Here’s a fast and easy activity for your horse that you can make using inexpensive supplies and no special equipment. Enrichment for horses doesn’t have to be complicated! A pack of cups and a cup of food come together to make an ultra easy horse food puzzle activity: Flip Up Cups.
DIY Horse Food Puzzle with Cups
Remember playing the “pick a cup” game when you were little? This is the one where someone takes a few cups, puts a piece of candy underneath one, and mixes them up. Then you pick a cup to turn over, and see if there’s a piece of candy waiting for you.
This enrichment activity puts a spin on that game to make a food puzzle for horses. You’ll take a set of deli cups or other containers, place them face down in the pasture, and put some edible goodies underneath some or all of them.
To find the treats, your horse will wander to each cup, flip it over, and see if there’s something tasty beneath. Depending on the number of cups you use, this horse food puzzle can keep your equine busy for a long time. It’s perfect for relieving boredom and keeping your horse occupied in the pasture.
What Behaviors Does the Flip Up Cup Puzzle Encourage?
Enrichment is all about encouraging your horse’s natural behaviors. This horse food puzzle activity is SO easy to set up, but offers a lot of enrichment value! It promotes:
- Movement and exercise
- Foraging and food seeking
- Sensory behaviors: vision, smell, and taste
- Cognitive behaviors
Why the Flip Up Cups Horse Food Puzzle is Great Enrichment
This horse food puzzle does a great job of promoting your horse’s natural equine behaviors. It’s calming but engaging, and very safe. Flip Up Cups is an ideal enrichment activity to include in your horse’s regular schedule.
Your horse will travel from cup to cup, stopping at each to flip it over. This low energy movement is an important equine foraging behavior. Moving this way also stretches out the muscles of the back, improving flexibility.
The energy and intensity with this horse food puzzle is very low because the cups are easy to see and flip. It’s ideal for horses who need a quieter, calmer form of enrichment. If your horse is older or recovering from an injury or illness, flip-up cups are a must-have enrichment activity.
A Horse Food Puzzle Great for Equine Mental Health
The flip-up cups activity promotes foraging. Enrichment activities that let your horse seek out their own food are beneficial mentally and emotionally. They promote a feeling of agency and choice in the pasture environment. And that’s really important: choice and control is one of the Five Opportunities to Thrive for good horse welfare.
This type of activity works very well for horses that struggle with anxiety or have had tightly-managed, less natural care routines in the past. It lets them decide where and how to look for their food and gives them control over interacting with the enrichment.
Your horse will use several senses to locate their food in addition to some equine brainpower. The cups stand out visually in the pasture or paddock. Depending on the food used, your horse may also locate the goodies by scent. After flipping over the cup – which requires a little dexterity and fine-motor control – your horse will find the treat underneath with either its eyes or its sensitive whiskers.
Here’s more information on what cups and food to use and how to set them up:
How to Use Flip Up Cups for a Horse Food Puzzle
You will need:
- A set of cups or other containers, at least 6, no maximum number
- Treats or your horse’s regular feed
Step 1. Find Some Cups
First, source your cups.
This is a great opportunity to recycle or repurpose some existing materials. It’s good to be friendly to the planet as well as your horse! If possible, collect cups from your home, school, or work recycling bins for this enrichment rather than buying brand-new materials.
Use clean cups. Make sure they’re rinsed (you don’t want your horse trying to lick food residues from the cups). They don’t all have to match, and they can be any size as long as your horse can flip them over.
For the enrichment shown, I’m using plastic deli-style cups that were destined for the landfill. If you do need to buy new materials, get paper cups rather than buying new plastic for a greener choice.
Step 2. Pick the Food
For the food underneath, you can use any horse-safe food option or handfuls of your horse’s daily pelleted diet. If your horse is new to this activity, larger pieces of scented or visually-contrasting foods are best – like apple slices, carrots, cucumber, or saltine crackers (they stand out against the background).
When your horse has some experience checking the ground around each cup, they’ll be able to find smaller tidbits of any food.
Next, decide how to lay out the cups in the pasture. You can arrange them in any way you like, but here are some options to get your started:
Layout Ideas: New to Horse Food Puzzles
If your horse has never had flip-up cups before, start simple. Place several cups facedown in a cluster with a generous amount of food underneath each one. Add some food on top of and around the cups.
Turn a few cups on their sides with food partially inside to encourage your horse to nudge and move the cup to get the food. This teaches them that the cups are movable and this is how to get the goodies.
Repeat a few times until your horse is a pro, then move on to more complicated styles.
When your horse has more experience with flip-up cups:
You can make the enrichment a little more challenging and extend your horse’s time with the activity.
Try putting food under most, but not all, of the cups so that some cups don’t have a treat underneath. If you like, you can gradually decrease the number of cups that contain food until half or less have treats. When you set up this activity with lots of cups all over the pasture, this is important to keep a handle on the amount of food you need to use!
When your horse is ready for more movement and challenge:
Start putting the cups out in a line or curve around the pasture, or create clusters of cups throughout the pasture. Your horse will have to travel to each one, which provides exercise.
When you have several horses:
Teach each horse how to use the cups individually so that all your equines know how to safely and effectively forage in this activity.
Then, set up multiple clusters or lines or cups – at least one per horse – so that everyone can have a chance at the puzzle without anxiety or the need to compete. If some horses are left out or don’t participate, set up an individual session in an adjacent pasture.
When everyone is finished with the cups:
For safety and hygiene reasons, remember to remove the cups at the end of the activity.
You should remove the cups when your horse has turned all of them over and has moved on to other things. Taking the cups away when the activity is over keeps it more fresh and exciting to your horse since they won’t “tune out” to the presence of the cups in the pasture.
And that’s the whole scoop on cups – except for a few safety notes.
Safety Notes for the Cups Horse Food Puzzle
This activity is very safe, but there are a few points to note.
Flip-up cups may not be suitable for unsupervised use. You should always supervise your horses at least the first few times you provide this enrichment.
The cups pictured in this enrichment are almost unbreakable, but most plastic items can break or crack if struck by a horse. This isn’t likely to cause a problem because the cups are small, but it’s important not to assume that any item is safe. Supervise your horse before letting them have cups with no one watching.
Check all the cups when you remove them and discard any that have been damaged. If there’s dirt or food residue stuck on the cups, clean them before storing.
If your horse lives on a sandy surface, such as a dry lot or track in an area with sand-based soil, you’ll want to use dry treats such as hay cubes, peanuts in the shell, crackers, or horse treats as sand will stick to wet foods. Where sand ingestion is a concern or you’d rather use fruits and vegetables, set this enrichment up in an area with grass or put the cups down on large rubber stall mats.
Have you used flip-up cups? How did it go? If you have a story to share, tell us in a comment!