From: ckw0@aber.ac.uk (Carl Keri Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.equestrian
Subject: Re: Salt blocks
Date: 10 Oct 92 15:12:24 GMT
Organization: University of Wales, Aberystwyth

In article <2AD333AD.4475@ics.uci.edu> pazzani@ics.uci.edu (Michael Pazzani) writes:
>About how much salt should a horse (about 1100 pounds) consume?  When
>we first got Blue Moon, we gave her a salt block with minerals (about
>the size of a brick). She finished it in 2 days.  She's tapered down
>to about 1 a week, but this still seems excessive to me, since our pony
>(about 750 pounds) goes through one every 3 months.
>
>Will she get high blood pressure?  :-)
>
>She is feed primarily alfalfa hay, which tends to supply some
>minerals in an incorrect proportion.  Does anyone have any
>advice other than buying the larger salt blocks?
>
>Thanks
>Mike

Salt is sodium chloride, and it is the ratio of sodium to potassium in the
diet which is the problem.  Most 'processed' foods are heavily salted, 
whilst most 'natural' foods are high in potassium.  Grass is rich in potassium,
and as this is the horse's main diet, his problem is lack of salt (sodium) 
to counteract it.  Horses seem to have an in-built desire for salt, which 
turns into a craving if they are lacking in sodium, but this should wear off 
after a few weeks.  I would let nature take it's course for a while yet and 
let your mare adapt herself.  Human's eat so many processed and salty foods
and so few 'natural' foods like greens that they have too much sodium and 
too little potassium, but they tend to be like this for most of their lives
so I doubt your mare will have any problems by overdosing for just a few weeks
until she learns to regulate herself.  My old gelding and young mare never 
ever touched salt blocks, so I finally stopped providing them, but when Mari 
was in foal, both she and Rickie suddenly started coming up to me and licking 
my hands and face incessantly, so I bought them a new salt lick and set about
teaching Mari to use it.  Once she had realised where the nice salty flavour 
was coming from, she too spent about a week solid chewing her way through it
(the gelding took virtually no notice of it - I suspect he was just trying to
tell me that Mari needed it) and she still does use it fairly frequently, but 
a lot less now that the foal is drinking less milk.  I know that dairy goats
need a lot of salt, so I guess that her need was directly related to the needs
of the unborn foal and then of the demands of milk production.

The mineral imbalance in alfalfa hay concerns two different minerals, calcium
and phosphorus, which also need to be fed in a strictish sort of ratio, but 
this is not directly related to the salt/sodium to potassium ratio.  Alfalfa, 
particularly dried in the form of hay or cubes, is very rich in calcium.  
Grain feeds are very rich in phosphorus.  Here in the UK, where alfalfa hay is
rare, expensive and of poor quality, and where there is a great tendency to 
overfeed grains, calcium deficiency (or rather, low calcium to phosphorus
ratio) is the problem, whilst from what I can make out, in America alfalfa is
VERY widely fed to the extent that calcium is too abundant in the diet and
phosphorus is relatively deficient.  

Grass and grass hay are balanced are regards calcium and phosphorus (a little
low on sodium though) so they can be disregarded whilst balancing the diet 
for calcium:phosphorus ratios (millions of years of evolution can't be TOO
far wrong...) and I have conveniently worked out that a lb of alfalfa nuts
balances out 2 lbs of oats, which is what I roughly base my diets on, with
constant access to salt, of course...

Sorry this got so long...

Hope it helps :-)

Esther, Rickie, Mari and baby Non

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