Here’s a fun, colorful, and easy DIY horse enrichment item for stall or pasture: a swinging snack toy for horses made from….wait for it…rubber dog chew balls! Sound silly? It’s VERY silly, but it’s also a simple and on-budget stall toy that your horse will love.
A Swinging Snack Toy for Horses
On this blog I write tutorials and articles on two main kinds of horse toy projects: ones you can buy straight from the shelf and use, and DIY projects that you make mostly from scratch.
The swinging snack toy for horses is a combination of both!
I put it together using some spare rubber balls and a very used lead rope, after my plans for a very different and complicated build fell through.
And my horse loved it:
So I knew I had to write a tutorial for this silly but super-engaging equine enrichment item.
Why You Should Make It
There are three main reasons to make the swinging snack toy.
- It’s really, really easy.
- It’s on budget.
- It’s versatile.
Let’s drill down on these a little bit:
It’s really really easy: It takes a little more than five minutes to make this toy, start to finish. Then, your finished swinging snack toy for horses can be used over and over. The next time, all you have to do is load the balls with tasty treats. That’s a big perk, because even though enrichment should be a priority, we also need to make it fit into the rest of our busy schedules.
It’s on budget: while I do cover a lot of DIY horse enrichment that’s completely free – like the classic forage box or the paper carton swinging horse toy – for this project you will need to buy the three Megalast balls.
Even so, the total cost for this horse-sized puzzle toy is around $16 USD if you use an old lead rope from the stable. Compared to most commercially made horse toys, you’re coming out way ahead. Most of us are on a tight budget these days, and this toy won’t break the bank.
It’s versatile: Versatility is one of the most important traits for horse enrichment items. It’s great to be able to use a toy in different ways and locations – more variety means more behavioral options. Using a lead rope means it comes with a built-in clip, making installing and removing it a breeze.
This swinging snack toy for horses works with any fruit or veggie cut into stick shapes, and you can use it in the pasture or stall.
Why the Swinging Snack Toy for Horses is Great Enrichment
Before we get to the build instructions, let’s take a look at why this DIY makes a great equine enrichment item, from your horse’s perspective.
Enrichment for horses is all about encouraging natural behaviors. That means giving your horse ways to use their body and mind like a horse should.
This item might look like a colorful toy, but it’s actually a food puzzle. It lets your horse find and acquire their own food, but also requires some finesse and brainpower. Your horse will use their senses and practice their coordination as they try to grab the carrots from the toy, and in the process they’ll get lots of mental stimulation.
In other words, the swinging snack toy for horses is a great boredom buster, stimulates your horse’s mind, and gives them a unique food-finding opportunity. Use it as part of a daily rotation for a stall-confined horse, or out in the pasture for extra stimulation.
That’s a win!
How to Make the Swinging Snack Toy for Horses
Let’s walk through how to make this horse enrichment item, step by step. It’s very easy.
What You Need
You only need three things to put this toy together:
- JW Pet Megalast Ball dog toy (at least 2, 3 or more preferred)
- Old lead rope
- Fruit or veggies cut into chunky sticks
The Megalast Ball is a sturdy, solid rubber ball made by JW Pet. Its design makes it ideal for wedging fruits and veggies inside. I’ve featured it in another, even more simple horse toy project in this article.
I’m a big fan of the JW Pet line of dog toys because they use especially high quality thermoplastic rubber – that means a more durable toy. They also have designs that are really easy to repurpose for equine use. (Nope, they don’t sponsor this blog…but at this point they probably should!)
You can buy the Megalast Ball from Amazon for less than five bucks each.
Step 1. Slide the Ball onto the Rope
Each Megalast Ball has a hole through the center that’s just big enough for the end of a lead rope. Before you begin, don’t forget to remove all the tags from the Megalast Balls, including the little plastic threads that secure the labels in place. They can be easy to overlook, but safety should always come first.
Slide the rope end through as shown, and move the ball up a few more inches toward the clip end to give yourself slack to tie the first knot.
Step 2. Knot
Tie a simple loop knot in the rope, as close to the first Megalast Ball near the top of the rope as possible. Don’t pull the knot tight until you like its location!
If you realize that it’s drifting a little down the rope as you tighten, feed a little rope from the side near the Megalast Ball as you pull.
The knots are important because they create the space between the three balls for the treats.
Step 3. Repeat
Slide your second Megalast Ball onto the rope and push it as far up as you can get it. Tie a second knot, and then install the last Megalast Ball.
You’ll probably find that new lead ropes are more flexible and make tighter knots that use less rope. I used an older, very stiff lead rope and struggled to have enough rope to tie the last knot. You’ll see in the photos that it’s crimped shut instead of knotted. Using a standard ten-foot lead rope should ensure that you have enough length to work with.
Step 4. Treats!
Hang up your swinging snack toy and get your fruit and veggie chunks ready!
You can use any fruit or vegetable that you can cut into long sticks or wedges. Try any of these:
- Carrot
- Apple
- Cucumber
- Celery
- Pumpkin (yes, horses can eat pumpkin!)
- Sweet potato
Cut the fruits or veggies into chunky sticks and wedge them into the holes in the Megalast Balls. The balls are slightly flexible, so squash the treat sticks in as far as they can go for maximum hold.
Use an appropriate amount of fruit or veggie for your horse. There’s no need to fill up every hole – you can see in the pictures that I placed carrot sticks in only about half the holes. I used about three carrots for this enrichment item.
Using Your Swinging Snack Toy for Horses
To use this toy, you’ll need to attach it to a sturdy overhead structure. This can be a stall wall, rafter, or tree branch.
The swinging snack ball for horses works best when the topmost ball is about the same height as your equine’s poll. The other balls with hang at neck and wither height, creating variety and additional challenge.
The easiest way to attach the toy is by clipping the end of the toy’s rope to an overhead tie ring. These inexpensive safety tie rings are secure and can go anywhere – put a few up at different levels in your horse’s stall to make adding and removing enrichment especially easy.
If you plan to attach the toy outside, you can install a tie ring on a tall, well anchored post or loop the rope around a tree branch and clip it to itself.
Set up a tray or shallow feed pan beneath the toy, or sweep away a section of stall bedding, to make it easier for your horse to find treats that they knock out of the toy. I like to do this with all my hanging treat toys to make sure that no treats are wasted. The horse in the photos has learned to check the ground frequently while working on enrichment puzzles to find the dropped goodies!
The treats are easy to see and smell, so your horse should investigate right away. If they seem a little nervous about the bright colors or the way the toy moves, check out this article on fear of enrichment for ideas and strategies.
Swinging Snack Toy Safety
This DIY enrichment build is a really fun experience for your horse. But like all toys (for animals or people!), it’s important to keep safety in mind.
This toy is best offered only under supervision. This means you’ll let your horse play and empty out the toy, then take it away when you get ready to leave the stable.
After several uses, you might determine that you can leave the toy in the stall or pasture for your horse to play with even after it’s empty. I tend to be extremely cautious with enrichment items, and since the individual Megalast balls are just small enough to fit into my horse’s mouth, I don’t leave this toy unsupervised.
If you’re interested in a hanging treat toy that is usually safe for unsupervised use, try the plastic canister treat feeder or the hay net + beach ball combo toy.
Also, this toy uses fruit or veggie sticks. If your horse has had episodes of choke, or cannot chew harder materials, use caution and consider an alternative like the hanging noodle ball or the JW Pet spiral toy.
Related Enrichment
Of course, don’t miss the original article on how to use a single Megalast Ball as a horse toy!
For another budget-friendly option, try the Kong Quest Wishbone how-to article.
And for a completely free DIY, reuse a bucket lid to make a hanging browse toy!