I made a free feed salt mix with herbs and selenium. My
horses love it and I feed it where I can since I have to put it in buckets
so needs to be covered. It's about 90 percent salt, which is what
all the free choice supplements are that I found. I originally
made it to give my mares in foal the extra
calcium/phosphorous they needed without costing me an arm and a leg
buying something over the counter.
Last summer we compared two herds of 5 horses each. One
herd had the usual mineral salt block in the pasture. The other
had granulated salt in their pasture pan. The horses given
the granulated salt ate 5 times more salt than the herd given
the block salt. We are thinking that the horses "on the
block" get their tongues sore from licking the rough block -
which would raw their tongues and sting - and therefore quit
licking before they had enough salt in the diet. Or, perhaps,
the "granulated" horses ate too much salt for a good
dietary balance.
About 5 years ago we started have a high incident rate
of colic in our
older horses in our dude string , two horses and a mule
all in their
late 20's colicked on us in a two month time period .
They had been
eating the same grass hay that they have always been fed
and had
access to heated water plus a running creek at all times
.After trying
to figure out what was going on other than the older
horses not
chewing/digesting their hay as well as the younger ones
we put the
whole herd on loose salt which they ate more of and then
would drink
more water and no more problems with any in the herd .We
have not
had one colic incident since then . I believe the loose
salt really
does make a difference and even if it gets wet and kinda
hardens it
still is not hard as the block salt
.
Drin Becker
Mtn Region
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