Salt and Mineral Blocks for Horses

Providing salt and mineral to your horses and livestock not only contributes to their overall health, it promotes drinking which in turn helps prevent certain medical ailments.

Always keep a salt block in your horse`s pasture so she can lick it when she likes. Salt is an essential mineral that a horse loses when she sweats. A horse may sweat a lot in the summer, especially when she`s ridden, so she must be able to lick a salt block whenever she wants. You can buy salt blocks at the feed store.

In most of the pictures you will notice the tubs and free choice mineral feeders. The reason is horses need far more minerals than the can obtain from forage and provided feed. The primary mineral needs in horse nutrition are salt, calcium and phosphorous. No other animal faces a critical need for salt like the working horse. The horse may lose up to 75 grams daily (their are 454 grams per pound) through sweat and urine. For this reason, salt should be available free choice to the horse at all times.

Calcium and phosphorous are the other two critical minerals needed in horse nutrition, since most other minerals such as potassium, magnesium, sulphur, copper, cobalt and zinc, which are required by the horse, are only needed in small amounts and are usually provided by normal feedstuffs. Trace mineralized salt should be used with horses.

Minerals and vitamins play very important roles in equine nutrition. They are required for digestion and utilization of forages and feeds and for most metabolic processes. Soils become depleted of certain minerals, resulting in lower nutrient content in forages and feeds grown on those soils. In fact, average alfalfa hays, grass hays, and feeds provide less than the minimum required amounts of major minerals, trace minerals, and vitamins. Since mineral content of forages and feeds varies so greatly, any feedstuff could be deficient in all six of the major minerals and all seven of the trace minerals required by horses. Each of CTR mineral feeders provide free choice of minerals blocks and loose minerals.