The Cardboard Tube Treat Toy: Extra Versatile Enrichment
This swinging DIY horse treat toy made from cardboard tubes and rope is an easy homemade boredom buster. Where this toy really shines in versatility – a simple change in the food and forage can create tons of variety, so this budget friendly horse enrichment item packs a big punch in a small package! Here are 5 options for your newest homemade horse enrichment.
Haven’t made your DIY cardboard tube toy? Start with this tutorial article!
Enrichment Option 1: Hay Buffet
One of the simplest options is to stuff each tube with a different type of hay. The hay buffet technique takes advantage of the small cardboard tubes. Each one is perfectly sized for a handful of hay.
Keeping a variety of hay species on hand in the stable is a great technique for instant foraging enrichment. Your horse’s base diet of hay – whether they mostly eat timothy, alfalfa, etc – won’t change, but you can add small amounts of other hays for sensory and flavor variety.
Stuff each tube section with a different hay. Bermuda, alfalfa, orchard, or less common hays like teff or rye make ideal stuffers. You can also mix and match, combining different hays in each tube.
Every region has varying availability of hay. For small quantities of hay for enrichment that isn’t locally available in bulk (or if you’re in a boarding situation with limited space), hay for small pets like this orchardgrass mini-bale is available from Amazon.
Enrichment Option 2: Fruit and Veggie Sticks
This is the style in the tutorial article. It’s one of the simplest and most user-friendly options for the cardboard treat toy.
To set up this style of enrichment, stuff each tube with a handful of hay, then carefully wedge sticks of fruit or veggie like apple, carrot, or celery into the tubes.
The hay will support the veggie sticks, creating a food puzzle that your horse can solve in a few different ways. They might opt to carefully remove the fruit and veggie bits using their lips and a lot of dexterity. Or they may figure out that nudging or shaking the swinging toy makes the treats fall out.
If your horse is the mover-and-shaker type, place a pan or mat beneath the cardboard tube toy so that the fruit and vegetable slices don’t get lost in the stall bedding or grass.
Enrichment Option 3: Herb Garden
Alongside a base of hay in each tube, you can thread stems of kitchen herbs for an interesting flavor and smell experience.
Herbs like basil, mint, and thyme have unique smells and tastes. Place one type of each herb in each of the tubes. Your horse may opt to eat them, sniff them, or even pull them out and eat around them instead.
This kind of choice and decision-making is what enrichment items are all about.
Enrichment Option 4: Go Green with Grass
Add a few handfuls of freshly cut grass to the cardboard tubes for an extra-appealing flavor and texture option.
This is great for horses who don’t have access to fresh grass or who can’t have unrestricted grazing. You only need a few handfuls, so it’s a safe sampler.
Just remember to treat the freshly cut grass like other perishable treats and feed right away. Don’t let cut grass sit around for hours before you use the toy.
This option is ideal for grass you’ve grown using the How to Sprout Grain for Your Horse tutorial!
Enrichment Option 5: Hidden Food Pockets
This option for the cardboard tube toy is a little more complicated but elevates the toy from simple textured forager to true treat puzzle.
For this one, stuff a handful of hay into the cardboard tube and squash it down with your fingers. Bracing the tube against the ground works well for this. Then, when one end of the tube is stuffed completely with hay, add a handful or two of pellet feed or treats.
Then, take another handful of hay and stuff the open end of the tube. This basically creates a hay sandwich with grain in the middle, so when the horse manages to pull out the bite of hay and tips the toy, grain will spill from the cardboard tube into a waiting pan below.
If your horse eats a forage based diet and doesn’t receive a lot of grain or any grain each day, you can use hay pellets or an easy to chew senior feed, or small pieces of chopped fruits and veggie.
Options like this help turn one toy into several enrichment activities. Adding different options like this to your enrichment rotation keeps things fresh and interesting for your horse, and that’s what enrichment is all about.
Related Enrichment
Swinging enrichment items offer a lot of enrichment value. Many of these ideas work great with other hanging toy options, like:
The Hol-ee Roller for Horse Enrichment