In Cold Weather Horse’s Will Reduce Water Consumption and Be at Risk of Colic

Watering Horses In Winter

During the winter months horses should not be fed excessively cold water, as it may bring on colic symptoms. Try a heated waterer or consider taking warm buckets out when it's cold outside. If nothing else, make sure to break the ice on a horse's water supply in freezing temperatures.

How to prevent drinking water from freezing

• In very cold weather, water heaters may be needed to prevent the water from freezing.
• If you are using a submersible electric water heater to keep the water supply open and free of ice, check to see if it is giving off stray voltage and shocking the horses when they try to drink.
• Be careful that you do not get shocked.  If you use automatic waters be sure the heating element is turned on and that there is no stray voltage. 

Water performs many tasks in the body

• Water makes up most of the blood that carries nutrients to cells and takes waste products away. In addition, water is the body’s built-in cooling system; it regulates body heat and acts as a lubricant.
• A horse drinks about 10 to 12 gallons of water daily depending on the work it is doing. Larger breeds of horses may drink up to 15 to 20 gallons of water a day.
• Horses that are not drinking enough water will reduce their feed intake and reduce the energy intake.

Affects of dehydration

During the bitter cold weather is when horses need to keep up their energy sources and the worst possible thing that can happen is to have a horse quit drinking water and go off feed.  If the horse cannot drink or worse cannot get to water because it is frozen solid, the horse becomes dehydrated.

• Within 24 hours of water deprivation, a horse can lose about 4% of his body weight. After 48 hours without water, 6.8% of his body weight will be lost, and after 72 hours it’s about 9%.
  
• Symptoms of dehydration -- dry mucous membranes, sunken eyes, a tucked-up appearance, skin that has lost its elasticity, and a slowed capillary refill time -- only become obvious when the horse has already lost 6% of his body weight or more, by which time dehydration has already begun affecting digestive efficiency. When this happens the body cannot maintain a constant body temperature and become hypothermic. 
  
• But the worst risk caused by lack of water is that the horse’s intestines become impacted and results in colic. In fact, the main reason the incidence of colic increases from December to March is that many horses don’t drink enough water in the winter months.

When Is a Horse At Risk for Colic?

However, winter isn’t the only time horses are at risk for colic due to restricted water intake. Any time a horse faces a rapid decrease in water consumption, he’ll be more prone to colic, especially if a good part of his diet is dried forage.

• Horses grazing on fresh, juicy, spring pasture can extract allot of their water from grass, but those eating hay or roughage cubes need to drink significantly more water to digest their food.
• Both in-foal and lactating mares have an increased need for water, largely because they are satisfying their increased energy and protein needs by taking in more feed (requiring more water to digest the additional feed), but also because they lose some water in the placental fluids and in their milk. Although foals satisfy most of their liquid requirements by nursing, most will begin to drink water early.