Transcript:

[0:03]

Welcome to the Mad About Horses video podcast, and in this episode we are going to talk about stereotypic or abnormal horse behavior. Now, if you’ve been around horses long enough, you’re going to run into these abnormal behaviors. It is just part of being a horse owner or someone that cares for horses. It is one of the most frustrating aspects of horse care that owners have to deal with day in, day out. And it is something that we know more about today than we’ve ever known — how to manage it, and also how to do some corrective action possibly to limit some of these abnormal behaviors. But, you know, preventative medicine is always the best cure for this, and with the research we’ve been able to identify causes — and we’re going to talk about all that today.

[1:01]

I started off, you know, thinking about my own experiences with stereotypic behavior, and anybody that has a horse that’s cribbing or is a cribber probably goes, “Ugh,” and probably just rolled your eyes because you’re like, “Yep, dealt with it.” I had a riding mare that was just a cribber, and there just seemed like there was nothing we could do to get her to stop that behavior. She would crib through a cribbing collar that we put on — we’re going to talk a little bit later in this podcast about what those are and how they work. She just would crib and crib and crib.

[1:43]

If you don’t know what cribbing is, it is a very frustrating behavior that horses do. It is an oral stereotypic behavior where they will rest their teeth like this on something very hard, and then they will arch their necks and — it’s also called wind-sucking, but wind-sucking is when they can’t put their teeth on something — they’ll still learn to do this, and they’ll go *gasp* and it’s like they’re inhaling air. What it does is it releases endorphins in the brain, so it feels good for the horse to do it, and that’s why it becomes this addictive behavior. And it is very, very, very difficult to get them to stop.

[2:34]

The reason cribbing can be a problem — and some of these stereotypic behaviors that we’re going to talk about — especially with cribbing, is they wear down their front incisors. This horse that we had, she literally had nubs on her front incisors. What that means is they don’t have their front teeth, so when they go to graze or munch on grass, they have difficulty selecting and chewing blades of grass as they forage. So it is a health issue, and some of these other abnormal behaviors can cause colic — wood chewing, you know, some of this other stuff that they do that leads to the stress of it.

[3:22]

So overall, when it comes to stereotypic behavior here, the overall feeling is it shows a mental distress in the horse, right? So if we go back to how these stereotypic behaviors impact the horse, but also the domains of welfare — that mental state, that’s the fifth one that overrides all the others — it is a concern, right? When you see horses doing these behaviors, it’s not just cribbing. Cribbing is a whole separate one that, like I said, it’s addictive, it’s very, very difficult to alleviate. But there’s a whole list of other behaviors that we can alleviate, or we can find strategies to minimize horses doing these behaviors because they’re an indicator of stress. And we’re going to find out — we’re going to find out what the research says.

[4:22]

I will start this out with saying — is it boredom? Because as I evolved in my career studying this many decades ago, you read the research, you read the papers, and as I was taught by my professors, and then as I turned around and taught my students — stereotypical behaviors are because the horse is bored. Well, that’s probably… maybe not true. And you’re like, “What? No, it’s boredom! It’s pure boredom, right? They’re bored, that’s why they’ve developed these things.” No — we’re going to talk about what the research shows, and it’s actually not what we call boredom. It’s other impacts of a horse not being able to act like a horse.

[5:07]

So there is a lot of research out there that shows these stereotypic behaviors are due to their environment and due to domestication. Okay — so we’re going to talk about the history of this in a second. I always start talking about history, but I think it’s worthwhile to start with the broad definition and then we’ll narrow it down as we go. But like I said, many, many, many papers — scientists around the world, DVMs, PhDs, all looking at this — and one that I found very interesting in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior by Dr. Christy Roberts and other authors — “Casual Factors of Oral Versus Locomotor Stereotypy in the Horse.”

[5:59]

So this is their definition of stereotypic behavior — abnormal behaviors like cribbing and wood chewing and all these others we’re going to talk about. To quote: “Stereotypic behaviors are repetitive, invariant, idiosyncratic, and induced by motivational frustration, repeated attempts to cope, or central nervous system dysfunction.” Okay — so that’s a lot of scientific language, right? And scientists, when we write these papers, we use flowery language, so I’ll break that down a little bit. Stereotypic behaviors are repetitive — that’s easy, they repeat the behavior over and over and over and over. Cribbing — they’re going to do it. Stall weaving — they’re going to do it back and forth. Wood chewing — they’re going to keep doing it.

[6:43]

Invariant — so what does that mean? It means it never changes; it’s an unchanged pattern of behavior. So when they crib, they go and look for something solid, stick their teeth on it, and try to inhale air, arching their neck to do that behavior. Stall weaving — that’s a big one — where the horses bounce back and forth on their front legs. It’s repetitive, it’s a stereotypic behavior. Pacing back and forth in the stall, or perimeter walking — repetitive, they just keep doing it over and over and over. Now idiosyncratic means it’s an unusual habit — it’s a strange way of behaving. So it’s not something natural that a horse would do in the wild; it’s not something they’re normally inclined to do. It is a behavior that they learn due to the stresses of being in confinement.

[7:44]

Because again, these are animals that roam the plains, evolved over millions of years to eat small meals all day and be out in the sunshine and do the things they normally do. But when we confine them in fences — in, say, a pasture or a paddock, or we have them in a dry lot, or we have them in a stall — we’re limiting what they can do, what their natural behavior tells them to do. So they get… it’s like frustration, right? They act out in frustration. We’ll talk about what the research shows. Now, the “repeated attempts to cope” part — that’s stress. “Central nervous system dysfunction” — now this is beyond this podcast, that’s more medical, and that’s with veterinary care. So if they do have a neurological disorder or something like that, that is something that needs to be addressed medically.

[8:42]

But that’s the broad definition of stereotypic behavior, and we call it abnormal because it’s not what they’re normally meant to do. So what is normal? In a lot of these podcasts, I talk about normal horse behavior — and what is normal for your horse may be different from what’s normal for my horse or my neighbor down the road. But — got to have a little caveat here — sometimes what’s normal for your horse is abnormal. Right? So if we had two horses in a pasture — one’s eating hay or a round bale or is grazing, and the other is over in the corner on a fence post cribbing — that cribbing, it may be “normal” for your horse to do that, but that’s not normal. So I think in the normality of this discussion, it’s what horses should be doing, or are normally doing, in a wild situation or in an optimal environment.

[9:53]

Remember, to go back — horses are meant to graze all day. The research shows around 60% — on average, 60 to 65%, depending on the study — eating small meals all day, and then they’re resting for a large part of the day. They’re doing some grooming or social interactions, they’re alert, you know, just being a horse. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing.

[10:18]

Now, when we stick them in a stall because we need them for training, that’s part of companionship with them. It is an acceptable form of housing horses around the world — doesn’t matter where you live, we’ve been doing this for centuries and millennia. This is where you start to see some of these stereotypies, and at the end of this podcast we’ll talk a little bit about strategies to help those stalled horses not develop these.

[10:45]

Okay, so we have our definition, we kind of know what normal is, and we know, okay — some of these abnormal behaviors, other ones I haven’t mentioned. So we started with cribbing — that’s an oral stereotypy. And when you think about it, a horse in their environment — they don’t have fingers and hands, so to manipulate their environment they use their mouths, right? So that’s one way they can manifest some of these behaviors, is with the mouth, because they can go and bite and move things and manipulate their environments. So that’s where we see cribbing, and then we also see wood chewing — which, again, a caveat — it’s okay for horses to chew wood in the wild, or, you know, you don’t want them chewing on your trees, and that’s why we usually fence our trees off or wrap them in wire, but horses would eat wood or fiber in their environments or in the wild, and digestive systems should be okay. But in a stall setting, or say in a small paddock setting, or even in a pasture setting — wood chewing or destroying, you know, their environment — the things, the fences, and the things that keep them stalled, or if you have a shade building, you know, that horses stand in — if they’re chewing all that wood, that’s not good. That’s not good. If they chew too much it can cause problems.

[12:14]

Okay, and then wind-sucking, right? That’s that other oral fixation behavior. Locomotive behaviors — talked about the pacing back and forth, talked about the perimeter walking. The weaving is going back and forth on their front legs, you know, just back and forth, back and forth. So they’ll sit in their stalls, or the front of their stalls, and they’ll just go, you know, alternate their weight on their front hooves. Other abnormal behaviors or stereotypies are aggression towards people, aggression towards animals, aggression towards other horses — that’s not good. Biting, rearing, head shaking — you know, if it’s constant, if it’s repetitive. I mean obviously, a horse is going to shake their head if they have flies or something like that, but if it’s repetitive — some of these abnormal behaviors.

[13:06]

And, you know, again — why concern? Not only talking about colic, destruction of their teeth, but just overall stress. Obviously there’s a stress associated with this, and that leads to ulcers, that leads to self-mutilation if it’s too much — that’s a horrific abnormal behavior that some horses do — and it leads to reduced lifespans. So they won’t live as long, or their competitive advantage — you lose that. If they’re stressed all the time, they’re going to lose weight and muscle and all these things, so not good. Especially the locomotion ones, because they’ll be so stressed they’re just burning energy all day, right? And they become hard to keep weight on, and things like that. So overall, the broad picture of these behaviors is — it is a problem. It’s an absolute problem that owners are faced with all around the world, every day, every day.

[14:07]

Now, thinking about my approaches to this podcast, I always go back to the history. I’m like, “Okay, is this a recent phenomenon?” Because we’re feeding our horses better, so they have better diets, they have more energy to do the things we ask of them. They are in environments where a lot of them are stalled in training, getting ready for competitions, very busy lives. They’re not working on farms, they’re not pulling carts, or, you know, taking their owner back and forth to town every day. It’s a different world for horses, say, versus 100 years ago or 150 years ago. You know, did horses have stereotypic behaviors way back when? And — come to find out — yeah. Yeah, actually, thousands of years ago they have found skeletal remains of horses with worn down teeth where they were cribbing thousands of years ago, which is crazy to think about.

[15:12]

You know, if you go back a few thousand years, when we start domesticating horses — in ancient Greece, that’s like a couple thousand years ago — but let’s go to ancient Egypt 4,000 years ago, or the Byzantine empires, or whatever — going way back in history. When you put horses in a confined situation, they started to crib — which is crazy. So when you see a cribbing horse, go, “You know what, they were doing that a long time ago.”

[15:37]

Now, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has a statistic that up to 15% of horses will develop cribbing — as low as 5%, to 15%. That is a lot of horses. And they’ve actually observed that behavior in Przewalski’s horses that were confined. And we know Przewalski’s horses are a separate species from domestic horses — they’re still part of that caballine lineage, so if you go back to the “Rise of Equus” podcast, I kind of talk about how they split — they have different chromosome numbers, so they’re definitely two distinct species, our domestic horses and our Przewalski’s horses. But even when you put Przewalski’s horses in underhuman care, they will start to develop stereotypic behavior. So you’re like, “Wow, okay, so it’s an equid thing, right?” I didn’t see any research on zebras or wild asses developing this, but I would think they would.

[16:48]

Now, to get to more recent history, I found a very fun read — and you can find this online if you ever want to Google it — but it was Horses and Their Diseases, and this was by Robert Jennings, who was a veterinary surgeon in 1860. This was published out of Philadelphia in the United States, and talks about a lot of diseases of the day and behaviors and vices — stable vices, right? Talks about cribbing. And I was like, “Wow.” So reading this, I could read the frustration in this narrative, and I want to read you some of it because it’s very similar to what we experience 164 years later.

[17:28]

Just to quote him: “Crib-biting — this is a very unpleasant habit and a considerable defect, although not so serious as is often represented. The horse lays hold of the manger with his teeth, violently extends his neck, and then, after some convulsive action to the throat, a slight grunting is heard, accompanied by a sucking or drawing in of air.”

[17:55]

Okay, so he goes on and talks about it, and that it’s a repetitive behavior. And some of the other quotes in this were very interesting, in that they recognized that cribbing is a behavior that horses learn from each other. So, to quote him again, Robert Jennings said: “Every companion of a crib-biter in the same stable is likely to acquire the habit, and it is most inveterate of all habits. The edge of the manger will in vain be lined with iron, or with sheepskin, or with sheepskin covered with tar, or aloes, or any other unpleasant substance — in spite of the annoyance which these may occasion, the horse will persist in his attack on the manger.”

[18:50]

So despite doing all these things to prevent it — like we do today — my good friend, I was very fortunate to see her research paddock in Auburn, Alabama way back in the day, like 20 years ago. I went out, and Dr. Cynthia McCall — she’s done a lot of research in cribbing — and I remember her walking me around her facility, and she had a bunch of poles with a bunch of notorious cribbers out there, and she was studying them. And it just brought back a lot of memories of that, of just how frustrating this one is to deal with, and how difficult it is.

[19:24]

And again in 1860, they were doing it — they talk about using a cribbing collar.

[19:30]

I mean, this thing looks a little medieval compared to what we use today, but he says, quote, “The only remedy is a muzzle with bars across the bottom, sufficiently wide to enable the animal to pick up his corn and to pull his hay,

[19:45]

but not to grasp the edge of his manger.” So it’s trying to use what we use today in trying to stop or reduce this behavior so the horse doesn’t teach other horses to do it, but also destroy their front teeth.

[20:03]

So now the history shows, yes, the stereotypic behaviors have been around for a while. Some of the others we don’t know, but we assume, yes — they perimeter walked, they weaved, they did all these things. The big question is: why? Why do horses develop these abnormal behaviors? And I talk a lot about stress.

[20:21]

The first thing I would always say is if you suspect any health problems with your horse, always, always, always, always, always talk to your veterinarian. Cannot stress that enough — they’re the ones that can get eyes on your horse and they’re the ones that can help guide you, especially when it comes to some of these abnormal behaviors.

[20:47]

But another really interesting article — again, so much research in this — in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, this was another study: “Equine Stereotypic Behaviors: Causation, Occurrence, and Prevention Estimates.” They put in there up to 40% of horses will develop some sort of stereotypic behavior, and then others down to 10%.

[21:14]

And I was like, why? Why do you see such a wide variance in some studies? It’s because it depends on the population of horses you’re looking at. And we know horses that are eventers or in big barns, or just a standard stable with riding horses — you know, for western riding or backyard riding — they’re all experiencing different types of lives day to day.

[21:47]

Some have more intense training, some no training. You know, I go back to my own horses that were stalled — it was just, you know, some western riding and pleasure riding, that was it. I was not training to be a barrel racer or anything like that with these horses. It was just pleasure riding to break them so that we could go out and ride some trails. And so the training wasn’t as intense,

[22:13]

but they maybe had not gotten as much exercise, they maybe had not gotten as much turnout time. Right? So you have different horses in different types of situations. But you know, when you think about it — and I was just thinking, like I was saying earlier — boredom. They’re bored. They’re stuck in this stall. It’s almost like, you know, again, we anthropomorphize, or we insert humanness to the horse.

[22:43]

And these animals are very intelligent, don’t get me wrong. They have feelings — I’m a massive advocate for that, and for animals and for horses particularly. They are very intelligent creatures, and we have to be careful, though — they’re not human. Where they’ve got emotion, I’m just saying, they don’t have the same very complex thought processes like we do.

[23:07]

So when you think of boredom to us — it’s like, and again, our attention spans are getting reduced. The other day, a couple of weeks ago, I remember I didn’t have my phone because it was getting fixed, and I was waiting for my kids to get out of school. And I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs. And you know, today, we’re used to having our phones to read the news or catch up on messages or social media. And I didn’t have it.

[23:37]

For 45 minutes I sat there in the parking lot because I had to wait until the phone was fixed, and da-da-da… I was bored. I was bored out of my mind. So you imagine that with a horse sitting there all day in the stall. I was like, “I’m bored.” But when they do the research, and when they look at horses under cameras — right, so there’s no people around them — what do horses do when there’s no one around?

[24:07]

They tend to just eat or sleep and rest. You know, they don’t do these stereotypic behaviors, they don’t act out, they don’t express these behaviors. In fact, when they express these behaviors is at a time of high activity in the barn. So if you go today, or tomorrow, or the next time you go to a horse facility or a barn, what does it sound like around feeding time?

[24:35]

When you show up to feed your horses, what do you hear? It’s boisterous — the horses are anticipating eating, the horses are communicating, they’re neighing or nickering, there’s a lot of activity. That’s when you start to see some of these stereotypic behaviors.

[24:57]

Then when it’s training time — not feeding time — or when you go by into the stalls, the horses are like, “Oh, oh, oh, time for me — oh… no, okay, they walked by.” So what the research is showing is it’s high environmental stimulation when they start to see horses act out.

[25:23]

And really, what it’s boiling down to is these horses — they call it low behavioral competition. They’re not able to act like a horse. Fight or flight — you know, I always talk about studying horses out in large pastures, or when you do see their time budgets in the day, and they’re used to monitoring and being alert all the time, and having escape routes if there is a predator. And they’re able to be close to their friend and groom when they want to, and do some of these things — letting a horse be a horse.

[26:03]

So when we stall them, or put them in — you know, when we confine them, right? When we limit what they can do, it’s not boredom. It’s that they can’t do some of these other behaviors that they want to do, or their instincts and natural tendencies are for. So it’s that frustration. Right? I think that’s where they’re getting at in the research now — that it’s not that the horse is bored sitting there like, “I wish I could go for a ride right now, but you know, I’m kind of bored and my brain’s thinking…”

[26:39]

It’s, “Wow, normally I could run over here if I feel threatened,” or “Oh, there’s Bobby across the way and I really want to go nuzzle up to him or her,” and “Oh, I want to do that.” And so that’s where they get the frustration. So that’s one component of it.

[26:58]

The other is diet. We are feeding horses a lot better, and a lot of these stalled horses or competitive horses are on really higher energy diets. We’re feeding more concentrated feed, we’re feeding them more fats and things that give them more gas to go and be better competitors and be more explosive in their events, if that event calls for it.

[27:31]

And what that does is it gets them being antsy. And it’s like — I look at my now nine-year-old, when in the morning he goes and forages, and if he finds the candy, I can tell first thing when I wake up because he always wakes up before me. And if he’s bouncing off the walls, I’m like, “Ah, you got into the sugar.” I can tell. And I look and I see there’s wrappers, and I’m like, “Uh-huh.” And I ask him, and he’s like, “Oh, yeah,” sheepish. I’m like, “Okay, let me get you a proper breakfast.”

[28:03]

So that energy, that sugary starch — you know, a lot of diets, a lot of energy diets. And I saw this… one of the stories I like to talk about is when I was working at the Del Mar racetrack.

[28:17]

I was a hot walker — I’d get up in the morning and help groom and walk horses all day, and then take them to the races in the afternoons and then repeat every… right? These Thoroughbreds are incredibly pampered, beautiful stalls, complex diets. And this was years and years ago — this was before even now — I’m talking over 20 years ago when I worked there.

[28:44]

And, you know, I remember the first time I saw a horse weaving and just going back and forth, and I was just like, “That’s an abnormal behavior.” And even then I knew — and I didn’t really know what stereotypies were and I didn’t know the causes and things like that — but thinking about that horse, it was a young horse. I can’t remember exactly, probably a three-year-old, maybe not quite four, could have been a two-year-old too — we were racing two-year-olds back then a lot — and very high-energy diets, in stalls most of the day. They’d get hot-walked and

[29:23]

then they would go and breeze and, you know, work out on the track in training. The horses weren’t there at the track all the time — they would get shipped off to the big farm for more training if they didn’t have any races coming up, things like that. But again, that high-energy diet — I used to think, “Wow, that was, you know, not a normal behavior.” And again, with our stalled horses, this is why one of the big things — I’ll put the caveat in now — is we want them turned out so much. You know, optimally 12 hours a day if we could.

[29:57]

You can’t do that at a racetrack. There is no big pastures, you know, in Del Mar or Santa Anita or some of the other large racetracks — there just isn’t, for the hundreds and hundreds of horses there. But, you know, again, there’s other things we can do with enrichment that we’ll talk about, like stable toys or slow feeders. That’s where we’re getting, which is really good, because it all goes back to the Five Domains of Animal Welfare.

[30:28]

Nutrition — we’re meeting that, or we’re probably overfeeding our horses, and that’s another podcast for another day. But that’s a big one. The environment is where we’re seeing changes, and that’s the major factor in development of stereotypies. The health of the horse. The behavior — allowing a horse to be a horse — so that factors in with environment. And then that mental state — I did talk about that in a past podcast. And then the last factor… so if we talk about overfeeding, maybe too much energy in the diet, or it’s just that’s part of being a competitive horse, that they need to be on those diets…

[31:05]

We talk about the behavioral frustration. The other aspect is if they’re not getting their nutritional needs met — which, just to put it out there, most all forages on the planet are deficient in some nutrients horses need. Horses need some supplementary feed to balance out their diets. If you get their diet evaluated, I guarantee you there’s probably some deficiencies in there, because our hays, doesn’t matter where you live in the world, are not going to be able to reach that horse’s — all their needs. And we want to meet all their needs because we want these horses to live into their 30s, some living into their 40s now. We want their competitive lifespans to extend past their teens into the 20s, right? So

[31:55]

that’s why their diets are so important. But that can lead to wood chewing — that’s one of the things. Or they may eat soil or other things because either they’re hungry or their needs aren’t being met, so they try to find ways to fill those needs.

[32:07]

Now, we’ve talked a lot about stalled horses — some of you may be asking, “What about pasture horses? Do they develop stereotypic behavior?” Well yes, the quick answer is yes. And there is a very good study that was done out of Australia, and this was published just recently, a few years ago. And it was looking at the reports of stereotypic behaviors in pasture horses.

[32:37]

This is in Australia, but again, it could be anywhere in the world. In this survey, this covered over 3,000 horses, and 85% of those horses had access to pasture at least 16 hours a day. And again, of those 3,000 horses, at least half had developed or shown signs of some stereotypic behavior. Chewing bark was 26% of the horses — so almost a quarter. 18% licking or eating dirt. 7% pawing the ground.

[33:12]

And then some of the owners talked about, you know, they had some issues with their pastures. And again, for me, those statistics indicate that if they are wood chewing or eating dirt or something like that, that probably the grasses in Australia are not meeting the dietary needs of those horses. Those horses need something more in their diets to offset whatever it is they’re not getting, or the pastures are too compact — too many horses. We’ve talked about that in a previous podcast with behavior — overcrowding — that leads to stereotypies, and it also leads to pasture degradation.

[33:53]

So, you know, the rule of thumb is always two acres per mature horse under most conditions. But I always use New Mexico as an example — they have lots of wonderful horses out there, I’ve been to New Mexico — not the most lush or densely grassed pastures out there. So I could say, you know, some of those horses may need eight acres to meet their dietary needs. So it just depends on where you are. And then even time — time of year — it could be two acres per mature horse in the summer or spring, that could go to four in the fall or winter. Right? It just depends on where you are.

[34:42]

But again, stalled horses is where we see a lot of this — you do see it in pasture horses. So when we go to look at how to limit stereotypic behaviors… and Cooper & McGreevy — it’s a very good study, “Stereotypic Behaviors in the Stabled Horse: Causes, Effects, and Prevention Without Compromising Horse Welfare” — a very good paper on this. And to quote them, the number one thing is: turnout, turnout, turnout, turnout, turnout. That quote: “It is widely acknowledged that the most successful means of reducing the frequency of all common stereotypies is to give the horse greater time in paddocks with ad libitum forage and social contact with conspecifics.” Okay? So that means basically turn them out with either hay or enough pasture with other horses — that is the number one strategy in reducing stereotypic behavior.

[35:43]

But can we all do that? No. Some of you listening or watching can’t do that — you just can’t. Your facility doesn’t have it, or where you live you don’t have it, or if you have horses on your own property, you may… you probably don’t have it. You know, if you — I would suggest, if you do have a paddock, you know, it could be dirt, you put in plenty of hay, let the horse get turnout time if you can. It’s very, very important.

[36:09]

Some of these other strategies could apply to stalled horses that you should consider — and this is where I think there’s been a big change in the industry just in my lifetime, seeing where we’ve gone with, you know, the Five Domains of Animal Welfare, where we’re seeing more environmental enrichment. I can drive down the road — I live near some dairy farms — and I will see scratchers out there. I’ve even seen automatic scratchers where the cow can go underneath and push up a little bit and it will scratch their backs for them. I’ve seen bulls — they have around these big posts — bulls up around scratching their shoulders. That’s a form of enrichment for them.

[37:06]

We’re seeing this now with our horses, especially with our stabled horses. One thing everybody can do is mix in different types of hay. Just — again, another caveat — always change the hay in a horse’s diet slowly. I always say over three weeks. Tons on social media you can look up, look for that. You can always go to madbarn.com, Learn tab, transitioning diets — you always want to transition slowly. But they’re finding in some studies — so this one was “Foraging Enrichment for Stabled Horses: Effects on Behavior and Selection,” Goodwin and others wrote this out of the UK — they were mixing hays. So you could do an alfalfa–timothy mix or something, or a grass hay or two different types of grass hay and mix it, because you don’t just want to throw one next to the other, because the horse may just prefer one and will eat that and ignore the other. So if you mix it, it causes horses to select — so they’ll go through, smell, and taste different flavors and textures. So that is a form of enrichment — you’re giving them diet variability. That’s good, that helps their brains.

[38:14]

And this actually led to — they talk about reducing the time a horse will crib when you do things like this. There was a thing called a ball — you may see it — some of these hard feeders, you can put hay or treats in there where the horse is trying to get everything out. We see these at zoos, and enrichment’s a big part of their care now for wild animals, where they’ll put food in boxes and different things. The elephants will go out and their hay is stuffed in different places, or giraffe, or the primates have food in different little things they have to work out and puzzles. So all of these things, we’ve learned, will help your stabled horse.

[38:58]

So one thing you can do is mixing — that’s easy, mixing hay, everybody can do that. The other big shift I’ve noticed in my career is the push for forage-based diets. We’ve always fed forage…

[39:10]

But now it’s more, start with forage — get a really good forage for your horse, that’s the diet. And then, if they need, they — every horse is gonna need some sort of supplement, whether it’s just a vitamin–mineral mix up to a complete feed. You know, it just varies on your situation. But where the push has really come, I’d say in the last couple decades, is extending foraging time.

[39:31]

Where, you know, we feed meal feed twice a day — now we’d say, you know, three, four, five times a day would be optimal. But you can’t really… you know, not everybody can do that. So what do you do? You try to either feed them as much forage as you can — and then you get into obesity and those concerns — or you increase the time that they forage with the use of slow feeders.

[39:57]

We’ve seen, and there’s a lot of research ongoing, with using hay nets or other types of slow feeders for horses. If you — again, if you go to madbarn.com, Learn tab or the Articles tab, “Slow Feeders for Horses: Benefits and Best Way to Use” talks about the benefits of this — that it increases foraging time, which we want to do. Again, horses are meant to eat small meals all day, so trickles of feed. They notice when they forage longer, they decrease aggression, overall welfare is better, it can help with weight loss, you know, helps their guts be healthier, it reduces stereotypic behaviors.

[40:42]

So you can use things like hay nets or hard slow feeders — like that EA ball I talked about — you can stuff that with forage and the horse has to work at it to get it all out. Have to be a little bit careful, you know, especially with hazards — if the horse is shod or has shoes on, you don’t want them to strike the net and get tangled up with that, or hurt their teeth or something with a hard feeder. You actually now can see round bale slow feeders — which, you know, round bales in my career, I always just dumped them in a round bale feeder — but now you have nets that go around them that will… the horses have to work at getting the forage out. That’s a really great way of increasing foraging time, increasing the horse — that’s what they want to do, right? That’s what their bodies are telling them to do, and you’ll reduce that behavioral frustration, where they get frustrated, they eat their meals really quick and then they sit around all day and then they go, “Okay, well I’m bored… oh, what’s… oh, he’s cribbing, what’s that? Oh, let me try that,” and then they pick up the behavior. You don’t want that.

[41:44]

And then diet — always, you know, see what your horse is doing. You can go to Mad Barn right now and get your diet analyzed 100% completely free. At the top right of our website is the “Analyze Diet” — you can submit your diet, have one of our equine nutritionists, DVMs, PhDs look at what you’re feeding your horse, come back at you and say, “Looks great,” or, “You’re feeding too much energy,” you know, “Your horse — you say you do this with your horse, I look at what you’re feeding, wow, your feed bill must be really high,” you know, get that advice. Or talk to an equine nutritionist that you trust and say, “Hey, can you just analyze my diet and see what I’m feeding, if I’m on track, is my horse in a proper body condition, am I missing anything?” Because those dietary imbalances can lead to these stereotypic behaviors.

[42:41]

And, you know, where I’m living in New Zealand, I didn’t realize I was low in iodine. I had no idea. You know, my skin was irritable — I’ve never had problems like that before. I was like, “Ooh, is it the air down here?” I mean, the air is clear, but, “Is it the water?” And I come to find out that our vegetables and fruits — we don’t have any iodine. And I was using the Himalayan salt, so I wasn’t using iodized salt, and I was really low in iodine. So I had to add that to my diet. Horses need that in their diet. They need selenium — that’s a big one, antioxidant. Most everywhere I look, soils are deficient in selenium. So get your horse’s diet looked at and see if there’s any imbalances there that could be causing some of the stress or hyperactivity that you might see, or, you know, if they’re wood chewing or things like that.

[43:40]

Now, cribbing collars — oh, I’m sure many people have different opinions on it. I think there is a welfare concern with them. They’re supposed to be painful or discourage cribbing behavior. I’ve seen a mare crib right through the cribbing collar like it wasn’t even there. She kept cribbing, and obviously the pain or whatever the discomfort she was feeling outweighed the benefit of cribbing. I would just say do everything under vet care or with vet guidance if it’s in that desperate of a situation. I can’t see your horse and I can’t tell you not to use it, but always talk to your veterinarian, let them know what you’re doing, and they can help guide you.

[44:26]

So other things you could do — again, the turnout time’s big, the increased foraging time’s big, stall mates — visually can see each other, talk to each other — using environmental enrichment, different toys I’ve seen used, people put mirrors up, different ways to enrich a horse’s life. Talk to friends — you know, horse industry is wonderful in sharing information. People on social media, or even tell us — you know, email me, podcast@madbarn.com — “What’s something cool that you do?” I would definitely mention it in a podcast or do a social media post on it if it’s something I’ve never heard or just it’s interesting. I love to hear from you and let me know. But, you know, look at the diets too, because all of that rolls into…

[45:29]

That’s why it’s like I started off, and I’m like, “Oh, this is so frustrating, it can be so complex.” It is something that we all have to deal with. And again, don’t beat yourself up — especially if you’re listening to this point, I always say, “Well done.” You’re getting the information. I know horse owners — I’m starting to say this more and more — you’re my tribe, you’re my people. I’ve been with you my whole life. I know the trials and tribulations of being a horse owner. We do the best we can, and you love these animals so much and you want the best for them. And so we all have to deal with it, we all have to deal with abnormal behaviors — it’s just how do we help our horses live the best lives they can and, in turn, give us that love.

[46:15]

So just on behalf of your horses, thank you. You know, thank you for listening and learning and taking this knowledge and applying it to your day-to-day management.

[46:21]

And then as I finish this, again, just another plug — Mad Barn, Learn tab — there’s other articles where you can find out more information: wind sucking, weaving, wood chewing, “Why is My Horse Cribbing and How to Stop It,” causes, risks and prevention, stall walking, circling — all of these articles are written by horse enthusiasts and DVMs and PhDs. We all look at these, and that information is for free, absolutely 100% free. Just go on there, give a click on the website, read some of this stuff, because again, knowledge is going to help you and your horses.

[46:58]

And then, if you need to, subscribe to our YouTube channel, like this video — so appreciate it — check us out on social media: the TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, all there. This information is going to keep coming at you, and thanks for listening and take care, and get ready for another video podcast coming your way very soon.