Crucial reasons you need to be grass smart

Why all horses need salt added to their diets

Another great post on Facebook from

Calm Healthy Horses

Salt for Horses - including Broodmares and other livestock

While plants make great use of potassium they have no need for sodium. Hence ALL forage is virtually devoid of sodium. For one thing, plants, having no mechanism for movement, have zero requirement for it. However for mammals it is essential to life itself; including the operation of nerves and muscles which enable movement.

Both Potassium and Sodium are key to fluid balances.

It is critical that Sodium be kept at a certain concentration in the body fluids. The body is equipped with sophisticated homeostatic mechanisms to ensure this. Taking in a lot of water without any accompanying sodium can be life-threatening as witnessed in athletes who drink too much water and end up in trouble because of it.

Many years ago Dr Thomas Swerczek DVM alerted us to the importance of adding salt to feeds instead of relying on a salt lick.

Back in 2001, in Kentucky and in neighboring States, thoroughbred breeders, suffered catastrophic losses in the form of abortions, still births and limb deformities associated with abnormal formation of bone and cartilage.

That year, frost and freeze damage to the forage had caused potassium and nitrate spikes which adversely affected goats and horses, while cattle on neighboring farms died of grass tetany. (staggers). Click this link to find out more.

Dr Swerczek was one of the veterinarians in attendance at the time:

“We had severe losses here after the massive late freeze in 2001. The foetal and foal losses were over $600milllion in 2001 and losses from grass tetany were over $150 million in Kentucky alone.”

Subsequent to this disastrous year Dr Swerczek implemented the practice of including salt in the feeds for large bands of TB broodmares in Kentucky, and thereafter observed not only vastly reduced incidences of foetal loss, limb deformities and reproductive issues, but also of LAMINITIS.

Reduced in fact to levels better than BEFORE 2001.

After corresponding with Dr Swerzcek directly, we took his advice and began adding salt to feeds rather than relying on a salt lick.

Adding salt to feeds in conjunction with 'keeping a lid' on the potassium intake by not adding to their load with more high potassium forages/feeds, takes the stress off the horse’s adrenals and kidneys.

It is not that horses should have a low potassium diet, but that they shouldn’t have a chronically (permanently) high one! Think about it…...

When horses lick your hands and/or chew tails or wood, they need more salt.

Salt is ‘sodium chloride’ and horses need both elements. Not to be confused with Epsom Salts (Magnesium Sulphate) or Sodium Bicarbonate (unsuitable because it will further alkali their metabolism)

How much salt?

All nutrients need to be fed in quantities that the body can regulate; neither too little nor too much.

Based on information from Dr Swerczek we have always recommended 10gms per 100kgs body weight. This works out at 50gms per day for a 500kg horse (or a tablespoon per feed 2 x day). A ‘teaspoon’ goes nowhere in a 500kg horse!

If you are feeding pre-mixed feeds which already contain salt (check back labels) then add the amounts of sodium plus chloride to get total salt content and deduct that from the above.

It is very important for horses in any ‘sweat generating work’ or for those enduring hot climatic conditions that they start out with adequate Sodium in their system so they are appropriately hydrated. When their sodium levels are depleted, then losing even more in sweat can result in serious life-threatening metabolic problems.

Best not to feed ‘electrolytes’ on a daily basis as they contain potassium.

When you feed salt you are feeding two of the most important electrolytes.

It goes without saying that clean, fresh drinking water needs to be available at all times

Horses lacking salt will chew on rails