Horses have an incredible variety of urinary habits and varying appearance to the urine. This article, through recounting past forum posts and frequently asked questions covers the normal and abnormal of equine urination. Normals, abnormals, and interpretation of equine urinalysis are presented and links to scientific summaries on horse urine and urinalysis are provided.

By Deborah

Dear Dr. O, I have recently been suspecting that there is sand in our gelding's urine. This evening, I had the opportunity to collect some, and sure enough, a very fine, sandy substance is present. Is this normal? Could this have been ingested?

No this is not ingested sand. Horses secrete a lot of calcium in their urine compared to other species. When it becomes concentrated enough it precipitates as calcium salts in the bladder. As a result horse urine is often cloudy or sandy appearing do to the calcium crystals. Often this is associated with feeding legumes like alfalfa, lespedeza, or have clover rich pastures. Beet Pulp is also a rich source of calcium. This is a common finding and may be normal. It would seem this would increase the chance of bladder stones but a correlation has not been observed.

DrO