Cribbing? How do you stop it?!

[WildFire]

Okay so my 9 year old appaloosa, Dante, eats everything. EVERYTHING. His most recent victim was all of the fence posts. They now need repainting. Do any of you know of any way to prevent this??
Wild

 

[Chirpy]

That can be a really tough thing to stop a horse from doing.

I know they make special collars that go around the horses neck and often stops the behavior; I think they work pretty well although I have heard some people say they didn't stop their horse.

I heard someone put hot sauce on the wood in their horse stall... don't know how that worked.

I actually nailed old pieces of asphalt roofing shingles around the posts in my horse stalls... that did stop them but it looked really bad.

I'm sure others here will have other ideas.

 

[WildFire]

Thank you
Wild

 

[freemotion]

Is he cribbing as in chewing on wood, or is he cribbing as in latching onto things and swallowing air, like a backwards burp? Different approaches for the different problems, although both can be referred to as "cribbing." Both are very harmful to the horse, not just to his environment.

 

[mydakota]

If he is truly "cribbing" as opposed to just wood chewing, that can sometimes be a symptom of ulcers. Does he bite the wood, then strain his neck and suck air? Or does he just chew the wood. If he sucks air, that is cribbing. You can treat the symptom with a collar, but it is better to treat the cause. It can be from too much confinement, which can be treated with more turnout, or from ulcers which can be treated a number of ways. There are many reasons horses crib.

 

[WildFire]

Hmm he mostly just chews...at least I have not seen him sucking any air...but thanks, I'll give your advice a try.

Wild

 

[goodhors]

Some of the most current opinions of wood chewing, are horse needing minerals, or horse having ulcers. So next question is your horse getting supplemental vitamins and minerals in his diet?

I am not sure what a cost would be for scope to check for ulcers would cost. Or the cost to treat an ulcer. A number of folks have said their horses with issues were much better, often a total personality change with the ulcer diagnosis and treatment.

My horses learned to chew wood from watching an older horse show them how! When we built the barn we put in metal corner covers for all places they could nibble the wood. Outside, electric fence prevented them eating the posts.

Short-term, but real cheap, is spraying laundry Ammonia on the wood. How long it lasts will depend on rain watering it down. I just poured Ammonia into a spray bottle and covered wood they could reach. This was before I had my own barn. You could probably add a bit of water to extend it, but determined horse may need full strenth.

Any of the products sold to prevent wood chewing will need to be re-applied at regular intervals.

 

[dianneS]

If its wood chewing, you can probably stop it. Its most likely a deficiency of some sort or a digestive issue.

If its wind sucking, forget it, no one has found a cure for cribbing. You can force them to stop with a cribbing collar or a miracle collar, but as soon as you remove it, he will crib again. Some chew deterrents help like "Chew Stop" or rub Irish Spring soap on th wood, but those are mostly helpful for wood chewers not cribbers. Cribbers usually grip the wood with just the edge of their front teeth, open their mouths and suck air so the chew deterrents don't typically effect them.

If you've got a wood chewer, there is hope. If its a cribber, get a collar or learn to live with it. Collars tend to rub the hair off their necks if you don't have fleece on them and the collar can itch, making the horse rub on things or roll on the ground a lot, usually shifting the collar and making the fleece all dirty.

 

[patandchickens]

What does he have to chew on *besides* fences. While IMO it sometimes *does* reflect mineral deficiencies, ulcers, and/or stress, an awful lot of the time it seems to be just bored teeth or bored brain.

Therefore it is often useful to see what you can do to give him more to chew on (larger pasture, rotate among smaller pastures; put out some hay; put out more-but-poorer hay; put hay out in a way that makes him work harder and longer to get it). And give him more to think about (some -- not all, but some -- horses enjoy paddock toys, either commercial or "a length of hose or a fortex feed pan", or those balls they can push around to get little bits of grain out if you have nonsandy ground that's safe to eat small bits off of; or a companion or more to watch)

I agree with the previous poster that if it is cribbing as in *windsucking* rather than just beavering, then unless your horse happens to be one of the relatively few that are fixed by a propertly-adjusted cribbing strap (of any of several designs) you may be s.o.l.

For persistant problems, in my opinion the best compromise between safety and humane horse management is to make everything SAFE to crib on, put metal (or a strand of hotwire, if the paddock is not too small) over most of the cribbable surfaces, and then LET him crib. Give him a safe area to work on and let him do what he's got to. This would be my last choice, not my first; but sometimes it does come down to that.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[patandchickens]

I am not sure what a cost would be for scope to check for ulcers would cost. Or the cost to treat an ulcer.

I am not certain about nowadays, but ten years ago it was not easy to find someone who COULD scope your horse all the way into the stomach. Typically you would have to haul to a state vet school or big performance-horse type clinic. Consequently it at least used to be real real common for people to just treat presumptively for ulcers because even with the meds coming out at several hudnred dollars per month for at least a few months, it was still cheaper than scoping (and, quite possibly, then ALSo wanting to do meds)

I am under the impression that the more-effective type ulcer meds are still in the coupla hundred dollars per month range, but you should look into it if you're interested in pursuing this, as I really just dunno about current conditions.

I have seen some remarkable changes, not just in cribbing but in demeanor and ridden work, when horses that seemed healthy were treated for ulcers. So it can be a very real issue, and is not always obvious. It is unfortunate that it is spendy to deal with though.

Pat