How Much Water Does a Horse Drink?
That depends on a lot of factors, such as the size of the horse and the weather. Horses that are eating hay are going to need more than horses that are eating grass. But the bottom line is that a horse MUST always have free access to all the clean water it can drink. The major cause of fatal colics is impaction, which is in turn often caused by dehydration. Your horse MUST always have fresh water in front of it and it must not be allowed to run out. On the horse farms where I’ve worked, the solution was usually a 100-500 gallon tank in the pasture which was checked daily and dumped and cleaned at least once a week and more often if needed. Inside the stall we usually hung two 6 gallon buckets, which was more than the average horse can drink in a day. If you have hung two gallons more than the average horse can drink in a day, they should not run out in the course of the night. On some of the bigger farms where I’ve worked, there was a security guard at night, and part of his job was to
