Tammy: I guess the salt would want to make them drink more water.

Dr. Olcott: Yeah that’s right. And where should the salt be? Well it should be close to the water source because, just like you just said, yeah eat a little bit of salt and boy I’d like a drink of water to go with those salty chips I just ate, so you’d go over and get a beverage to go along with your salt.

Tammy: Okay. And do you recommend that people give them hay as well? Does hay help prevent that or does it really matter?

Dr. Olcott: Oh yeah hay’s…If they’re not on pasture…And these are animals that they’re not made to eat grain, they’re made to eat grass and weeds and shrubs and such so yes if pastures are inadequate, absolutely they should have hay out there. Some people want to give them a treat and hay’s a treat and it is to them then the hay would be a much better treat for them from a nutritional standpoint than would be a bowl of sweet feed or something along those lines to eat. But what hay does in a ruminant is it goes in their stomach
0:25:00.3 and then they regurgitate that and then they bring it up and chew their cud. Now while they’re chewing cud, it’s just like you and me if we’re chewing some gum, we start to salivate and we swallow that saliva and that saliva is very alkaline and so then that alkaline bi-carbs go down to the rumens and keep the rumen pH correct. And it also kind of helps with phosphorus excretion, so if they are getting too much phosphorus that we said was the big problem on these stones, that decreasing pH and that recycling of phosphate through saliva out of the blood, that phosphate going to end up accumulating in the rumen and going out to the gastrointestinal tract instead of having to be dumped out through the kidneys into the bladder, so it helps in both ways with that.
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