Knowledge
Nutrition Focus
Lorna Edgar – specialist equine nutritionist
Crib Biting & Windsucking
Adam’s passion for this topic has found him adapting management changes to his own horses from research he has read. He feels further research and studies should be encouraged in this area of behaviour.
Case Study
Why do they do it & how can we help?
Raven (two-year-old gelding) arrived at Adam’s property from a commercial racing yard as a chronic cribber and windsucker. The introduction of ad lib hay, 24/7 turnout and a friend of his own age and sex reduced these stereotypies by over 90 percent. He has now not been seen to display these behaviours in over three months despite returning to a stabled regime. Age is a factor in the success rate of reversing stereotypies.
Photograph courtesy of Oli Hipwood
This nice open barn allows social interaction between the horses we can help reduce stereotypical behaviours that affect many polo yards. We all know that noise, as they gulp in air and make the grunt louder than Maria Sharapova! More often than not, we invest in a collar to stop them from doing it. But is this the best thing to do? Are there reasons as to why horses do this, and what are the ideas and suggestions as to how we could reduce these behaviours without using collars?
Why Do They Do It?
After researching and reading some Instagram posts by Adam Buchanan @pairbonding, I felt a combined article on behaviour and nutrition might be an interesting topic to explore and how, or if, 56
Polo Times, April 2021
It has been suggested that oral stereotypies may be due either to an attempt to buffer acid in the stomach by increasing the production of saliva1 or due to gastric ulceration related to stomach acidity2. Nicol et al (2001) and Mills and Macleod (2002) reduced cribbing behaviour in young and adult horses, respectively, by feeding an antacid diet, suggesting that gastric acidity may play a significant role in oral stereotypy. The reduction was particularly evident in the period after feeding3, a period that has been particularly associated with intense stereotypic behaviour by cribbers.4
Oral stereotypic behaviour is not caused directly by diet quality or minimal foraging that it requires, but instead by its consequences for gut function. Lowfibre, high starch diets are known to cause gastrointestinal dysfunction, including gastric ulcers. Gastrointestinal acidity leads to suggestions that cribbing behaviours are responsible for gut health and perhaps even have some beneficial effects, for instance generating saliva that, if swallowed, helps to rectify gastrointestinal pH. The brain chemistry and physiology of cribbing horses is that when they are fed, it tends to stimulate pleasure receptors in the brain as the endorphin release from their feed influences the behaviour or reinforces it. Some may believe, once a cribber always a cribber, but some behaviourists believe cribbing is not a vice, but a response to adapting to situations that are not so natural or are stressful to them. There are some suggestions that it maybe a genetic trait, and there are suggestions that the behaviour is not copied by its ‘neighbour’. Researchers still are not sure why some horses crib while others managed the same way do not. But most agree that it is not “contagious”— horses do not adopt this behaviour by mimicking others. “There are many non-cribbing horses kept in stalls next to cribbing horses who don’t learn this behaviour,” says Amelia S. Munsterman, DVM, PhD, DACVS, DACVECC, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Studies have shown a close association to feeding time and the amount of crib biting increasing, peaking before and after feed. Some horses can spend up to eight hours cribbing each day, performing thousands of www.polotimes.co.uk
