Since I have always lived in the dry
parts of the NW my experience is probably different than other's.
I've found that an
unconditioned/young/unfit horse will sweat foamy, salty, thick and
sticky sweat. It drys crusty and salty on the skin/hair.
As the horse gets in better shape
the sweat begins to get cleaner and more watery. A really fit horse's
sweat hardly tastes salty at all, and leaves almost no residue on the
hair, just wet.
Perhaps it's just my horses, or the
weather here, or something, but I think, after many years horseback,
that some horse's systems do adapt to conserve some e-lytes.
Perhaps it's in some families of
horses to be more adaptable to hard work.
And yes I believe most hard working
horses should have some e-lyte supplementation. I also know that many
horses have been ridden hard day after day in hot weather for many
seasons without anything except free choice salt without any ill
effects.
I've done some 100s years ago
without any e-lytes.
Probably wouldn't do it now, they
are too easy to use.
(And no, I'm not planning on any
hundreds anymore, and the horse I'm riding now doesn't seem to need
much in the way of e-lytes either, but we're not asking much of her.)
Gayle Ecker, who has been studing electrolyte loss in endurance horses
since the late 80's and probably has looked at over 5000 endurance
horse's blood told me one time that even in training horses can loose
significant electrolytes and they don't acclimate to that loss - that
is they don't get better at not losing them.
-- We imitate our masters only because we are not yet masters
ourselves,
and only
We
imitate our masters
only because we are not yet masters ourselves, and only
because
in doing so we
learn the truth about what cannot be imitated.
