To drink, a horse purses his lips and lowers his tongue, which creates an area of low pressure that siphons the water into his mouth. It’s a straightforward process, but some horses feel the need to add their own flourishes. One may enjoy sloshing water back and forth in the trough with his muzzle, another may let water dribble out of his mouth all over his stall. And there are many other variations.

When to become concerned

These quirky drinking behaviors aren’t a cause of concern unless they are new and/or limit the amount of water the horse consumes each day. If your horse enjoys splashing in his bucket and is still drinking plenty, it’s best to let him do his thing and just deal with the mess. Trying to break an annoying drinking habit can contribute to dehydration if it discourages the horse from drinking.

Individual preferences also affect other drinking behaviors in horses. Some prefer to drink from certain buckets. Other horses may only like the taste of familiar water from home.

How to encourage your horse to drink

In all of these cases, the best course of action is to indulge the preferences to encourage hydration and prevent health problems. This may mean carrying water from home when traveling to events, or flavoring home water with electrolytes so you can use the same supplement to make water on the road taste similar.

Likewise, it’s worthwhile to indulge horses who dunk their hay in water. Wetting hay not only cuts down on dust that can cause respiratory illness, but it also makes the forage more digestible. If dunked hay displaces water from the horse’s bucket (or clogs up an automatic waterer), hang another bucket and keep it full of water. Horses with a hay-dunking habit will quickly designate one bucket for dunking and the other for drinking.

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