HIT TROUGHS

The supply of clean, uncontaminated drinking water is absolutely essential for good group husbandry. Water is not only crucial to a horse’s digestion and metabolism, but also to ensure that its thermoregulatory system functions properly. Water is a horse’s lifeblood and is available to them in the HIT active stable all year round. Active Stable horses on some farms situated in mountainous regions can even enjoy natural, flowing spring water. However, this is not possible in most cases, which means that troughs have to be installed. When choosing the correct trough it helps to take a look at the natural world. How do horses prefer to drink their water? By using a suction technique, the horse’s head position during water intake is lowered, since the water is always drawn from the surface of rivers, streams and ponds etc.

For this reason, troughs should not be mounted too high, and should facilitate drinking at ground level. In the wild, there are no valves, balls or such like which the horse are required to press when they want to drink, therefore the troughs should always facilitate free drinking directly from the trough basin. The water feed should be enough to allow the horses to drink their fill and not have to wait for slow-flowing additional water to be fed in. An integrated heater is needed during the winter months to ensure that the water does not freeze over. Adventurous bucket or bath tub constructions should be a thing of the past, since the horses run the risk of suffering water shortages particularly during periods of scorching heat or bitter frost. In order to ensure that the horses have constant access to natural water intake, HIT offers two Active Stable troughs, which have proven to be excellent in practice: