Do you do anything special for your horse in your dry lot to keep them entertained? I’ve been wondering. Sometimes, I see balls in horses’ stalls/dry lot and the horses weren’t playing with it. I saw a horse with what looked like a pool noodle the other day and was wondering if that was safe if ingested??? Other ideas? Thanks in advance!
I used to have a jolly ball and not one single horse ever picked it up. I don’t get the impression that horses really need to be entertained with toys. Mine have hay and company in their dry lot and they seem to be pretty content. If you had a horse all alone, I might consider a buddy or a scheduled training session just to break up the day, but not sure horses need anything otherwise.
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I have a jolly ball - my two love to play with it. I also use the amazing graze, with alfalfa or timothy hay cubes in it. I have cavaletti and I do some walk work over them with my 6 year old and some in hand stuff to wear out his brain.
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we had to keep one mare in ice water for two weeks, she watched TV
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I scatter their hay around the perimeter. It makes their hay last longer and gets them moving.
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I Love, love, LOVE these:
I have 3; seriously one of the best purchases I have ever made.
The horses go nuts over them. They get the horses walking and moving, simulating grazing at times when the horses would rather just stand around and eat their hay. Even once the toys are emptied out, the horses will still play with them periodically to see if maybe they’ll find one last hay cube.
The biggest reluctance/concern I hear is that the idea of dry hay cubes scares horse owners; I get it. But, I have been using these since 2012 without problem. I honestly believe (hopefully not foolishly) that the fact that the cubes come out one at a time and are on the ground reduces the risk of choke. I also try to buy “soft” cubes; I’ve found timothy/alfalfa mix cubes tend to break apart more readily than straight alfalfa cubes. I’ve been really happy with the Triple Crown Naturals brand for this purpose.
Cones, jolly balls, milk jugs… my horses completely ignore them. I have pool noodles in my pasture, not for toys but to cover pieces of pipe that jut out of old, abandoned concrete water troughs. Shredding the pool noodles into chunks seems to be a very fun game for my herd, which made me nervous they were ingesting them. So I now cover the pool noodles in duct tape and everyone leaves them alone.
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Make sure they have a place to roll and lie down that is soft and relativity dry. A pile of sand or a pile of hog fuel. Lots of drylots are hard and some have puddles.
Horses take a great deal of comfort in just being close to each other, hanging out. It looks dull to us with our busy monkey brains, but out in pasture if they are done grazing they just stand contented in proximity to each other.
I taught my mare to roll a ball.for treats and apparently she sometimes plays with it alone. But she might be trying to conjure a human with treats!
My friend gives her horse branches with moss and bark to nibble on.
In general though adult horses don’t play with objects like cats or even foals do. Some geldings and stallions stay playful but not all.
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What you mean pulling the running hose out of the water tub isn’t fun and engaging for Connemara ponies on dry lots? Or rubbing their fly mask off? Practicing yoga to get to that one blade of grass that’s on the other side of the fence? Or pulling his blanket off the fence? (Ok, that last one was my fault, I left it there)
My super shorty does a good job of keeping himself entertained without being destructive. I joke that I love being able to see my horse out my house windows…except when he is doing something he shouldn’t, then I wish I was looking at someone else’s horse.
I have used the Amazing Graze at times. He seems to enjoy it but I have a hard time keeping up with retrieving it (when he’s pushed it under the fence. There is only ONE spot where he can achieve this), filling it and then restocking with hay cubes when I am out. It also gets muddy and given all our rain he quickly pushes it unto the muddiest spot of his lot…
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Plenty of hay spaced all about, room to move, and buddies. Mine don’t touch the jolly ball either.
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Traffic cones are my horse’s favorite toys = tug of war. I also buy lengths of natural cotton rope, the bulky kind used in shipyards and for those dog toys. I tie a series of knots in them and my horses have endless fun swinging them around and also playing tug of war. Jolly ball was a waste of $$ – they didn’t have any interest at all.
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Jolly Tug, Jolly Ball and traffic cones are my horses favorite.
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@Displaced Yankee We have a Connemara also and she is hilarious. Lots of time, I see her with half her body through the fence just grazing. She always makes it safely back. The other day I was in a fenced off area and found some droppings. I just knew it had to be her. She’s not much on boundaries!
@Texarkana if the duct tape process is annoying, you can just add some cayenne to dish soap and squeeze it on the pool noodle. That should generally cure any thoughts of playing with it! (I have a horse who is an after dinner cribber and the back of his run in has a gate to my hay area. One pool noodle, cayenne and dish soap, problem solved! (pool noodles are second only to duct tape in usefulness in my world, and I just leave the soap/pepper bottle located nearby whenever it needs a touch up).
Mine could care less about toys unless the toys are out of reach, then there is much fun to be had in destroying whatever is between them and the toys!
But I just put hay out in a few locations. I used to scatter it around so they could “graze” but they never clean it all up and organic material needs to be cleaned out of the dry lot… so if I’m spending more time cleaning a dry lot than a stall, that’s not working for me. So a flake goes in the hay rack in the stall and dry lot, some goes in the slow feeder bag and most goes in the outside hay feeder.
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There are always so many factors to consider, the horses, each one is different in what they need and enjoy, where we keep them, how we manage their feed and time and the weather adding to that also.
It is very windy here much of the time and during the worst of the wind, they rather stand behind something than go amuse themselves.
Also the wind keeps us from using some, like things that will blow away.
We used some beach balls for a bit and they ended up miles away.
With all that in mind, I would say a good answer is the old “it depends”.
We can’t ever ask enough for more ideas, at one time or another we may find use for some of them.
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My horses just love playing with their rubbermaid water tub, first they splash the water out and then chew on it for awhile and then carry it around the dry lot sometimes playing tug of was…
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I have one horse who is always finding trouble and his hay isn’t enough to keep him sane. He LOVES his hay ball. I stuff it with handfuls of the 3 different hays I have for variety and layer in some treats. His paddock is attached to his stall. The ball keeps him from eating the barn and opening the other stall doors.
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@Goforward Wow. I wonder why the regular hay ball is $95 while the shire ball is $20+. Good idea though. I like the idea of different toys. Thanks!
It looks like the Shires ball is smaller and made for treats or grain and the more expensive one is larger and made for hay.
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I used to spread hay in multiple piles around my dry lot for my mare, but she still gobbled the hay up too fast; plus the hay waste! I now use slow feed hay net (down to 1" holes), stuffed with 3-4 flakes AM and PM (depending on the size/weight of the flakes). A hay net keeps her occupied for about 7-8 hours, then she has several hours to scrounge for scraps or just hang out before I refill the hay net.
I just bought some 1" hole hay nets that are a really nice, large size from State Line Tack, https://www.statelinetack.com/item/ultra-slow-feeder-hay-net-yellow/E015309%20YEL/
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My young horse likes my dog’s old jolly ball (though I don’t leave him with the string when I cannot keep an eye on him):
https://www.facebook.com/ilana.gareen/videos/10217991299445115/?l=6674862236672708573
He also likes the Jolly Mega Ball.
https://www.facebook.com/ilana.garee…077956/?type=3
I also hay in slow feeders in multiple locations.
