The Tower of Cups puzzle for horses is a quick and easy foraging enrichment. Your horse won’t know how easy it was to put together – it’s a lot tougher for them to solve than for you to make! They’ll be busy disassembling the stacked cups to get the goodies inside, and you’ll be congratulating yourself on encouraging foraging and problem-solving behavior with an enrichment that took about two seconds to set up.
Here’s how to make this super simple enrichment puzzle for your horse.
What is the Tower of Cups Puzzle for Horses?
The tower of cups puzzle is a stack of deli cups or other containers nested one on top of the other. You’ll add a bit of food between each cup.
This puzzle is ultra simple to put together and very budget friendly. You can use the Tower of Cups puzzle in the stall or pasture, and with any kind of horse treat. It offers a lot of enrichment variety for such an easy toy!
This enrichment activity is perfect for horses who need mental stimulation. It prevents boredom and keeps smart, active horses engaged in a fun and positive activity.
What Behaviors Does the Tower of Cups Encourage?
Enrichment for horses is all about encouraging natural behaviors. The Tower of Cups activity is a foraging puzzle for horses. It promotes feeding behaviors, and the problem solving skills needed to find the food and separate the cups.
With the Tower of Cups puzzle, your horse will get to practice:
- Foraging
- Problem solving
- Fine motor skills
In this enrichment activity, your horse has to knock over the stack and separate the cups. Then, they’ll need to search for the treats that fall out of the cups. It’s surprisingly complicated for such a simple puzzle!
How to Make the Tower of Cups Puzzle for Horses
You’ll need just a few supplies to make this puzzle for your horse:
- Stackable cups or containers – preferably shallow and wide enough for the horse’s nose
- Treats – big chunks work best
Set It Up
First, prepare your treats. Here, I cut apple into thin slices. The wide slices are easy to see in the grass, but thin to make the apple stretch a long way.
Next, create the stack of cups.
Place treats in several of the cups until you run out of either treats or cups:
Then stack the cups by nesting them in one another to form a stack:
Place the stack upside down (bottoms of cups facing the sky) in the stall or pasture.
Because the treats will scatter onto the ground, this enrichment activity is best offered on a relatively clean, plain surface such as a swept stall floor or very short pasture. The treats will disappear into tall grass if this puzzle is set up on dense pasture. If it’s placed on stall bedding or bare ground, the treats will become coated with bedding or soil, neither of which is ideal.
Easy but Engaging
It doesn’t get much easier than this, but it still takes a while for most horses to tease out the goodies from between the nested cups – or, if you used the simplified Covering Cups technique, to flip all the cups over. Even though it’s incredibly quick and simple, this enrichment provides excellent opportunities for problem-solving and foraging for tasty treats, so enjoy working this quick and simple enrichment into your horse’s schedule!
Related Enrichment
The Tower of Cups puzzle for horses is a food puzzle and foraging enrichment activity. Try these enrichment ideas for more inspiration:
Flip Up Cups foraging activity