We think of horses as grazing animals, wandering grasslands in herds and cropping grass as they go. Equines actually have a wide variety of feeding behaviors and strategies, and enrichment involving food and foraging are some of the most rewarding and engaging activities we can provide for our horses.
Grazing
This is the quintessential horse behavior. Other than galloping freely across prairie, grazing is what comes to mind when most of us think about wild horses – a herd of horses, heads down, cropping grasses to eat.
Grazing is how wild horses get most of their food, and involves pulling grassy vegetation into the mouth using the lips and tongue, breaking or pulling it away from the ground using the teeth, and then chewing with their impressive set of grinding teeth before swallowing it.
Wild horses may spend more than 75% of their time grazing, which usually involves alternately seeking out grass, grazing, and resting.
Grazing is one of the most crucial equine behaviors for both physical and mental wellbeing. Horses are poorly adapted to eat meals the way humans do, and instead have a digestive system that is designed for small amounts of material passing through it nearly all the time. The most natural way to promote grazing is by providing good pasture for horses, but unlimited high-quality pasture isn’t necessarily the best choice for some horse’s health or available to most horse owners. To ensure that horses get enough time grazing in a natural way, make this behavior one of the features of your horse’s enrichment program. Slow-feed haynets, hay pillows, and hay feeder bins can ensure that horses have the 24/7 access to forage they need without excess weight gain, metabolic problems, or waste of hay.
In addition to simply providing forage at all times, there are other enrichment opportunities that promote grazing. If you want to encourage movement and foraging at the same time, try Tiny Haystacks. If you have a green thumb, try growing your own fodder for enrichment. Hand walking to areas of good grass is a great activity for horse and human to share. For the simple action of feeding from the ground, try offering food on an enrichment mat or wide shallow pan rather than in a bucket or wall-mounted feeder.
Browsing
Browsing is the ingestion of non-grass plants such as shrubs and tree leaves. If you’ve ever seen a horse nibbling at the leaves of a pasture tree overhead, you’ve seen browsing.
While grazing comes to mind when we think about horse feeding, browsing is also an important source of roughage and certain nutrients for horses. Given the chance, they’ll readily browse material from many trees and shrubs, including leaves, twigs, and sometimes bark. Wild horses may browse certain species out of a need for calories, such as at certain times of year when other food is scarce, or simply because they enjoy the taste. Domestic horses will browse for the same reasons, but will also take to browsing as an activity when bored- a behavior that can be either good or undesirable.
Bored or hungry horses may browse pasture trees that ordinarily they wouldn’t eat, causing damage to shelter trees or ingesting toxic species. This is a situation that should be discouraged, by correcting the problems that result in a hungry and unengaged horse or by removing the toxic plants.
Enrichment activities can encourage browsing in a healthful way, providing the opportunity for this natural equine behavior. There are options for browsing enrichment that can be offered in the pasture or in the stall. Stall-based browsing activities include hanging treat balls, greens on a string, natural wreaths with treats, and hanging natural vegetation from the ceiling. For a guide to using a webby ball, which can be used as one of the best hanging treat balls available, try A Beginner’s Guide to Webby Balls.
In the pasture, promote browsing by providing limbs and and branches from edible species, hanging leaves and treats from overhead limbs, high-hanging haynets, and creating goodie trees.
Snuffling and Pawing
These two behaviors can be seen when horses want to get better access to some food they’ve found.
Snuffling and nudging is a way that horses move aside undesirable or inedible material to get to the good stuff nearby or underneath. If you’ve seen horses grazing in tall grass, you’ve probably seen them push aside the overgrown material in search of the newest, tastiest green grass underneath. In fall and winter, horses will do the same behavior to get at food hidden under dead grass, leaves, or snow. When they paw, horses also make use of their whiskers and sensitive lips to learn more about the shape and texture of the material they’re working in – especially important for horses since they have a blind spot beneath their noses and can’t see the material that’s under and around their lips.
Pawing is used for the same purpose but involves the use of a foreleg. Many of us have seen horses paw, often in an undesirable context such as when a bored or stressed horse paws when tied or kicks a stall door. This isn’t the natural use for pawing, but instead is a product of the environment and situation the horse finds itself in. In non-domesticated equines, pawing while seeking food can shove aside ice and snow, move fallen leaves, or uncover edible roots – all an important part of foraging.
To encourage these food-acquisition behaviors, one of my favorite techniques is to offer a snuffle mat – for more details try The Beginner’s Guide to Snuffle Mats for Horses. You can also provide various puzzle feeders, food inside blankets or under cups, and don’t forget the classic, simple forage box: How To Make a Forage Box.
Licking
Licking is a good sign that something is good to the last drop – horses use their tongues and lips to scoop up the last bits of tasty material from surfaces. This behavior can keep a horse engaged and entertained for long periods and may be calming and relaxing.
A licking mat or smear board is a great way to give a horse the chance to lick, and can be used in any location – we have a whole post on DIY smear boards for horses you can find here. There’s so much potential for variety in flavor and scent for lickable items, so check out the Five Lickable Spreads for Enrichment post. The same smearable materials used there can also be applied to sticks – which is another way to promote browsing too – or the outside of treat balls.
Foraging and Finding Food
Horses seek out food using several senses. Sensory-based enrichment activities are a great form of stimulation for horses, and traveling between food items while searching for tasty things to eat promotes exercise and healthful movement.
Horses find food using their eyesight and use their sense of smell to locate edible material that isn’t in plain view before using one of the techniques above to get the food into their mouths. The sense of touch is also very important in foraging – horses have sensitive whiskers and, since they have a blind spot directly in front of their noses, use the sense of touch to detect when something is within range of their lips.
You can encourage “whisker work” by offering forage boxes, food under cups, and puzzle feeders that encourage the horse to reach into and work through material to find treats inside.
In the pasture, encourage horses to seek out their food by using lots of tiny haystacks, placing several bins, bowls, or mats on the ground with a small amount of food on each, hiding tidbits such as carrots at random for the horse to find as they graze, and placing the feed pan in the pasture when the horse isn’t there.
Sources
McDonnel, Sue. The Equid Ethogram: A Practical Field Guide to Horse Behavior. Eclipse Press, 2003