Eating slowly is good for your horse’s mental and physical health, but many horses rush through their daily bucket feeds. A textured slow feeding container is an ideal way to slow down your horse’s meals, but it’s hard to find a shaped slow feeder for horses without that works and fits in your budget. Enter this DIY slow feeder made from a picnic egg tray! This dirt cheap enrichment item promotes slower eating, calmer meals, and a more natural feeding experience for your horse.
Why Slow Down Your Horse’s Eating?
Eating slowly has lots of benefits for your horse’s mind and body. When horses graze or eat from a hay net or other forage feeder, they take in food at a natural pace. But meals fed from a bucket are a different story.
Grain or pelleted feed can be essential for some horses, providing calories or nutrients missing from the rest of the diet. These concentrated feeds pack a lot of taste and nutrition into a small space, and since they’re very palatable (tasty!), many horses eat their meals too fast. This can cause health problems, including choke – a veterinary emergency.
Encouraging horses to eat their concentrate feeds at a slower pace can help, and has mental health benefits too. Slow, chill eating calms down the nervous system, promotes relaxation, and prevents boredom.
Slow Feeder for Horses: Great for Fast Eaters
Enrichment items called slow feeders are a good idea for horses who need to slow down. There are many different types of slow feed items available for horses. Some can be purchased in stores or online, like treat rollers or Hay Play balls. Other slow feed solutions, like the egg tray feeder we’re covering in this article, are DIY projects.
Methods of slowing down meals include toys or items that dispense only a small amount of feed at a time, like rolling treat balls or DIY canister feeders. Spreading feed over a wide, flat area is another very easy and effective way to gently slow down a hungry, rushing horse.
This egg tray slow feeder for horses is an ultra easy DIY enrichment item. It’s also very inexpensive, letting you help your horse eat slowly while sticking to budget.
Before we cover the awesome egg tray slow feeder, though, it’s important to note that food anxiety can play a role in how fast your horse eats. You should address any factors that might contribute to rushing alongside providing slow feeders. Competition with other horses or a lack of 24/7 forage can both contribute to a sense of insecurity around meals and a desire to eat quickly.
How Does the Egg Tray Slow Feeder Work?
The egg tray slow feeder uses texture and shape to slow down your horse’s meal.
It’s easy for horses to scarf up big bites of grain out of a bucket. Feeding from a flat tray is a better option, but a fast eating horse may learn to rapidly vacuum up feed from a flat surface.
A textured surface, with an irregular shape, prevents your horse from sucking up enormous bites. They’ll have to take their time, using whiskers and lips to find and eat the food.
If you’ve ever heard that you can slow down a horse who bolts feed by placing big rocks in their feed pan, you have the idea. The egg tray slow feeder has a couple of advantages, though. It’s lighter, easier to work with, and washable.
How to Use the Egg Tray Slow Feeder
Step 1: Get Your Egg Tray
In my part of the world, deviled eggs are serious business. These boiled egg appetizers are must-have at after church lunches, potlucks, and parties. They’re so popular that specially made deviled egg holders are available in every local general good store.
I visited my local discount store last week and was not disappointed. This simple plastic deviled egg holder was just a few dollars.
If you don’t live in deviled egg country, you can find the trays for sale online. This pack of 3 lets you offer the enrichment to several horses, or create multiple feeding stations for a single horse.
The containers come with a lid for carrying your collection of eggs to the closest potluck dinner. This makes it easy to close up the trays for transport to the pasture, or equine meal prep.
Step 2: Add Feed or Treats
This enrichment activity is so easy to set up. Just swap the egg tray slow feeder for your horse’s usual bucket.
The egg tray slow feeder for horses works great with dry or moistened feeds. I like to soak all my horse’s meals lightly for a little extra hydration, and the barely-moist texture is perfect for the slow feeder. It creates just enough challenge.
You can use the deviled egg tray for your horse’s normal meals, or create a special food activity by adding treats or extra flavors. Hide treats in the bottom of each “pocket” for your horse to find as they work the feed into their mouths.
Step 3: Where to Use
You can use this textured slow feeder in any location. It’s great for slow relaxed meals in the stall, or occupying your horse with natural feeding during turnout.
The snuffling action as your horse works through the textured surface will probably push a little feed out of the tray. To prevent lost feed, place the tray in a larger container like a kiddie pool or shallow heavy duty pan. Since it’s round, the egg tray slow feeder can also fit inside a rubber or plastic livestock feed pan.
Egg Tray Slow Feeder for Horses: The Results
This enrichment idea was a big hit in my testing.
As with many feeders that slow down a horse’s eating, at first the horse seemed a bit confused by not being able to suck up feed at a high rate.
Within seconds, though, he buckled down to the calm and relaxing business of working around the egg tray’s texture. The first bites were easy to eat because the feed piles up around the egg cups. As the horse eats, they have to work harder to lip and scoop out the feed.
Toward the end of the meal, the slow and gentle eating created some serious relaxation. The horse’s expression and body language showed total calm, with half closed eyes and soft ears. This is definitely an enrichment item that will go into our regular rotation.
Egg Tray Slow Feeder Safety
There are a few important things to note about the egg tray slow feeder, though. Safety is always of top importance when designing equine enrichment. You don’t want to give your horse something unsafe by accident, creating a dangerous situation.
Some horses will use the egg tray slow feeder quietly and then leave it alone. But others might return to it later and use it as a toy, or paw at it roughly during meals. The tray is made of human-grade plastic and won’t stand up to serious abuse, so you should use this tray under supervision.
To help you horse learn to eat from the tray without frustration, pile it high with feed at first so that your horse gets plenty to eat before working down to the textured areas. Supervise them and make sure they experience some challenge but don’t get frustrated or overwhelmed.
And that’s all there is to it! This simple, ultra inexpensive enrichment item can help your horse get the physical and mental benefits of slow meals. Add it to your rotation of toys and feeders for a happier, more relaxed eating experience.
Related Enrichment
For more slow feed items, check out the archive of Feed and Treat Toys!