Licking mats for horses are an easy, budget friendly way to give your horse some enrichment. Licking mats are versatile horse toys for stall or pasture. For a low sugar treat that your horse will love, peanut butter makes a great spread for any horse lick mat or smear board. It’s an especially good enrichment for the nervous or anxious horse. Read on for details on how to make a peanut butter lick mat for your equine friend.
What Is a Licking Mat for Horses?
First, a reminder about what a lick mat is!
A licking mat, lick mat, or smear board is a tasty food enrichment for horses. You’ll add a smearable, lickable ingredient to a flat or textured board and give it to your horse on the ground or attached to a wall. Licking mats keep your horse busy for a long time and promote relaxation. They’re a perfect enrichment for stalled horses.
Licking mats come in many shapes and sizes. Horse sized licking mats are almost always DIY. For more info on why you should add a licking mat to your horse’s toybox and how to make your own, this article is the place to start. And for the easiest horse-sized licking mat DIY, don’t miss the floor mat slow feeder.
The peanut butter smear board is a horse licking mat or smear board of your choice, with peanut butter as the spread.
Image by Debbie Miller from Pixabay
Peanut Butter Licking Mat for Horses
Why use peanut butter for your horse’s licking mat?
Peanut butter is a common lick mat ingredient for dogs, but many horses love peanut butter too. Horses can eat both peanuts and peanut butter!
Peanut butter lasts a long time on a licking mat compared to most other ingredients. This keeps your horse occupied with their toy for a longer period. Licking mats are perfect enrichment for calming a nervous horse or filling time before an appointment. Peanut butter takes longer to lick off than almost any other spread.
Plus, peanut butter is a perfect licking mat ingredient for sugar restricted horses. If your horse can’t have molasses, honey, or other smear ingredients, peanut butter is a high fat, low sugar licking option.
Peanut Butter Behaviors
Enrichment for horses is all about encouraging their natural behaviors. The peanut butter licking mat is an ideal low-key enrichment activity for your horse. It relieves boredom by encouraging these behaviors:
- Licking
- Sense of taste and response to novel flavors
- Sense of smell
Why this Horse Licking Mat is Great Enrichment
Horse licking mats and smear boards are fantastic equine enrichment because they’re engaging for the horse and great at boredom-busting. They promote naturally calming behaviors…AND they’re simple and budget friendly!
Pureed grain, applesauce, molasses, and honey are also great licking mat ingredients. But peanut butter is the best of the bunch for licking mats attached to stall walls. It sticks and stays put – no drips.
The repetitive, low-intensity licking behaviors is calming for horses. This enrichment is a great way to direct a horse’ focus or nervous energy into a soothing activity. Even better, like all smear enrichments you can offer it anywhere – stall, paddock, even the barn aisle.
You might find that your horse licks for a bit, then takes a break to graze or rest before returning to the peanut butter mat to lick some more. This is perfect enrichment for giving your horse choices in pasture or stall. Peanut butter licking mats are the longest lasting horse lick mat ingredient.
Also, natural peanut butter contains nothing but peanuts and salt. There’s no added sugar. Most other horse licking mat ingredients such as applesauce, molasses, or honey are high in added or natural sugars. A peanut butter lick mat gives your sugar-restrictive horse a chance to enjoy this relaxing enrichment.
Ingredients
- One licking mat for dogs or horses, or one cutting board (plastic, not glass or wood)
- Up to a few tablespoons of natural peanut butter
How to Make a Peanut Butter Licking Mat
Pick Your Peanut Butter
First, select your peanut butter. I recommend using “natural” peanut butter, the kind that will separate if not stirred. The thicker consistency and slight graininess of natural peanut butter helps it stick to the board better than the more processed varieties.
Try to find peanut butter made with only peanuts and salt. Be aware that even some “natural” peanut butters are milled up with added sugar, so if avoiding additional sugars is important for your horse, be sure to check the label. You won’t be using a large amount of peanut butter so the carb input won’t be high, but it’s worth considering if you have a very sensitive horse.
Find a Licking Mat or Smear Board
You can use any licking mat you like, but if you don’t need a challenging surface – like if your horse is new to licking mats – I’m a big fan of using kitchen cutting boards like this one. They have a smooth but just slightly grippy surface that’s great for smear enrichment.
You can also use a licking mat for dogs – or several, since they’re small.
Add the Peanut Butter to the Licking Mat
Use about two good tablespoons and smear all around the board.
There’s no right or wrong way to load your horse’s licking mat. You can spread the peanut butter evenly, or put it down in lines or even small pats from the back of a spoon. Offer it differently each time for extra variety.
You can also add texture with a little grain or cereal:
Using the Peanut Butter Licking Mat with Your Horse
You can give your horse their licking mat toy on the ground or attached to a wall.
If you use the peanut butter licking mat on the floor of a stall, put it inside a shallow pan to keep stall bedding off the peanut butter. No one wants shavings in their licking mat!
You can attach a licking mat to the wall of a stall with Velcro, or permanently install it with screws. To use, just bring the peanut butter to the licking mat and smear it on.
At first, observe your horse and licking mat to make sure they use it correctly and safely. Most horses take to it right away. To be on the safe side, consider introducing the peanut butter licking mat slowly and in an open space.
Horse Licking Mat Safety
The peanut butter licking mat is extremely safe. Like all enrichment items, licking mats should be inspected before each use. If the mat is cracked or broken, don’t use it, and if you plan to tie or hang it up, make sure that your cords and knots are horse-safe. Otherwise, this is usually a pretty bombproof enrichment concept.
I found that the board encouraged several feeding behaviors. It promoted a bit of cropping (picking off the Cheerios with the teeth and lips), pulling and dragging the lips along the board to grab peanut butter, and finally just slurping with the tongue. All those behaviors were hysterical to watch and the horse appeared to really enjoy both the flavor of the peanut butter.
The peanut butter took a long time to lick off, more than other smear ingredients for sure. It stuck to the smear board and created a long-lasting enrichment activity.
Smear boards are considered safe for unsupervised use at my stable, so I’m not sure how long it took for all the peanut butter to be licked clean, but that board was spotless when I returned the next morning.
And that’s all you need to know! With a couple dollars and five minutes’ time, you can provide a low-sugar enrichment treat that is really engaging to your horse. Peanut butter for the gold!