Freedom is a confirmed cribber. He came to me as a cribber and even with 24 hour turnout, free choice hay, lots of grass and a cribbing collar, he will crib.
Over the past few months he’s pulled a few posts out of the fence line and generally made a nuisance of himself. As an experiment, the owners of the barn installed his own personal cribbing post, a post where he can’t cause any damage to the rest of the fence.
Of course, convincing him to use it? You’ve heard the story about leading a horse to water? To make it more appealing, I’ve been installing electric fencing to keep him off the actual fence line. Finally, when he had his collar off this week, he honed in on that target fence. Look at the expression on his face! If he were a human, he’d be a chain smoker.
You might ask why I’m not trying to completely stop his cribbing. The problem is that this type of OCD behavior won’t just go away . . . it will be replaced by something else. Let’s face it, for whatever reason (most likely a strong genetic predisposition) Freedom needs an outlet. With a cribbing collar he doesn’t crib to the point of obsession — he’s not one of those horses that would rather crib than eat — and as long as he doesn’t bring down the fencing he can go wild.
Well done! You really can’t stop a cribber so rather than make their lives a misery it’s damage limitation & a happy horse all the way 🙂
Exactly! At least he’s not as bad as some cribbers I’ve seen, but as long as he gets his “fix” he’s pretty happy.
Chryssi my 30 year old cribbed all her life, she lives in my back yard. we have electric fence and for sure, there is limited wood. but when she finds it, she is that chain smoker. She wears a collar that seems to work, or maybe i don’t see the beaver activity, But still does it. you hi the nail on the head, when you made a statement about how euphorbic Freedom looks. how true!
I’m glad Freedom has an outlet for his OCD behaviour, with a livable solution for all of you.
This post made me wonder though: is this sort of behaviour only found in our domesticated horses, or do wild horses crib too? Is there anything known about it?