Maisie has been cribbing for a couple weeks now. I catch her at it in the morning when I go down to feed. This started before she was weaned. I have no idea why she started - she's had no stress in her life, she lives in a big paddock with a good sized pasture. Gets fed lots of quality food and rarely has an empty stomach. She's never been around horses that crib.
I couldn't find much about foals cribbing on the internet, but there's some discussions on the COTH forum about foals cribbing due to ulcers or just being genetically predisposed. We are currently a little over halfway through a course of omeprazole (byeeee money!) but so far nothing has changed. I went ahead and just treated for ulcers because if she has them, foal ulcers like to perforate which is terrifying. Foals also tend to get ulcers very easily for no particular reason.
She's not interested in toys. She has a goat and sheep as companions and horses in the paddocks next to her. She was doing this even when she was with her mom. In the morning, I'll see her outside grazing and by the time I head down to feed her I often find her cribbing on the fence inside her paddock.
It's not the end of the world. I've had a horse that cribs before. My first horse Grady was a relentless cribber. He was never stalled because he got very upset, so he lived in a three acre pasture. He'd stop grazing just to go crib on the fence. We never found a cribbing collar that worked on him and it didn't really bother me so we just let him go for it. It didn't seem to negatively affect him - his teeth were fine, he never colicked, the only thing we attributed to his cribbing was his inability to hold weight in the winter.
I was pretty upset the first time I found her cribbing. While I do plan on keeping her, if my plans ever change, people don't want to buy a cribber and some barns are reluctant to board cribbers. It's just a huge bummer. I'm hoping the omeprazole will make her feel better - the idea being that her tummy doesn't feel good so she's trying to relieve the discomfort through cribbing.
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| Trying to eat my face |
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| She's just too cute |
Anyone have any advice or insight?
In other news, she's almost grown out of her foal blanket! The largest size is a 60" so I need to decide what size to buy her to last her through the rest of winter hopefully! She's also gotten a lot more friendly as she's gotten older. She comes over to greet people and wants to be scratched. She also likes to give kisses! Pretty adorable. I installed a tie ring in her stall so that's the next fun thing that she gets to learn. Baby is growing up!
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| Let the baby training begin! |
I have no experience with foals cribbing, but Niko is actually the first horse I’ve owned that ISNT a cribber.
ReplyDeleteMy first horse was terrible — a lot like Grady. The only thing that worked for him was the “Best Friend Cribbing Muzzle”
Miles was a mild cribber, and I ended up putting metal over the spots in his stall where he cribbed, as well as using Farnam’s No Chew spray. I’ve also heard you can use Vaseline mixed with cayenne pepper, but cayenne is a USEF banned substance and since I showed, I never tried that.
Yeah, I bought some No Chew type spray so we'll see how that works!
DeleteI feel your pain. Hampton waited until he was 9 years old to start cribbing. On pasture board. Still no idea why he started. I think genetics have something to do with it, and a lot of very intelligent horses crib. Sometimes they just figure it out. Don't be too hard on yourself. But yes I know that punch in the gut of "Ok, if I ever try to sell you it's going to be more difficult." ugh. I have had decent like with the DARE collar but she's probably too little for that yet.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm going to wait until she's older for a collar and in the meantime just hope she outgrows it!
Deletemy youngster magic actually started cribbing when I got him a few months after i first got him i think, vets first thought that it was a lack of vitamins however later decided that it was just a bad habit that he had got in to, I had to get like a special paint that I painted on his fence and stable door, he hated the smell and tasted and he soon stopped, every now and then he'll try again and I just re-applied this stuff and he's over it straight away
ReplyDeleteUgh, that's a bummer. I don't have any advice or really experience with that but treating her for ulcers seems like a good thing to try.
ReplyDeleteAlso, raising a baby is stressful! Haha.
DeleteIt is stressful! So many things that can go wrong...
DeleteNo fun little Maisie!!!! you're to cute to crib!!!'
ReplyDeleteThough with that said Chimi is a cribber and I have worked hard to lessen his cribbing and it seems to of helped. I do what I can to make sure his gut is happy and healthy with probiotics (really good ones, not Probios, those don't have enough or a good variety of gut bugs, I can't remember which) and feed a mostly forage diet. Also he seems to improve when I have various bodywork done on him that releases the diagphram. I make sure he has little to no sugar in anything I give him (not even in his treats) and it has made a HUGE difference. If he gets a sugar treat he immediately starts cribbing on anything he can reach, including the crossties. So try taking her off any grain for a week or more and see if it helps? It really made a huge improvement in Chimi when I got him and took him off all processed grains and fed a hay cube based diet (he does get oats and a mineral supplement and seems to do really well on that, much less cribbing!) it's A bit of a pain bc it is a lot easier to buy a bag of grain but since he's under my care I do what makes him happy and he's fat as a tick right now and I haven't had any weight issues with him since I got him and he apparently was a hard keeper before.
I know plenty of people have foals on their own with no foal friends but maybe Maisie needs someone her age to play with? I'm just kinda tossing ideas out there as possibilities but know it's not always so easy!
Hope that helps! But at least she's cute!!!! She'll always have cuteness factors with that adorable face of hers!!!
She gets mostly high quality hay, a little bit of alfalfa and a small amount of a low NSC grain with her vitamins. Babies do need more sugars than adult horses since they are growing so fast so I am not planning on taking her off grain, but overall she gets a very low amount. Soon she is going to get turned out with a 3 year old horse, so she'll at least have another horse buddy.
DeleteWell dang… hopefully it's just a phase and she'll grow out of it or just be a mild cribber :) Or maybe she's going through the rebellious teenage years and smoking pot out behind the school and listening to weird podcasts so she can pretend to transcend normal life and be above all that material obscession and one day will wake up and think what have I been doing and stop cribbing 😂 One can hope!
Delete😂😂😂 here's hoping!
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