Cross posting here; not sure where this belongs. What have you found that will stop them from chewing the wood? Unfortunately, here in CA no opportunity for grazing, but they are in fairly large corrals, and are fed hay three times a day, so have hay in front of them almost the whole time. They have access to salt, are fed a pelleted feed with beet pulp 2x a day, and have ‘toys’ (which they ignore.) I’ve tried Chew Stop with no success. I long for good ole creosote, but alas I’d probably be arrested if I tried smuggling it in. Any suggestions?
[QUOTE=Brooke;7729420]
Cross posting here; not sure where this belongs. What have you found that will stop them from chewing the wood? Unfortunately, here in CA no opportunity for grazing, but they are in fairly large corrals, and are fed hay three times a day, so have hay in front of them almost the whole time. They have access to salt, are fed a pelleted feed with beet pulp 2x a day, and have ‘toys’ (which they ignore.) I’ve tried Chew Stop with no success. I long for good ole creosote, but alas I’d probably be arrested if I tried smuggling it in. Any suggestions?[/QUOTE]
Don’t use wood?
Provide them with tree branches/other wood sticks to chew on?
If you have wood in barns and fences, where horses reach it, cover that with metal edging.
Add hot wires where horses have ample room to live without hitting it, that is not in little spaces but the larger ones.
There is a reason many pens in AZ and CA are made out of pipe and sheet metal/metal clad plywood.
Feed in a slow feeder of some sort. Try hemlock on the pieces they chew the most. Line with metal.
check for ulcers -
Someone here on COTH suggested rubbing a bar of soap on areas they chew. I used some Irish Spring and it did stop them.
Ivory soap on the areas they chew - and if that fails, buy some Cribox. It’s expensive, about 30$ a jar, but it lasts a while and nobody here will touch it.
We have one that will chew through a board in a few hours. Even though he is outside, on grass. I’ve heard that some horses that chew have some sort of mineral deficiency; and have seen someone on the board suggest Sulfur blocks for it. Don’t know the efficacy, but if your horse doesn’t have a mineral block either it may be a good place to start.
I would wear gloves with the Cribox. If you inhale or accidentally ingest it, it definitely hurts.
You could try cheap hair spray - not sure how long it will last on wood or if it will even work but my horses have stopped pulling fly masks off.
Check for ulcers, or at least try a probiotic. I used a probiotic from Farm and Fleet, just a powder I added to grain, and it stopped my gelding’ s chewing phase.
Training race horses, we used to pour a glug of apple cider vinegar in their water buckets.
The thinking was that so any water anywhere would seem somewhat familiar if it all had the taste of that vinegar.
Seems to have worked for that, horses rarely didn’t drink good any place, even in the places some trainers complained their horses didn’t like the water.
What some noticed, don’t know if it is true, is that some horses that liked to chew wood would quit after being on that bit of vinegar.
A vet I asked once said it could be the potassium in the apple cider vinegar.
Who knows, have not followed that to see if that is right.
Maybe some do chew because of that, most that do I assume are just bored.
Thanks all. Writing down all of the good suggestions.
