However as salt is invariably low in forages and it is not added in high levels into compounds (because the necessary high levels would attract water and make the feed unpalatable), extra should always be added separately to the feed bucket.

Feeding electrolytes

Diets with a total forage content of less than 30% mean low inherent electrolyte supplies. Equally, a new forage source could be markedly different to the previous source.

Use electrolytes whenever a horse works hard, summer or winter.

Understanding the electrolyte supply contained in the feed bucket and forage net is a good start. Nutritionists and feed companies can help.

In problem horses, a fractional electrolyte clearance test (carried out by your vet), alongside feed analysis, will confirm whether a diet is short in electrolytes.

Always add salt to the diet, either directly in the feed (typically 2oz per day) or by offering free access to a salt lick. For horses in hard work, a mixture of salt and lite salt (potassium chloride) ensures the supply of three important electrolytes is maintained.

Feed or administer electrolytes only when there is plenty of fresh water available, usually the day before heavy exertion, and certainly afterwards. Syringing electrolytes into the horse immediately before intense exercise is likely to be counterproductive because, unless he has access to water, he could end up more dehydrated in the short-term.

This article first appeared in Horse & Hound (10 June)