Oral medications - Urhg!!

So, my one mare has been prescribed Bute, my vet says that bute is oral only and he has no access to inject-able other than IV type bolus which is also useless to me. Here's the problem, my 2 year old mare has a 'don't touch me zone' right around her mouth, from the noseband of the halter down. We are working on this issue and slowly making progress, but giving her this bute is erasing any progress we've made and she is starting to bob her head, pull away, all the usual. Is there a trick to getting horses to take this type of medication? My other mare will actually OPEN HER MOUTH for oral medications so I am very inexperienced with this type of avoidance behaviour. Also, I would like to make this as stress free for her as possible.

Mix it in some food. Buy a coffee grinder and grind the pills into powder. Mix it up with some ramp grain or add some applesauce or molasses in.
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Applesauce FTW! All of mine will eat applesauce, it's the best masking food I've found.

Powdered Bute

Comes in a white tub with a red lid and is *supposedly* apple flavored. Your horse will NOT find it to be apple flavored or in the slightest bit edible.

Take the powder and mix it with beet pulp and soak for 20mins. Drizzle with molasses, sprinkle on a teeny bit of grain and serve.

8 horses where I board and 5 have needed Bute for various reasons in the past few months. That recipe worked on every last one where other methods I tried earned me things like full feed pans flung at my head.

My girl will eat powdered bute with just a pinch of sweet feed, she will even lick the pan clean.....

I've mixed it with applesauce and a dash of molasses and added it to the feed or put that mix in an old wormer syringe and shot it in their mouth like a wormer too
Slice some carrots, apples, pears, add a few peppermint flavoured horse cookies to the feed as well - can help with picky horses

Powdered and mixed in to feed is how I've always seen it administered.

The meds are a powder, I have tried beet pulp, molasses and sweet feed and every combination thereof. I'll try the Applesauce tho.
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You can also ad a bit of vanilla icing for flavoring when you mix it up in the food.

We've used those generic brand packets of instant oatmeal, brown sugar flavored. Worked surprisingly well, and was pretty cheap!