Karen’s Musings & Endurance Ride Stuff

My horses go through a lot of salt.  I offer it to them in two ways – 1)  salt blocks and 2)  loose salt.  I buy the loose salt in 50 pound bags at the feed store.  It’s labeled as “taxidermy salt” and sells for about $7 or $8 for 50 pounds.  The bag does say “feed free choice to livestock”.  If your horse’s diet is balanced, this plain white salt is fine.  You don’t need to use mineralized salt.  If you aren’t sure, check with a veterinarian who is familiar with equine nutrition.

My horses don’t normally use the salt blocks and some of them are several years old.  The only horse I’ve ever had that has done anything with the salt blocks is Bo, and he munches on them like candy.  He’s just that kind of horse – he plays with everything and gets bored fast.  Most horses will NOT get the salt they need from a salt block.  Salt blocks are great for cattle because they have rougher tongues, but not so great for horses.

With three horses I’m going through 50 pounds of loose salt every three or four months.  I put a cup or two of loose salt in the horses feeders or buckets that are in each stall every few days, or when I notice that it’s gone.  When I travel and are competing in endurance rides I add more salt into the horses feed as well and will go through it at a faster rate then.

I did a search online to find out exactly how much salt a horse needs on a daily basis.  The National Research Council recommends 25 grams per day of sodium chloride per day for maintenance. That works out to 1.4 tablespoons per day.  Sodium + chloride = salt.

Sodium and chloride are electrolytes essential for many bodily functions. Both are lost in sweat and must be replaced in what you feed your horse. Salt is also the only essential nutrient that is not naturally present in grasses and grains, at least not to the degree necessary to keep your horses needs met.  Horses have a natural appetite for salt and most will consume what they need if given the opportunity.  However, you do need to watch out for horses that may be bored (like my horse Bo) and over consumes salt (say by munching on the salt blocks like they are candy).

Research suggests that heavy work could increase the sodium requirement eight or ninefold.  That equates to providing 200 grams or sodium or more to your horse.  200 grams of sodium works out to almost 12 tablespoons, or about 3/4 of a cup.

If your horse is doing a moderate amount of work he may need about 55 to 65 grams of sodium per day.  That is around 3.8 tablespoons per day.  When I am traveling with the horses this is close to  the amount of additional salt that I put into their feed, broken up into multiple feedings.

To really know what your horse needs you need to first figure out what your horse is already getting.  Check the nutrient contents on the labels of your grains and other feeds to help you calculate how much additional sodium you need to provide.

At the end of this post is a link to a salt conversion table so you can calculate how to measure it out by tablespoon, cup or other measurement based upon the above recommendations.

Table salt amounts conversion

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