Just cause you can't get enough, theres more yawning.
Some interesting tidbits in an article I wrote for a magazine a wile back:
A horse eats roughly 22.04 pounds of grass in a day if allowed to graze.
It drinks 20 gallons a day when it is hot and he is losing electrolytes, and 12-15 on cooler days. To make sure your horse is getting adequate water intake in the winter and even summer adding 1 tsp of NTM (natural trace mineral) salt, twice daily to every 1000 pounds of body weight will increase the ammount a horse will drink and replenish the salts lost in sweat.
Horses create 12 gallons of saliva a day! However this number is only met if the horse is receiving adequate forage to chew on and make that saliva. Chewing activates a horses salivary glands.
Since most horses are forced to eat solid salt blocks meant for cows they often tire or run out of saliva before their needs are met. Cows have rough tongues and salivary glands that are activated by moving the tongue around so they are able to receive adequate minerals from a salt block. This is why you often find bite marks in the salt blocks. The horse is trying to create more saliva by chewing or biting the salt block.
Horses do not have a pancreas so they do not create any amylase in their saliva. Amylase is responsible for breaking down starches. This is why large carbohydrate meals are hard on a horses digestive system.
A horse can comfortably carry 20% of it's total weight.
A horse is capable of pulling three times it's weight and sometimes more!
And the deal maker *drumroll* A horse produces 50 pounds of manure a day! That equals it's body weight in about 3 weeks.
Who says shoveling S**T is easy!?
2 comments:
Does she ever keep her mouth closed?! ;-)
And thanks for the manure fact. I needed that visual this morning!
yeah, she is just really relaxed around me. Shes always licking and yawning and crossing her jaw.
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