5 Minute Horse Enrichment: Cereal Box Feeder

In need of some instant enrichment? Save a cereal box and, with three quick cuts and about half a minute of work, you have a forage box puzzle ready to go. It’s fast, free, and encourages some natural equine behavior. Can’t ask for much more than that! Here’s a quick tutorial.

The Cereal Box DIY

I totally love forage boxes for horse enrichment. They’re one of the most budget friendly options for encouraging problem solving, using the senses of touch, smell, taste, and sight, and experiencing novel foods.

For this five-minute enrichment DIY, start with an empty cereal box. Did you know that most of the healthy cereals at the grocery store can be eaten by horses? Cereal is a MAJOR trigger food for me so I don’t keep it around the house for myself (if you have ever fallen victim to the “just one more bowl” situation, you’ll understand). But I have empty cereal boxes at the barn because I occasionally use human cereal as training reinforcers or enrichment treats. My horse loves the chance for a couple of Cheerios during training sessions and it makes it easy to add additional variety in taste and texture to food-based enrichment.

If you’re looking to use cereal as a special treat for your horses, keep a few things in mind. First, stick to the natural stuff – or as close to “natural” as a cereal product can be. Stay far away from artificial colors and excess sugar; the “candy in a box” kinds of cereal are definitely not appropriate for horses! Additionally, chocolate is not horse-safe, so don’t use any cocoa-flavored product. Stick to unsweetened, whole grain cereals such as oat rings, bran flakes, or granolas. A favorite is simple, unsweetened Cheerios or a store brand thereof.

Make sure the box is completely empty, no inserts remaining inside. Close the box up using the tabs at the top.

Make three cuts in the top of the box to form the hinged lid.

Bend back a portion of your box top to make a grabable handle for your horse’s lips. The smaller the bent area, the more challenging the puzzle:

Fill the box with any amount of treats you choose, depending on your behavioral needs. The different behavioral goals you can accomplish using forage boxes are covered in this post on how to make a forage box. For this one, I’m using some of the last Cheerios in the corners, hidden from view by chaff, with some lightly soaked pelleted grain in the center as an immediate reward for figuring out how to lift the lid.

Close up the box and deliver it to the horse on any flat, level surface.

If your horse has trouble with understanding the hinged lid idea, you can fold it back at the crease to make sure it stays upright, or roll the lid on itself.

Then enjoy watching your horses reaction:

What behaviors do you see? Lots of tugging, nudging, and finally snuffling and sorting through the chaff to find the really tasty treats?

Remember to remove the box after a short period of time, to keep the enrichment exciting and fresh and also to prevent the cardboard box from getting soggy in damp spring pastures. As long as it stays in good shape, you can reuse your box a few times, but cereal boxes are so easy to come by that there’s no reason not to just recycle it and get a fresh one the next time you want to do this enrichment. You can use forage boxes frequently with horses (as long as you keep up the behavioral variety) so perhaps that’s an excuse to eat more cereal!

Have you used this idea or a similar one? Sharey your experiences!