Frequently Asked Questions
The questions we
actually get asked.
No fluff. No corporate FAQ-speak. Just real answers to real questions from real horse people.
No. Zero added sugar. This comes up a lot because most palatability products on the market use sugar or molasses as the palatability mechanism. We don’t. The flavor is the mechanism — not sweetness.
≤35 calories per serving. No added salt. No electrolytes. No copper. No added sugar.
It’s not. We get this assumption a lot — probably because “hydration” and “electrolytes” have become nearly synonymous in the horse world. But they’re not the same thing.
Electrolytes work by creating a sodium load that makes your horse seek water. Ours is different: we make the water itself more appealing so your horse chooses to drink more, voluntarily, without any sodium or mineral loading. No salt. No electrolytes. No copper. Safe for every horse on the farm — including the ones who can’t have extra minerals.
The formulation — no added sugar, no electrolytes, very low calorie — was designed with exactly these horses in mind. We’re not vets, and we can’t tell you what’s right for your specific horse’s management plan. Share the full ingredient profile with your vet or equine nutritionist before introducing anything new. Email info@www.improveequine.com and we’ll send you the complete breakdown.
The formulation was designed with metabolic horses in mind — no added sugar, no electrolytes, no copper, and ≤35 calories per serving at standard dose. For most PPID (Cushing’s) horses, this profile is about as low-risk as a water additive gets.
Cushing’s horses are often also managing laminitis risk, insulin dysregulation, or medications, and every horse’s management plan is different. Share the full ingredient list with your vet before introducing anything new. Email info@www.improveequine.com for the complete breakdown.
The formulation has no added sugar, no molasses, no high-glycemic ingredients. Hydration is also directly important for laminitic horses because circulation to the hooves depends heavily on overall hydration status.
Flavors we’d particularly highlight for laminitis management: Oh My Gourd! (specifically flagged as metabolic and laminitic safe), As American As, and Carrot Cool Down. Avoid For The Girls if your horse is managing active hormonal laminitis, as fenugreek has a mild effect on some metabolic markers. Share the full ingredient list with your vet and farrier.
HYPP (Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis) requires careful attention to total daily potassium. At the standard dose (1 tablespoon per 2 gallons) our flavors are not a concern for most horses — but for HYPP horses, it’s the cumulative daily total that matters.
The safest choices for HYPP horses are As American As and Carrot Cooldown (or Caked Up Carrot — same flavor family). These are among the lowest-potassium options in the lineup.
Stick to the standard dose. Don’t try to make it stronger. And factor our product into your horse’s total daily potassium picture alongside everything else they’re eating.
Flavors Hydration Mix is safe for pregnant mares. However, if you’re also using Apothecary products — particularly Raspberry Leaf — be careful depending on trimester. Raspberry leaf supports uterine tone, which is exactly why you don’t want to use it in early pregnancy.
Yes — and it’s particularly valuable for senior horses. Older horses often drink less as dental issues make eating physically uncomfortable. The product dissolves fully in water; there’s nothing to chew. If your senior horse is on a carefully managed diet or multiple medications, loop in your vet before introducing anything new.
You’re in the right place. This is exactly why we exist.
A lot of horses refuse electrolyte-laced water because electrolytes taste and smell distinctly medicinal — the sodium chloride bite is real, and horses with sensitive palates turn away from it. Our approach is completely different. No sodium load. No forced thirst mechanism. Just a scent and flavor profile your horse actually wants to drink. Start with the Palate Profile Sampler to find the flavor your specific horse responds to.
Salt works by creating a sodium load that triggers thirst. The problem is that some horses are effectively “salt-tired” — they’ve been exposed to so much sodium through their regular feed and supplements that the signal is dulled. Some horses simply won’t engage with salt licks at all.
Our approach goes around the salt mechanism entirely. We’re not creating thirst — we’re making water more appealing so the horse chooses to drink voluntarily. These are two completely different mechanisms, which is why horses who don’t respond to electrolytes often respond very well to flavor.
Masking is one of the five core uses of Flavors Hydration Mix. A strong, appealing scent profile competes with the chemical smell of most medications and supplements, making the whole bucket more attractive even with the thing they hate in it.
Soul Soup (pumpkin, turmeric, cinnamon) is the gold standard for masking. The warm, spiced aroma is complex enough to overwhelm most medication smells. Mint Condition is the backup — peppermint is one of nature’s strongest aromatic disruptors.
Add the medication to the bucket first, then add the flavor. For severely picky horses or strong-smelling medications, pre-load the flavor for a week before introducing the medication so the scent is already a deeply positive association.
Yes — and honestly, I encourage it. The whole point is desire-based hydration: your horse drinks when they want to, as much as they want to, at their own pace. Leaving it available consistently is what creates the habit and the intake benefit. No sugar loading concern, no electrolyte imbalance risk, no “too much” scenario at normal use. Leave it out. Let them drink.
Learn more about the Water Buffet method for finding your horse’s favorite flavor →
No. Never. Your horse must always have access to clean, plain water. Flavors is an augment — you put it in a second bucket alongside their regular water, not instead of it. What you’ll often see is horses going back and forth between the two — almost like an aperitif or a palate cleanse. That back-and-forth is the behavior you want.
The standard dose is one tablespoon per two gallons. You can go up to 1.5 tablespoons per 2 gallons for specific situations: strong-smelling well water, masking a potent medication, or a very picky horse on first introduction. Going higher tends to produce diminishing returns or rejection from sensitive horses. Start at standard. Adjust up if needed.
Not at all. The simplest version: one bucket of plain water, one bucket of flavored water. Your horse now has a choice, and choice is the whole mechanism. One flavor is enough to start seeing results. The full Water Buffet with multiple options is great for barns with multiple horses who have different preferences.
Yes. Every single day. Consistency is what builds the drinking habit and maintains it. No added sugar. No salt or electrolytes. Very low calorie. It’s a genuinely good daily option — and honestly a wonderful alternative to the treats most of us are handing out at the gate.
Winner’s Circle Sampler (Root Revival, For The Girls, Oh My Gourd!) is built for performance and working horses. All three are show-safe, NOPS-compliant, and built around functional ingredients that support circulation, hormonal comfort, and respiratory health.
Palate Profile Sampler (Soul Soup, Mint Condition, Ready Roadie) is built specifically for difficult horses — picky drinkers, medication compliance, and travel. These three represent completely different scent and flavor profiles so you can identify which direction your horse responds to.
Possibly — and the reason we have 11 flavors is exactly this. Picky horses are often reacting to something specific: a smell, an aftertaste, a texture association. Different horses respond to completely different flavor profiles.
Mint Condition is the aromatic disruptor — works surprisingly well on horses who refuse sweet things. Basic Batch is the crowd pleaser. For The Girls tends to work on sensitive mares. Oh My Gourd! converts the unexpected skeptics.
Honest advice: start with the Palate Profile Sampler. It exists specifically for this problem.
It’s one of the best gifts I know of for someone who has horses and cares about them — which is specifically the kind of person who is hard to buy for because they already have all the brushes and blankets. The 6-pack sampler gives them six full-size travel pouches, each a different flavor, with enough in each to run a proper trial. Head to the Samplers page to see all the options.
“The whole Farmily™” is not just a tagline — the formulation is food-safe across species. Horses, dogs, goats, donkeys, minis — yes. Barn cats probably won’t be interested, but they won’t be harmed by a stolen sip from the bucket. For smaller animals, use proportionally less.
Horses are acutely sensitive to changes in water smell and taste — a different water source smells different, and a horse under travel stress is already in a heightened state of vigilance. Refusing unfamiliar water is a survival behavior, not stubbornness.
The mechanism that works: scent masking. If your horse consistently drinks from a bucket that smells like Ready Roadie at home, that scent becomes associated with safety. When you put that same scent in a bucket at a show or after a haul, it smells familiar — and they drink. Start using it at home a few weeks before travel so it’s already a known, positive scent before you ever leave the driveway.
Start weeks before the show, not the morning of. Create a strong positive scent association at home that you then bring with you. If your horse has been drinking Ready Roadie or Mint Condition out of a specific bucket for three weeks, that smell is now “safe water.” Bring the same product, the same bucket, the same concentration to the show.
Bring your own water from home if it’s practical. Horses aren’t being precious — they’re detecting actual chemical differences between water sources, particularly chlorine levels.
Municipally treated water with high chlorine levels is genuinely aversive to horses — they can smell it at concentrations far below what humans notice. Yes: a strong flavor profile competes with that chemical smell. Mint Condition is particularly effective — peppermint is a powerful aromatic disruptor and consistently outcompetes chemical odors. The key is establishing these scents as positive at home before you need them to work at the show.
Sulfur-smell well water is a real and frustrating problem, particularly in Florida and parts of the Southeast. Your horse isn’t being dramatic — hydrogen sulfide smells genuinely bad. Mint Condition and Ready Roadie have strong enough aromatic profiles to mask the sulfur smell for most horses. You may need to go up to 1.5 tablespoons per 2 gallons to get full coverage.
For a permanent solution, a whole-barn iron/sulfur filter is worth the investment. But for getting your horse drinking now, flavor is your fastest option.
Learn more about keeping horses hydrated in Florida heat and water quality →
Appropriate before and after vet checks — used as a consistent pre-loading strategy to encourage drinking at every opportunity. You’re not adding electrolytes (those need to be managed separately), you’re just making water more appealing so the horse drinks voluntarily at holds. Check with your ride manager and vet. With no banned substances and a food-grade ingredient list, this is typically a non-issue.
Yes — and it’s more common than people realize. Horses can reduce their water intake by 20-30% in cold weather, which significantly increases impaction colic risk. Cold water requires more energy to warm internally, and horses will often choose less drinking over cold shock.
The practical fix: tepid or slightly warmed water plus flavor. The warmth removes the physiological deterrent. The flavor provides a positive pull. Soul Soup (pumpkin, turmeric, cinnamon) tends to do particularly well in cold weather — there’s something about the warm spice profile that works well as a winter bucket.
Post-colic hydration support is one of the most meaningful use cases for this product. Horses recovering from impaction colic need consistent water intake, and a horse who’s been through a painful GI experience may be reluctant to drink normally.
Do not introduce anything new during active colic without your vet’s clearance. Once through the acute phase and your vet has given you the go-ahead, this is a gentle way to make water more appealing without adding any mineral or electrolyte load. Soul Soup is the best choice for recovery — pumpkin is gentle and gut-soothing.
Yes — and this is worth taking seriously. Horses on stall rest often drink less because they’re bored, understimulated, and not generating normal thirst signals from movement. Reduced gut motility means impaction risk goes up exactly when they’re drinking less.
A flavored water bucket gives a stall-resting horse something to interact with and makes water more interesting. Rotate flavors to maintain novelty — bored horses are more likely to investigate something new.
You can, and plenty of people do — but there are real tradeoffs. Apple juice is high in sugar and fructose (matters for metabolic horses) and ferments faster in warm water. Gatorade has the same problems plus a significant electrolyte and dye load. Both are human products not designed for equine physiology or daily use.
Our formulation gives you the palatability benefit without the sugar load, fermentation, or electrolyte concern. One tablespoon per two gallons, food-safe, designed for daily use. Cost per serving is comparable once you do the math — and significantly better for your horse long-term.
The Water Buffet method: offer several different flavored water options and let your horse self-select. The horse smells each bucket, tastes what appeals to them, and chooses. No coaxing, no forcing, no guessing.
The simplest version: one bucket of plain water, one bucket of flavored water. That’s a Water Buffet. For a full buffet, the Water Buffet Kit has everything — all 11 herbs, waterproof bucket tags, tea infusers, and four flatback buckets. Track which buckets get drained fastest. That’s your data.
Absolutely — and it’s one of the best use cases. A barn-wide Water Buffet is both a practical hydration tool and one of the most interesting things you can offer boarders. Set up a communal station with clearly labeled buckets using the waterproof tags in the Water Buffet Kit. Rotate flavors for novelty. Track which buckets get drained fastest — that’s your barn’s consensus favorite.
For boarding barns interested in bulk pricing, email info@www.improveequine.com. We work with barn managers directly.
Single ingredients. One herb, one product, full transparency on dose and rationale. No proprietary blends, no mystery percentages, no “advanced formula” language that obscures what’s actually in there.
Most herbal supplement lines use blends because it’s easier to market a story than a single ingredient. You know what your horse is getting, you know why, and you can verify it. If you’re working with a vet or nutritionist, that information is available to share — because it should be.
We can’t make that determination for you — compliance depends on the specific herb, dose, competition organization, and withdrawal period. Some botanicals have prohibited status or detection thresholds under certain governing bodies, and those rules change.
If you compete, please check with your vet and the relevant governing body before using any Apothecary product. We’ll provide full ingredient and sourcing documentation to support that conversation. Email info@www.improveequine.com.
For anything therapeutic, work with a licensed equine nutritionist or integrative vet. We’re not here to diagnose or prescribe — we’re here to make sure the product is exactly what we say it is and nothing more.
The Library has the deep dive on each ingredient. Our Professional portal is built for vets and nutritionists who want to recommend specific products to clients.
Beetroot powder’s hydration benefit is indirect but real. Betaine in beetroot helps with osmotic regulation in cells, and the nitrate content supports circulation — which means blood gets delivered to muscles and tissues more efficiently, including during heat stress. Better circulation = better water and nutrient delivery throughout the body.
It’s also one of the reasons Root Revival (beetroot and carrot) is one of our most popular performance flavors. The circulation and stamina support is a meaningful bonus on top of the palatability benefit.
Nettle leaf (Urtica dioica) is one of the most versatile botanicals in our lineup. It’s a natural antihistamine — it inhibits histamine release without the sedative effect of pharmaceutical antihistamines. For horses with seasonal allergies, itchy skin, or persistent coughing, nettle leaf is often the first thing we’d reach for.
It also supports circulation, urinary tract health, skin and coat quality, and has natural anti-inflammatory properties. It’s in Oh My Gourd! (our laminitic-safe flavor) specifically because of its antihistamine and respiratory support properties. And it’s in the Immune Pack and Joint & Circulation Pack in the Apothecary for the same reasons.
The Benchmark is a structured protocol for documenting your horse’s baseline — vitals, behavior, movement, intake, and coat condition — so you have something real to compare against when something feels off. It’s not a diagnosis tool. It’s a documentation tool. Knowing what normal looks like for your specific horse means you catch changes earlier, communicate more clearly with your vet, and make better decisions.
A journal is free-form. The Benchmark is structured — which means it’s comparable over time, shareable with your vet, and actually useful in a moment of crisis when you need to answer “what’s her normal resting heart rate?” and you don’t have to guess. The structure is also what makes it transferable — if someone else needs to care for your horse, they get actual data, not a narrative they have to interpret.
No. The Benchmark was designed for horse owners, not veterinarians. It walks you through what to observe, how to record it, and how often to update it. Basic vital signs are included with guidance on how to take them if you’re new to it. Your vet will appreciate that you have this. We’ve never had one tell us otherwise.
Flat rate $5.00 on orders under $49. Free shipping on orders $49 and over. US orders only at this time. If you’re close to the $49 threshold, the cart will let you know and suggest something to get you there — because $5 is a silly thing to spend on shipping when you could spend it on another flavor.
Yes — that’s the whole point of the Bundle & Save page. Choose your tier (3, 6, or all 11), pick your format (travel pouch or 2lb), then select exactly which flavors you want. You can get 3 of one flavor if that’s what your horse loves, or mix all different ones. Head to the Bundle & Save page to build your mix.
If something arrives damaged or there’s an error in your order, we’ll make it right — no hoops, no hassle. Email info@www.improveequine.com with your order number and what happened. Because these are consumable products, we can’t accept returns on opened items. If your horse doesn’t take to a flavor, we’d genuinely like to know — and we’ll help you find one that works.
Not yet. US only for now. International shipping for consumable products involves a lot of regulatory paperwork that we’re not quite through yet. If you’re outside the US and interested, email info@www.improveequine.com so we know where the demand is.
Sara Kirkwood — Navy vet, systems engineer, horse mom, science fangirl. My horse Lorelei had a severe allergic response and ended up on 21 dexamethasone tablets a day. I did what engineers do: I found the peer-reviewed research, reproduced the result. It worked. Then I realized I should probably tell people about it.
Improve Equine exists because I got tired of the gap between what the research says and what actually ends up in products on the shelf. Read the longer version here.
No. I’m a systems engineer with 30 years of experience, a U.S. Navy veteran, and a horse owner who reads primary research obsessively. I work with licensed equine vets and nutritionists and am transparent about that relationship. Nothing on this site is veterinary advice. Your vet is still your vet.
Yes — and it was built specifically for you. Licensed equine vets and equine nutritionists can apply to our dividend program, which gives you a referral code and a 20% dividend on purchases your clients make through it in Year 1, and 15% in perpetuity after that.
Applications are reviewed and approved — this is not a public affiliate program. Limited to licensed veterinarians (DVM/VMD) and credentialed equine nutritionists. Apply here.
Email us. Genuinely. info@www.improveequine.com — I read it, I answer it, and if it’s a question I’m getting a lot, it ends up on this page. No chatbot, no ticket system, no “we’ll get back to you in 5-7 business days.” Just an email that goes to a human who knows the products and cares about your horse.
Still have questions?
Email info@www.improveequine.com — a real human reads it and responds. Usually same day.