Equine Electrolyte Calculator

Electrolyte and Sweat Losses in Exercising Horses

Riders and handlers need to be aware of how much their horses are sweating to prevent dehydration and heat stress, and to support recovery from exercise.

Horses lose significant amounts of water through sweating, especially during exercise or in hot weather. They also lose essential electrolyte minerals in their sweat, which must be replenished to prevent imbalances.

This tool predicts your horse’s sweat losses during exercise and recovery by considering their body weight, exercise duration, current weather conditions, and visual sweat score.

By monitoring sweat loss, you can provide sufficient water and appropriate electrolyte supplementation to maintain optimal hydration and ensure your horse performs at their best.

How to Use the Electrolyte Calculator for your Horse

Mad Barn’s Equine Loss of Electrolytes Calculator (ELEC) is designed to help you understand how much water and electrolytes your horse loses in their sweat when exercising.

The following factors are used to estimate your horse’s total sweat fluid and electrolyte losses:

• Your horse’s body weight
• Duration of exercise
• Ambient weather conditions (temperature and humidity)
• Visual sweat score

Body Weight

You can enter your horse’s body weight in either kilograms (kg) or pounds (lb). This value is used to estimate your horse’s total surface area (m²), which informs how much skin area they have available to dissipate heat.

Horses with more surface area are expected to produce higher volumes of sweat.

Duration of Exercise

Enter the total time your horse spent actively exercising today, in minutes. Exclude any time spent walking slowly or standing still after exercise.

Horses engaged in exercise for longer durations of time are expected to produce higher volumes of sweat.

Ambient Conditions

Temperature and humidity are environmental conditions that influence how much your horse sweats at rest and during exercise. They also impact how effectively sweat evaporates from the horse’s skin to dissipate heat and cool down body temperature.

To determine these values, you have two options:

1. Use current conditions in your location: Enter your location and the tool will return current temperature and humidity values for your area
2. Manually input conditions: Enter current temperature and humidity values manually or input predicted values to plan for future workouts

Entering your location automatically provides the current temperature and humidity of your area. However, if you want to plan for a future ride, you can input hypothetical values to predict sweat losses and prepare an effective hydration strategy for your horse.

Visual Sweat Score

The Visual Sweat Score is a scale used to estimate the rate of sweat your horse produces during exercise.

At the end of active exercise, examine your horse’s coat to evaluate the amount of sweat present. Use the following table to assign a visual sweat score as soon as possible following your exercise session.

Score	Appearance	Description
1 Minimal		Area under the saddle is partly dry and partly dark, sticky, and moist Sticky throat area Flanks darker than usual
2 Light		Wet area under the saddle and on the throat Small white areas at saddle corners may appear Wet friction surfaces between throat and reins Inside of hind limbs may show foaming
3 Moderate		Snaffle leaves a clear wet impression on the head, often with foam on the back piece and noseband Throat and areas under saddle and girth are consistently wet Flanks clearly wet
4 Notable		Throat and flanks completely wet Moist, dark wrinkles above the eyes Heavily muscled or fat horses may show white between h