When I went to the barn several days back in the morning, I saw what appeared to be blood in the snow where one of the horses had urinated. I called the vet, and he said he had a number of calls about the same thing. Apparently when the temperature is right, there is a chemical in horse urine that turns the snow reddish in color, and then disspates. He told me the name of the chemical, which I can not spell or pronounce. Looked at the snow later in the day, and saw nothing. In my many years of horse ownership, this was new to me!

Always learning,

Brenda

Same thing happened to me several years ago.  I thought for sure that my horse had a serious problem.  My vet was amused by having to explain the facts to another novice!  Wasn't so very funny to me, though.

Marla

Just from alfalfa.  Looks bad though.

I feed alfalfa all the time and I've never seen this. My brother in law runs a dairy and his horses get premium dairy quality alfalfa and no red.

I have on several occassions bought Alfalfa Pellets or cubes to pack into areas that require Certified Weed Free feed.  again No red.

Is it just the change over from from grass to alfalfa that causes the red.

The first time I ever saw Alfalfa cubes, I had put my horse in the Happy Horse Motel in St George. The owner fed all the horses twice a day. Even the transient horses.  He gave each horse a bucket of cubes.  I asked him about it.  He said he bought the cubes by the Dump Trailer load. He parked the trailer in a shed and each day would go out and fill up a bunch of buckets.  He said he weighed the feed  originally but now was pretty comfortable each one of his buckets held 10 lbs of cubes. He would fill his buckets and put them in the back of his John Deere Gator and drive down the stalls dumping one bucket in each manger. No soaking. Just plain cubes.  And all 40 of the horses at his place ate them. For him it was much easier. No stacking hay bales. No lifting 65lb bales. The source just dumped cubes in his trailer with a loader on a tractor, His trailer was a dump trailer with 4 foot sides. he would tilt the front of the trailer up and through a grain chute let the cubes roll into his buckets. What little fell on the ground was easily scooped up with a scoop shovel. He was lifting and moving 10lb buckets instead of 66lb bales.

As I started packing into remote location, I started to haul pellets. But the small pellets get lost in the dirt and wasted. I just don't have space to pack in feed tubs for my horses to eat out of. Wwhen I pack, they eat off the ground. So I switched to cubes. The larger size doesn't get buried int he dirt as easy.  My horses have all learned to bite the cubes and break them into smaller pieces and then chew them. And I found a source of 80lb bags of cubes vs 50lb bags of pellets.  Two 80lb bags were a little closer to the ideal weight I wanted to pack on my horses, one bag in each pannier.

So to answer your question. Horses will learn to eat dry cubes.   Or you can soak them.