My mare is always licking her lips. She especially does it when she’s working cattle, When she gets nervous she flaps her lower lip. I have seen other QH do this… it seems to coincide when they are thinking… the lip flapping.
The lip licking I think is a bit of a tic my mare has… I know all horses lick and chew when bridled. Mine does it in the bridle and without.
Anybody else have a licker and or lower lip flapper?
I have a lip flapper. He is also a bucket splasher and teeth scraper and general goof.
Ulcers.
Lip flapping and water playing are classic signs of ulcers.
May just be a quirk she has…we had a TB that developed a habit of sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth twisted and then flapped it around for fun. (Habit from tongue tying at the track)
Didn’t mean ulcers, just a very entertaining habit lol
But maybe consult a vet just in case 
mine is a low stress horse, not ulcers. She just licks a lot. She doesn’t splash her water although she does have a love affair with the muck bucket water that we put in her stall when it got blazing hot here (in addition to her auto water bucket)
She loves to stick her face in but doesn’t really splash. She does like to play with the hose as its filled up.
“When she gets nervous she flaps her lower lip”
All I’m going to say further is that I sure wish someone had told me about the connection 25+ years ago. I probably would have had a happier, less nervous horse to work with if we’d given him a round of ulcer meds.
Ok, I lied.
Low stress is also bunk as a way to rule out ulcers. Are yearlings under a lot of stress? No, but somehow the incidence of ulcers in yearlings is pretty high.
Ok, now I am done. :lol:
I will have her checked but I have noticed it’s a very common thing cow horses (cutting bred ones) seem to do when they are thinking about a cow.
Maybe it is the stress… but my mare is an oldie and in light light work now. Her weight/condition is perfect and no real signs of problems.
Licking and chewing does coincide with thinking. Lip flapping, teeth grinding, and apparent “tics” coincide with anxiety and can be indicative of ulcers, particularly if they occur during work.
I like to see my horses lick, chew, and yawn while they’re learning. Quirky attacks of lip-flapping, nose-flipping, or teeth-grinding have become red flags for me though. I’ve dealt with too many OTTBs now that had ulcers or other issues whose tell was one of those habits. Not familiar with working cow horses though. Not my genre.
Yeah she doesn’t grind at all, and the flap is really a small flap… just the bottom lip a little bit. She is licky… I do think it’s a habit she has now… at her age not going to change… she’s 19 now.
Cowhorses are thinkers…mine is very cowy… and very locked on when she’s working. Her work load she’s a happy semi retiree… just a little sorting, trails and lots of TLC. In her younger years she was a champion cutter and later a champ penner. Now she’s my baby…if she has ulcers they would be from her previous work… it is possible but she really shows no signs.
My new horse is a lower lip flapper … never occurred to me it might be ulcers, though. He only does it in work. Eek.
Lip flapping and lower lip “tics” are generally classic signs of the horse harboring anxiety or resentment about working. It is an external display of stress, especially stress that the rider has either ignored, written off or otherwise not noticed.
The constant licking and chewing falls under the same category: it isn’t always a sign of relaxation, it can also be an external manifestation of stress.
Huh. I’ve never heard of that being related to ulcers.
A nervous horse is a nervous horse, and I’d always check them for ulcers anyway.
My guy doesn’t have ulcers, but he’s CONSTANTLY licking his lips. It’s just his thing.
Only took me about 30 seconds to browse and find 3 pictures with his tongue hanging out…
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k27/r_beau/2014%20Horse%20Pictures/2014-06-22LamoureHorseShow08EggampSpoon_zps8e2fe5be.jpg
My old mare doesn’t really flip her lips, but she almost looks like she is talking. My friend and I always joke that she is cussing me out. Once in a while if she is really in a mood she will grind her teeth. She doesn’t do either behavior all the time just once in a while.
One of mine likes to lick my hands, coat, face / anything he can reach. He does get salt with his food daily and has a trace mineral block in his stall so I don’t know why he does it.
We had one at our barn that flapped his lips and made a lot of sound. He did it when he was nervous. He was on ulcer meds, but it didn’t stop his voicing his displeasure about things :lol:
Him, mine flapped his lip with droopy ears whenever he was very relaxed.
No tension anywhere.
[QUOTE=sascha;7809993]
“When she gets nervous she flaps her lower lip”
All I’m going to say further is that I sure wish someone had told me about the connection 25+ years ago. I probably would have had a happier, less nervous horse to work with if we’d given him a round of ulcer meds.[/QUOTE]
25 years ago ulcer meds for horses didn’t exist. I remember back in the day we “treated” stomach issues with liquid panacur everyday.
Sure they did. I remember having to go to VPCL’s pharmacy to pick up what the vet had compounded. No it wasn’t Omeprazole, but it was ulcer meds. Ranitidine? Famotidine? Can’t remember at this late date - one of the oldie but goodies. Had to administer about a billion times it day it felt like.
The particular episode I’m remembering was for a yearling that kept purposefully casting himself. He was in a bad way and got fixed right up. The lip flapper was a hard keeper owned by someone else and their vet didn’t put the symptoms all together because they weren’t so obvious. A couple of years later, another lip flapper belonging to another owner was diagnosed and treated by the same vet that dealt with the yearling.
The one vet dealt with a LOT of TBs and STBDs and we were lucky as heck to have him work on our riding horses. The other vet was with a general practice (large and small) with no really solid equine specialists in the practice.
I had a gelding that when he was in the stall flapped both lips at the same time when he was bored by nodding his head up and down fast. I think that started to get flies off then he found he liked doing it. At least it wasn’t cribbing… but it was a habit for sure he developed. Sounded and looked very silly.
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