What funny things does your horse eat?

[PREconvert]

Fingers…flavored with whatever treat person who didn’t read the big hazard sign on his stall saying “Warning: I EAT FINGERS. All treats in bucket please” was holding. Except now they are also holding their lightly scratched very drooly fingers instead.

In his defense, he does NOT reach out and bite, nor mug pockets or beg. He is just very non-picky about whatever someone is holding invitingly towards his mouth: fingers, carrots, mints, it all gets sucked in if you are not very careful. But since you can’t teach every person who wanders down the aisle how to glue their flat palm to his nose, I opted for the “no hand treats” policy and big sign. So he is not ever supposed to get hand fed. Until someone goes and feeds him their hand.

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[SinMiedo]

My first Pony Club horse ate horseflies. I discovered this one day when I killed a particularly large one and showed it to him. He sniffed it for a second and promptly chowed down. I thought there was no way he intended to actually eat it, but whenever I’d smack a fly on him afterward, he’d look for his “snack”.
He was an odd duck in many ways, so somehow being an omnivore didn’t really seem surprising to wee me.
I still wonder what the appeal of a horse fly was. Perhaps he just had an overdeveloped sense of irony, lol.

[PintoPony]

The horse I had when I was a kid would eat just about anything.
His favorite was anything peanut butter and cookies of all types.
The funniest was the day we were at a show and he snagged a hot dog out of my sister’s hand and ate the whole thing. I didn’t believe her at first but then I saw the tell tale ketchup on his lip, lol!

[aregard]

My favorite horse ate raisins. My first horse ate black licorice. I boarded a pony who ate oranges, even though he was allergic to oranges. His first pen (when we didn’t know about his allergy) was near an orange tree, and a windfall orange rolled into his pen. He gobbled it down, with s*** streaming out of his nose. It was scary, actually. We were afraid the reaction would be bad enough to close his airway (it wasn’t. Whew!). Another pony I had would stand under the peach tree and eat fallen peaches, neatly spitting out the pits.

Oh, yeah, one day my dog countersurfed a bag of wasabi-coated-peas from the house and took them out back to try. He didn’t like them, so left the pawed-open bag on the ground. Up came my raisin horse and ate all the wasabi peas.

[walkinthewalk]

One of my horses will eat the cat food — neatly out of the bowl on the counter without knocking the bowl over —

[Bluey]

We had a registered AQHA gelding, Goober, he came already with that name as a colt that, once when we were draining the horse trough and had siened the gold fish into a bucket to clean it, stuck it’s head in the bucket and started to gobble up goldfish.
Bobbing for … goldfish?

Have heard since of other horses that will eat live fish.

Even when young, Goober was a strange horse.
He only had two speeds, slow and slower, which made him a perfect horse for little kids.

[WildandWickedWarmblo]

Bananas and any other kind of fruit.

[StillHorseCrazy]

@walkinthewalk

One of my horses will eat the cat food — neatly out of the bowl on the counter without knocking the bowl over —

My horse always tries to lunge for the cat food when we walk by, so I’ve wondered if she would eat it. But then, she also lunges for the cats, so I’ve also wondered if she was just trying to annoy the cats, which is 100% something she’d do…

[AddieMarie]

@J-Lu

I don’t feed my horse unusual food.

But, he sadly will not eat Fuji apples (my favorites) but likes Gala and MacIntosh apples very much. For a long time I thought he didn’t like apples but he just doesn’t like the apples that I like. When Galas went on sale, I learned that he actually really likes apples. I never knew a horse who was picky about varietals!

My mare also…I love Honeycrisp apples. Best apples ever. She won’t touch them, if she gets a bite she spits it out! But she loves Red Delicious apples. Go figure.

[sophie]

When I got her off the track my Tb mare would not eat treats at all. She’d barely eat her grain as it was.
Eventually I got her to eat carrots and apples…until I tried to hide bute in an apple. After that she wouldn’t touch apples for a year. rolleyes
16 years later, she is still picky, but LOVES organic baby carrots. She will eat other types of carrots, but she will do anything for organic baby carrots. Comes in handy when doing carrot tricks and stretches

Our WB school horses were much less picky. Anything went. One of them, from a very fancy jumpers line, would eat anything we offered. Chips, sandwiches, coke straight from the bottle.

[drawstraws]

@walkinthewalk

One of my horses will eat the cat food — neatly out of the bowl on the counter without knocking the bowl over —

I have a cat food eater also. Mine’s a 21 year old Appy gelding, has done it since he was born. First thing he does if he ever is loose in the aisle is head for the bowl.

[Wayside]

@AddieMarie

My mare also…I love Honeycrisp apples. Best apples ever. She won’t touch them, if she gets a bite she spits it out! But she loves Red Delicious apples. Go figure.

I used to have a gelding that wouldn’t eat Honeycrisp apples either. We had several apples trees in a row, and he’d eat the Cortlands, and Hawaiis, and the Connell Reds, and anything we got out of season at the grocery store, but he would not touch those Honeycrisps.

As far as I could tell he had no carrot variety preferences, though. I used to work in a carrot breeding lab, and I’d bring home garbage bags full at the end of the season after doing variety trials, and he’d eat any of them.

My sheep, on the other hand, are complete apple snobs and will eat any kind of homegrown apple, but refuse to touch any apples I get at the grocery store.

[equest]

My BO buys otter pop popsicles for our barn freezer during the summer. When it’s hot there is nothing my gelding loves more.

[Training_Cupid]

My horse is not very big on people food, but he loves to eat moss! Straight off the tree, it’s pretty odd.

[Goforward]

One of my horses is a moss hog too. I need 2 hands on one rein to keep him from pulling Spanish moss off a tree when we ride around the farm.He knows all the best snacking trees and tries to take me to them!
My other two horses are super picky about everything that goes in their mouths. Both of them give every treat a thorough sniff over before it passes for food. They only do standard treats and it took them both years to like eat carrots and apples. They both love to drink beer though :lol:

[MissAriel]

My guy will eat most anything and try everything else. Every time he is in turnout he tries to eat the iceplant planted along the perimeter, decides it is inedible and spits it out. Until the next time he is in turnout, when he tries again.

For treats he loves the standard stuff and peanuts - in the shell.

When I was a kid my horse loved sodas - he would grab the can in his teeth and tip it up to drink!

[RoughOut]

My horse had nibbled on moss too. She is also a root eater. A few times I’ve seen hter dig up plants to chew on the roots including thistle!

I might rent her out to clear people’s pasture of thistle plants

[J-Lu]

Weird horses re: apples!! Will have to try honeycrisps now with my guy! i love them, too!

[reignthealarm]

My mini will literally eat anything you put in front of him. He especially loves sweetarts! The TB is Mr. Righteous and will only eat apples, carrots, peppermints, and watermelon. Peppermints are his favorite.

[Frog_Pond]

@RoughOut

My horse had nibbled on moss too. She is also a root eater. A few times I’ve seen hter dig up plants to chew on the roots including thistle!

I might rent her out to clear people’s pasture of thistle plants

My mini pulls up briars and nibbles on the roots – he belongs in a goat herd. The other mini came to me with instructions to give him a menthol cough drop every night – he has heaves, it was a sweet, misguided effort to help him. He looooves them still, even though they’re no longer a daily event.

The ex-harness race horse eats bananas, sometimes with the peel, sometimes he requests peeling service. His head flies up at the sound of a soda/beer can opening and he stomps over, wagging that Standie tongue. He’s spit out plenty of grain and snuffles his hay like he’s an inspector in charge of quality control, but he’s never turned down human food. Strangely, he loves people who smoke and snuffles them like they are delicious.