I wanted to follow up Dr. Karen Davison's post on water and electrolytes with something I saw in the field lately. In the pictures above, there are two water buckets. These buckets were side by side in a very nice, well kept barn. The top water bucket was offered with electrolytes in the water daily, and the other was "clean" water but had recent bird excrement that had fallen into it.
Which bucket would you rather drink from?
According to one of the barn managers, the horse was not a good drinker and did not like to drink the electrolyte water. Which leaves us the water with the bird poop- that can be a potential health risk to the horse drinking it.
Therefore, in this situation, I would recommend two things. 1) Clean, scrub/disinfect and refill any water buckets with bird excrement in them and try to keep birds out of the barn 2) remove electrolytes from the bucket the horse will not drink out of, and feed electrolyes as outlined in Dr. Davison's article below- as needed and either with feed or syringed to the horse individually.
Keeping horses hydrated during hot weather is very important. Make sure you are not getting in your horse's way and provide fresh, clean water at all times.
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