Ep. 120: 4 Mistakes Horse Owners Make with Salt and Electrolytes

Episode Notes

On this episode of the Beyond the Barn podcast, host Katy Starr chats with equine nutritionist Dr. Kelly Vineyard to count down the four most common mistakes horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, including:

• A common electrolyte label-reading mistake that could have you paying for the wrong ingredient
• The overlooked reason some horses may not drink as much water as you’d expect
• A simple daily feeding habit that can help support hydration throughout the year

If you’ve ever wondered whether your horse is getting enough salt, how to choose an electrolyte supplement, or whether a salt block is really enough, you won’t want to miss this episode.

🎧 Listen now on the Beyond the Barn podcast

Have a topic idea or feedback to share? We want to connect with you! Email podcast@standlee.com

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Additional Resources – 

• Ep. 081: What Type of Salt Does My Horse Need? - Podcast
• Ep. 065: What Can Happen If Horses Don’t Drink Enough Water - Podcast
• Fuel, Fiber, and Fluids: The Secret to Keeping Horses Hydrated - Blog Post
• Heat Stress in Horses: Understanding Symptoms and Prevention - Blog Post

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*Views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Standlee Premium Products, LLC.*

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Read full episode transcript

Katy Starr (00:01):

Hi, I'm Katy Starr, and you're listening to Beyond the Barn. Join me on this journey as we bust equine and livestock nutrition myths and sit down with some of the most intriguing experts from across the country. We'll also take you behind the scenes of how premium western quality forage has grown and brought to your favorite farm and ranch retail store. I'm so glad you're here.

 

Katy Starr (00:27):

Welcome back to the Beyond the Barn Podcast. We're back to our Feeding Fumbles and Fixes series. It's all about learning from real life feeding mistakes and experiences, and finding simple, practical ways to make improvements for your horse ownership journey. In this episode, we're discussing some common feeding mistakes horse owners can make with feeding salt and electrolytes and what to do instead. As a reminder, any of the topics we cover on the Beyond the Barn podcast are more generalized and not specific to any individual horse or any specific situation. Be sure to always work with your veterinarian and nutritionist before making any drastic changes to your horse's feed program, or you can reach out to us to talk directly with our equine nutritionists on any specifics you'd like to know. Salt and electrolytes are one of those nutrition topics that seem pretty straightforward until you start digging into the science.

 

Katy Starr (01:22):

Here are some interesting facts to get us started on today's topic. Did you know a horse's sweat is actually saltier than its own blood? Equine sweat is hypertonic, meaning that horse sweat has a higher electrolyte concentration than horse blood. Humans are the opposite, though. We sweat dilute hypotonic or less salty fluid. This explains why horses lose electrolytes so quickly when they sweat. Because the sweat is so salty, a dehydrated horse may not feel thirsty. Thirst is triggered when blood sodium concentration rises. But when a horse loses salt in water at nearly the same rate through hypertonic sweat, blood sodium levels stay constant. So, the thirst mechanism never actually gets triggered. This means that a horse can be dehydrated and still does not want to drink. So, today, we're counting down four of the biggest mistakes horse owners make when it comes to salt and electrolytes, and of course, how to fix them.

 

Katy Starr (02:24):

The goal of this episode is to give you practical tips for providing your horse salt and electrolytes in a way that will actually make a difference for them. So, Dr. Vineyard, can you talk to us about mistake number four that horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, which is not realizing that salt is actually an electrolyte?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (02:45):

Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, maybe this isn't so much a mistake as a misunderstanding. It's really important to understand that salt is an electrolyte, right? So, many people will assume, oh, salt and electrolytesare in two different categories, like they're two completely different things, but they're not. Plain white salt is sodium chloride. Sodium and chloride are the two primary electrolytes that horses lose in sweat. Mm-hmm. So, it's not just like a lesser substitute for electrolytes. They're the main players. Sodium and chloride are the main electrolytes that we're concerned about. It matters the most. Now, the other primary electrolyte horse is losing sweat is potassium. So, yes, commercial electrolytes will also contain some potassium. Plain white table salt doesn't have potassium in it. Guess what has a lot of potassium in it? Forage. Yes. Grass hay. Grass. Alfalfa hay. So, forages are usually very rich in potassium.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (03:40):

So, if a horse is eating adequate forage, he's normally consuming well above his daily requirement for potassium, but forages are low in sodium and chloride. So, that's why, you know, if a horse is eating forage, he's getting plenty of potassium, but the sodium chloride is really what we're mostly concerned about in those cases.

 

Katy Starr (03:58):

Excellent. So, then consequence, I guess, of just assuming that they're separate.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (04:04):

Yeah.

 

Katy Starr (04:05):

What's your take on that?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (04:06):

Say you are feeding a commercial electrolyte, and we may talk about this in the future, but, like, maybe it's not a good one, right? Maybe it's one that doesn't actually have a lot of electrolytes in it. It's called an electrolyte, but maybe it has more sugar. That's something you want to avoid. But you may skip feeding the salt thinking you're covering their electrolyte needs because it's quote called an electrolyte. And then also, you basically end up spending money on a premium product that's got some of things you may not necessarily need, where a couple of tablespoons of plain white loose salt could actually meet your horse's needs better. So, that's the consequence of not understanding that salt actually is an electrolyte.

 

Katy Starr (04:45):

Excellent. Okay. So, then what should we do about it then?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (04:48):

Yeah, I mean, so I like to recommend you basically start with meeting your horse's electrolyte needs with plain white salt. And then commercial electrolytes definitely have their place. Number one, for taste. There's awful lot of horses that don't like plain white salt. You top dress it on their feed, and they're like, "I'm not touching that." I actually own one of those horses. So, in that case, then, you know, a commercial electrolyte product that has some flavoring or some sugar, not as the first ingredient, but is definitely has a place. Also, if horses are truly sweating very hard, maybe they're working five or six days a week in the summer, they may be getting to where they need some of that extra potassium from an electrolyte supplement as well. So, if the plain white salt doesn't sort of meet the needs, then yes, an electrolyte supplement has a place in those kind of scenarios where it's either palatability or excessive sweating.

 

Katy Starr (05:38):

Okay. And I was just thinking about, so with minerals, and we talk about adding in salt, top dressing and everything. Sometimes people get concerned about certain toxicities of feeding too much of a certain thing. Is that hard to do, easy to do with sodium chloride? Or is that something that's really not as big of a concern for those?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (06:00):

Yeah. Salt is pretty safe. It's very hard to create a sodium toxicity. Most of the time, horses just will stop eating their feed. If it has too much sodium or too much salt. It's just unpalatable. And actually, you can use salt as like an intake limiter in certain scenarios. So, salt, usually horses will just not eat it, and that saves them from toxicity. <laugh>

 

Katy Starr (06:22):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (06:23):

There have been horses that have eaten a whole 50-pound salt block in one sitting. That has happened. And those horses are sodium deficient, and usually that's what will drive them to way over-consume sodium. But even at that level, they're not going to die. They're going to urinate a lot. <laugh> They're going to, but they're going to drink more because their thirst mechanism's triggered, but they're not going to die from a sodium toxicity.

 

Katy Starr (06:46):

And that's one of the minerals or whatever that horses canactually, they can'tself-regulate all the others, but that's the one that they're actually pretty good with.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (06:57):

Yes, absolutely. They are.

 

Katy Starr (06:59):

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, mistake number three that horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, buying a product with sugar as the first ingredient. So, how does this happen?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (07:12):

Yeah. I mean, I kind of just mentioned this, but whenever you're buying a commercial product, you know, a lot of times we just sort of go off the label and we don't flip it around and read the ingredient list. And when you're feeding electrolytes, this is really important. Ingredients are listed in order by weight . With the ingredient present in the highest amount listed first. And so, and on a very surprising number of electrolyte products, the very first ingredient is dextrose. What is dextrose? That's sugar.

 

Katy Starr (07:41):

Sugar.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (07:42):

The salt, which is actually what we're after, the sodium chloride that you're paying for, those are usually, can be way further down on the list. And then if you, like, even look at the grams or the milligrams of the sodium and chloride, it's actually quite low. And I mean, there are a couple products I've done some fun calculations where I'm like, "Oh, you have to feed two cups of this electrolyte to meet the horse's sodium requirement." And that's one that has dextrose as the first ingredient. So, read the label on the commercial electrolytes, for sure.

 

Katy Starr (08:12):

Do you know why sugar would be so high? Is it for palatability? Why would that even be?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (08:19):

Yeah, I mean, definitely palatability is the main driver. The other driver is some of these products are actually made to where you can mix them in water. So, it's like you make your horse a little Kool-Aid, and it tastes good. The sugar makes it taste good and that will drive them to drink. And in that sense, anything that drives a horse to drink can be positive, right? But think about it too. That's to me, one type of product. It's not a top dress on your feed every day product. The top dress on your feet every day needs to have salt as the first ingredient as an electrolyte. If you're mixing something into water, that's separate. That's not the product you should be top dressing over your feed. Now, the problem with this is you're paying a premium for sugar, right, when you're really after the salt.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (09:05):

Yeah. So, that's really the consequence of not checking to see if sugar is the first ingredient. And you end up overpaying and you are overfeeding sugar, which could be a problem. If you have a horse, you're trying to avoid sugar, right? Like if you have a metabolic horse. So, you're overfeeding sugar, under-delivering sodium, and that's what we really want to avoid.

 

Katy Starr (09:25):

Okay. So, then what should we do instead? What's the plan of attack?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (09:30):

Yeah, I mean, turn the label around. You want to either see salt or sodium chloride as the first ingredient. You don't want to see dextrose as the first ingredient. It is okay to have dextrose in the list. I'm not saying it's totally bad, because something needs to be in there to drive palatability. Whether it's flavoring, whether it's dextrose. But check the GA, too. So, that's actually where you're going to get either the percentage or even better, the grams per serving of sodium and chloride to kind of get an idea. I mean, an average, a maintenance horse's daily requirement of sodium is 10 grams per day of sodium. So, that's their baseline. They need about 10 grams. That's not salt, that's just plain sodium.

 

Katy Starr (10:10):

Okay.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (10:11):

And so that's about, I think it's like a tablespoon, one or two tablespoons of salt will make 10 grams of sodium. Or will provide that. So, kind of keep that in mind. But just remember, at the end of the day, plain old loose white salt is the cleanest, cheapest electrolyte out there that has no sugar at all.

 

Katy Starr (10:29):

Yes. That's so good. Okay. So, mistake number two that horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, only supplementing on hot days or after hard work. So, talk to us a little bit more about that mistake.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (10:43):

Yeah. I mean, it's actually reasonable to think, you know, well, if my horse is sweating more when it's hot, or only when he works hard, then that's when he needs electrolytes. I mean, that's when, like, the football players drink Gatorade, right? You know? They're sweating hard, they drink their Gatorade. And that actually is true. Like, you lose more electrolytes when you sweat. Absolutely. The mistake is to treat just the total electrolyte program as an occasional intervention as opposed to a daily intervention, because a horse does have a daily baseline requirement also. Forages are typically low in sodium and chloride, so they do need a baseline amount of salt every single day in their diet.

 

Katy Starr (11:18):

Okay. And so, consequence then for letting it be and maybe not paying as close attention to that.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (11:25):

Yeah. I mean, so horses can't store sodium. So, it's lost continuously, not only through their sweat, but also through their urine. So, it has to be replaced continuously, which means daily. So, if you're only supplementing on like, the demanding days, you're kind of running the risk of having a low-grade deficiency or deficit that's like the rest of the year. And when a horse is chronically deficient in sodium, there's actually some things that can happen, negative things. Number one, they have a blunted thirst response. So, the level of sodium is directly related to their thirst response. That's kind of why you hear the recommendation feed salt in the winter to, to help horses drink more and stay hydrated. It's because when the sodium level rises in the blood, that drives them to drink. They get a blunted thirst response if they're sodium deficient, they drink less, and I mean, drinking less is the absolute last thing you want in a heat wave, right?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (12:16):

So, to combat that, the solution here would be supplement year round with your salt. Sodium is just as necessary in July as it is in January. But then, on those days where your horses exercising or sweating a lot, it's absolutely okay to go ahead and on top of that, give them a nice mash with some extra salt in it or extra electrolytes on those days. And some cases, if you're an endurance rider, that's part of your program. You have to do that. So, it's okay to supplement above and beyond their baseline. What I'm saying is, don't forget the baseline.

 

Katy Starr (12:53):

Right. Perfect. Okay. So, mistake number one that horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, not feeding salt or electrolytes at all.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (13:02):

Well, this is the most common mistake that I see, and it's really the most problematic. Because I think a lot of horse owners assume their horse's sodium or mineral needs are covered if they're feeding a fortified concentrate or a ration balancer. And that's totally understandable to think that your horse's mineral needs are all covered since those products are designed to be comprehensive. And they genuinely do a great job at meeting most mineral requirements except salt. Okay? Or except sodium specifically. We kind of talked on this a little bit before, but that's because salt can be a negative palatant. So, if a commercial feed or a fortified feed or a ration balancer had enough sodium in it to meet sodium requirements, those feeds may be a lot less palatable, right? And also, horses' sodium needs do fluctuate with workloads. So,if these products,it's not really a good practice to put salt into these fortified products. It is a better practice to supplement, you know, electrolytes separately from concentrate. And so, don't make that assumption that your needs are covered. Even if you're feeding the best quality feed, the best quality ration balancer, you're feeding it according to package directions. If you read the fine print on all of these reputable feed manufacturers, they're going to have a little comment there. Always provide a source of salt. And that's because they know, there's not enough salt in there to meet daily requirements.

 

Katy Starr (14:27):

Okay. So, consequence, if we're just making that assumption that we feed our forage, we feed that ration balancer we're covered, what's the consequence there?

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (14:37):

Yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about that a little bit before, but you're going to end up with a chronically sodium-deficient horse. That may look like they have a decreased thirst drive, they're drinking less water. Reduced water intake is a big problem, not only when it's hot for less hydration, but also it contributes to impaction colic, slower recovery from exercise, decreased performance. So, we want horses to drink and stay hydrated. Sodium is also really critical for a lot of different processes in the body. You know, good nerve function and muscle contraction are dependent on sodium and sodium channels and sodium moving around the cell membranes. So, if deficient horses could become lethargic, they can have muscle issues, cramping, tying up. Actually, one of the first things when I'm working with a horse that has tied up for the very first time, and this hasn't happened before, my first question is always, is this horse getting his sodium needs met? Is he on a good quality electrolyte? Because electrolyte deficiency can cause tying up. A lot of other things can too, but that's actually a pretty common one. Stiff, reluctant movement. I mean, there's some things that can happen from a sodium deficiency that we may not overtly notice, because you may just misread it. Like, oh, he's lazy today, or he's being off, you know, or maybe it's chronically lazy. Just double check the salt intake there. And so, that I should probably mention too, I think a lot of owners rely on a salt block to provide their horses the sodium requirements, and not all horses are going to be able to lick enough salt off a salt block to get their daily sodium requirement. I'm a big proponent of top dressing, loose salt. Mm-hmm. At the very least, offering loose salt, because a couple studies that I've seen, maybe one to two out of ten horses will get enough sodium from their salt block.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (16:21):

The rest, you've seen it. That salt block sits in the corner. It gets poop on it. It gets dirt on it. Horses aren't natural lickers, so loose salt is kind of your best insurance policy, and top dressing it is really the best way to ensure that they're getting it.

 

Katy Starr (16:36):

Right. I do think those salt blocks are more geared towards/work better for cattle.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (16:42):

That's absolutely right.

 

Katy Starr (16:43):

If you've ever been licked by the tongue of a cow. <laugh> It's rough. Very course. Yes. It's sandpaper. Okay. No, that's excellent. Okay. And so, I mean, you've already touched on this a little bit throughout today's conversation, but our fix and solution to make sure that they're getting their daily needs met.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (17:04):

Yeah. I guess I haven't mentioned the exact amount, though. We're talking about loose salt. You know, but one to two tablespoons is adequate place to start. You may need to adjust that depending on the rest of your diet or depending on how much the horse is sweating. One to two tablespoons, or if your horse doesn't like plain white salt, like mine does, or does not, a commercial electrolyte product, but follow the feeding directions, ensuring that salt is the first ingredient, you know, it's adequate in sodium. Don't rely on a salt block. They're not bad. I mean, I have them. My horse has access to a salt block, but it's a bonus, right? It's an insurance policy.

 

Katy Starr (17:38):

Right. It may just not be everything that the horse needs, kind of a thing.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (17:42):

It's not his only source of salt, yes.

 

Katy Starr (17:44):

Yes. Well, this has been great, Dr. Vineyard. Thanks for talking us through salt and electrolytes and giving us a little bit better understanding about this.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (17:53):

Well, you're welcome. And, you know, stay hydrated. Keep the salt access handy. And if you had to say there's one supplement that every horse needs, it's salt.

 

Katy Starr (18:02):

This is it. Perfect. Well, thank you for all of your great insight today.

 

Dr. Kelly Vineyard (18:08):

All right. You're welcome.

 

Katy Starr (18:10):

Today, we covered four mistakes horse owners make with salt and electrolytes, and how to fix those mistakes. Here are some key takeaways from Dr. Vineyard. Salt isn't separate from electrolytes. It is an electrolyte. Start by meeting your horse's daily electrolyte needs with plain white salt, and add an electrolyte supplement if your horse finds salt to be unpalatable, or when increased sweat losses call for it. Take a minute to read the label on commercial electrolyte products. If dextrose is the first ingredient, you may be paying for more sugar than electrolytes. Consistency matters. Feeding salt every day helps support normal hydration, while increasing electrolytes during heavy sweating helps replace what your horse loses. And even the best fortified concentrates and ration balancers are typically low in sodium by design. Be sure to make supplemental salt part of your horse's daily feeding routine. If you want to dig a little deeper into feeding salt or hydration for horses, we've linked some additional resources in our show notes.

 

Katy Starr (19:17):

And we'd love to hear your feedback on our Feeding Fumbles and Fixes series or ideas for future episodes. Reach out to us anytime at podcasts@standlee.com. Thanks for listening to the Beyond the Barn podcast by Standlee Forage. We'd love for you to share our podcast with your favorite people and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite listening platform. Until next time, keep your cinch tight and don't forget to turn off the water.