Pool Noodles for Horse Toys and Enrichment: Five Ideas

Pool noodles aren’t just for summer fun in the water. You can use pool noodles for horse toys and DIY enrichment! Here are five ways you can use repurpose the humble pool noodle for equine enrichment. They can help you relieve boredom, keep your horse entertained in their stall, and encourage natural horse behaviors.

Pool Noodles for Horse Enrichment?

How can you use a pool noodle for horse toys and stall enrichment?

Making DIY horse toys and stall enrichment is all about using what you have in creative ways. Your horse won’t care if their toy was expensive: they only want to express natural behavior and get sensory stimulation during stall time.

Pool noodles are really versatile. They’re soft and flexible but hold their shape, so you can use them in creating several horse toy options.

With a little creativity, you can use pool noodles as a tool to make enrichment items that get your horse using their body and brain in fun and healthy ways. And the noodles themselves are really inexpensive, easy to work with, and usually very safe.

Sourcing Pool Noodles for Horses

You can use any kind of soft foam pool noodle for horse enrichment, but the length or width you choose may depend on what you choose to create. Pool noodles come in sizes from five to seven feet long and are usually between two to three inches in diameter, but bigger ones are available.

Most of them are tube-shaped with an opening running the full length of the noodle – like a squishy piece of pipe – but some are solid.

If you live in a hot area, pool noodles are easy to find at most large shops, especially during summer. If you live a bit further inland or in a latitude where people aren’t as crazy about water recreation, you can still find pool noodles. Look for them in the children’s toy section or sometimes in the seasonal or outdoor equipment of larger retailers.

But the best way to get pool noodles for DIY horse toys is to repurpose or reuse them.

Why Reused Pool Noodles Make the Best Horse Toys

There are two reasons to repurpose pool noodles instead of buying new ones for horse enrichment. First, even though pool noodles aren’t very expensive, every dollar saved on something you can reuse or upcycle is a dollar that can go into special horse toys or additional supplies. The noodles used to create all the samples in this post cost less than ten bucks, but why not shoot for free if possible? 

Second, pool noodles are made of plastic foam. They’re made from new plastic and aren’t easily recyclable. While horses absolutely need enrichment, the planet also needs a lot less plastic! Every pool noodle that you get from a friend or the back of your garage will be one less noodle purchased from a store.

If friends and family aren’t rolling in used pool noodles, call up your local recreation center or summer camp facilities. They may regularly need to dispose of noodles from previous years or camp sessions, so it’s worth it to reach out and see if you can score a haul of pool noodles for horse enrichment without purchasing new ones.

Five Ways to Use Pool Noodles for Horse Enrichment

Now let’s get to the fun part: what enrichment you can create with your pile of pool noodles! There are lots more uses for noodles than the ideas listed here, so let your creativity flow when designing enrichment. The best way to use pool noodles is to create soft, flexible structure as part of other toys.

Just keep safety in mind when planning enrichment. Here are the biggest safety pointers when working with pool noodles to create toys for your horse:

Noodle Safety First

First, don’t encourage your horse to lick or chew the noodles themselves. it isn’t a good idea to place food directly on or inside the pool noodles. Ingestion is a hazard with any plastic item. You should plan to supervise your horse as they enjoy most of these items.

Second, don’t leave your pool noodles outside in the pasture for long periods of time. The foam is not UV light resistant. Too much sun exposure will cause the noodles to become brittle or crumbly, so bring your noodles in after each enrichment session to make them last longer.

Now it’s time for five pool noodle enrichment ideas for your horse!

1. Noodle Forage Box for Horses

Cut up pool noodles make a great stuffing material for your next forage box. Forage or puzzle boxes are a fantastic horse toy – a gold standard enrichment activity that encourages natural feeding behaviors, foraging for food, and problem solving. 

You can increase the challenge level and provide variety in the experience by adding inedible stuffer material to your box. Pool noodles make a great forage box stuffer because they are extremely lightweight. They move aside easily and allow the horse to get to the goodies at the bottom of the puzzle box, but also create movement and texture as they roll around.

This is great for horses who are just learning how to work with boxes that don’t simply have hay and treats inside.

Use a serrated knife or box cutter to cut the pool noodles into lengths from 4 to 8 in. As you can see in the picture, a cheap bot knife isn’t just perfect for removing bot fly eggs from your horse’s legs – it’s the ideal pool noodle knife!

Cut the noodles and add them to the box on top of the treats.

2. Pasture Poles, Noodle Edition

Pool noodles make great temporary ground poles for pasture enrichment. If you aren’t lucky enough to have rolling hills, stone outcrops, or hedgerows, adding structure to the pasture and changing its layout frequently is a great way to provide a multi-textured environment for your horse.

Pasture poles are a wonderful option for providing proprioception enrichment and pasture structure. It gives your horse objects to walk around and over.

You can use pool noodles as temporary pasture poles. Use full length pool noodles or cut them into slightly smaller lengths depending on your pasture enrichment design. Lay the pool noodles on the ground a few meters apart in different parts of the pasture.

Change the layout of the poles frequently for extra variety. Since pool noodles are so lightweight, it’s easy to swap them around.

Remember not to leave your horse’s pool noodles out in the sun permanently. Rotating and swapping enrichment is a great idea anyway, so be sure to bring your pool noodles inside after a couple days of use to protect them from breaking down in the sun over time.

If you are expecting storms or high winds, remove your horse’s pool noodle poles from the pasture. They can blow around in storms and scare your horse.

3. Noodle Knot Toys for Horses

If your horse likes to pick up and carry objects, you can use pool noodles for a colorful and multi- textured play toy. Toys for horses encourage lots of important natural behaviors. Play itself is a normal equine behavior and has a lot of mental and physical health benefits, so encouraging your horses to play in a variety of ways is great for their well-being.

Pool noodles provide a toy used for object play, which is when horses interact with an item in their environment in a playful way. You might see pawing at the noodle knot, running towards or away from it, or picking the knot up. Some horses will run with or throw objects around during play, so pool noodles can be a great option that is soft and mostly unbreakable. Noodles can be cut or torn but can never shatter or create sharp, dangerous edges like other toys.

 To make pool noodle enrichment toys, get some full length pool noodles and tie them into simple knots. Your finished product will look a bit like this:

For extra size and complexity, weave another noodle or two into the knot as you tighten it up. Add one or more of these to the pasture and watch the fun.

4. Pool Noodle Horse Puzzle Box

This pool noodle puzzle box is a cut above the standard forage box toy for horses. All you need is a cardboard box, some treats, and pool noodles.

To solve this food puzzle, the horse must stick their nose between the pool noodles and shove or nudge them aside to get to the food underneath. This horse toy encourages problem solving and gives your horse sensory stimulation and variety.

The pool noodles are soft and flexible, so there’s no risk of entanglement. That’s a big plus for pool noodles, as similar concepts involving fabric or rope could create a safety hazard if material wrapped around a nose or hoof.

To keep this enrichment option safe, make sure you use a box shallow enough that the horse will reach the treats after sticking only their nose through. They shouldn’t need to stick their face any deeper than about halfway up the nose to get the treats. Use under supervision to ensure that your horse isn’t tempted to sample the noodles instead of the food.

5. Safety Support

Pool noodles can be horse enrichment stars, like in the four options above, but they can also be great supporting players. Pool noodles can help keep other enrichment activities safer for your horse.

Most pool noodles are hollow – they’re basically a foam tube – which makes them great bumpers or excluding devices.

If you are setting up a toy involving rope or bailing twine, slide a pool noodle onto the rope at the top near the clip or knots. This prevents the horse from touching or chewing bailing twine or metal fastenings.

Your hanging enrichment will go from this:

To this:

You can cut pool noodles to any length using a serrated knife. And, if you cut a slit up the length of noodle, you can slip the noodle around pipes, rods, and other hard or sharp objects around the barn or pasture. If you’re enrichment equipment, especially pasture structures, have any hard edges, noodles can form a great safety barrier that is instant to put on and really easy to work with.

Here’s a noodle being used to cover a dangerous length of chain with sharp edges. The other side of the chain has been left uncovered to show the difference:

Use Your Noodle!

Pool noodle horse toys are versatile and easy to make. Pool noodles can help you create lots of fun enrichment for your horse! By using a little creativity, you can create even more toys and activities for your horse using pool noodles beyond the options here – the sky’s the limit! 

Have you used any of the ideas given here? Have you done other creative pool noodle horse enrichment? Tell us all about it in the comments! We love hearing your enrichment stories!