How To Stop A Horse From Chewing Wood?

If your horse is chewing wood fence rails, barn doors, tree limbs and so on, you may not realize that this is not normal. Wood isn’t a natural food for horses, and wood chewing can cause complications in both barn maintenance and horse health.

In this article, we describe wood chewing and share valuable information to help you understand possible reasons for this behavior and how to stop a horse from chewing wood. Read on to learn more.

What Is Wood Chewing?

Many people are confused by the terms cribbing, wood sucking, and wood chewing. All of these behaviors can involve an equine oral fixation with wood, but the symptoms and results of these three behaviors are quite different.

1. Cribbing

A horse bites down on a solid surface, arches his neck and sucks air. This doesn’t cause a lot of damage to the surface, but it does cause health problems for the horse. Chronic cribbing can cause stomach ulcers and colic.

This behavior is usually seen in bored horses, but it is an addictive behavior and can continue even when the horse’s boredom is alleviated.

Cribbing (Windsucking)

2. Wind Sucking

This behavior is similar to cribbing in that the horse becomes addicted to sucking air. The difference is that the horse does this without biting down on a hard surface.

Some equine behaviorists speculate that this behavior is addictive because it releases endorphins causing a “rush” or “high”.

3. Chewing

Horses who chew wood are actually eating it. They may chew on trees, fence posts and planks, barn doors and other wooden structures. This causes costly damage and expensive health complications.

Horses may engage in this behavior because they are bored, lacking some element in nutrition or literally starving.

What A Horse’s Wood Chewing Does!

How Does Wood Chewing Hurt Horses?

When horses chew wood, they swallow little bits of wood and sharp splinters. This debris can cause a great deal of trouble in a horse’s innards. Not only can it cause colic, a big sharp splinter can puncture an intestine. This can lead to costly surgery or death.

Wood chewing is also bad for your horse’s teeth and mouth. Chewing on wood wears teeth down, and splinters can scratch or puncture your horse’s tongue or the insides of his mouth. Splinters can also get stuck between your horse’s teeth, and this can cause damage, decay and infection.

When your horse’s teeth become badly worn down by wood chewing, it interferes with his ability to chew his food correctly. This can cause an inability to swallow and digest food, and the result may be nutritional deficiencies and weight loss.

The 3 Main Reasons Horses Chew On Wood

1. Frustration or boredom

Horses are social animals, and their systems are designed to nibble constantly. In the wild, horses travel about during the day socializing with other horses and seeking out grass, leaves and other vegetation to nibble. Their diet is made up entirely of fresh, green roughage, and that is the ideal diet for most horses.

Horses who live in a controlled environment, don’t have much opportunity to move around, graze and socialize with others are prone to developing bad habits such as cribbing, wind sucking and wood chewing out of sheer boredom and frustration.

Being fed a diet of processed grain (pelleted feeds) can also contribute to this problem as these types of feeds don’t provide enough roughage or enough “mouth feel” to satisfy a horse’s needs. Free access to fresh, long stem hay can help. Be sure to use a hay net to keep the hay clean, slow the horse down and provide more challenge.

Never keep a horse in a stall for an extended period of time. Free time spent in a pasture with other horses is very important in keeping a horse happy, healthy and satisfied. Be sure to give your horse ample time roam, graze, socialize and move around freely.

If you don’t have a big, open space where your horse can move about freely and socialize, you must commit to taking him out, hand walking, lunging and/or riding enough to provide good exercise and socialization (even if it’s just with you).

Horse toys can help keep horses occupied and alleviate some boredom, but free time with plenty of room to play and socialize with other horses is the best remedy for boredom.

2. Nutritional deficits or starvation

A horse who is starving will naturally chew wood and anything else it can get hold of to try to alleviate hunger. It’s not uncommon for rescue horses to have the bad habit of chewing for very understandable reasons.

On the other hand, a well-fed horse may also turn to wood chewing if certain elements are lacking in the diet. If your horse is not bored, is eating well, has no history of wood chewing and has suddenly started this habit, consult your vet and request a complete exam including blood work and a check for ulcers.

It’s possible that your horse needs vitamin and/or mineral supplements or feed for weight gain. It’s also possible he needs his teeth floated because they have become overgrown and uneven. When this is the case, your horse will not be able to chew his food correctly. This can interfere with vitamin and mineral absorption.

Before you try any remedy, have your vet pinpoint the cause of the problem. This will save you money in the long run.

3. Habit or addiction

Even if your horse is currently well-fed and amply engaged in interesting activities, he may still chew wood if he developed the habit earlier in life, or he may have learned it from another horse. In either case, you may need to take steps to make wood repellent to him.

• There are commercially prepared sprays and pastes that you can apply to wooden surfaces to repel your horse. This works for some horses but may actually encourage others to chew more.
• Some people have had good luck spraying a homemade hot pepper spray on wooden surfaces, but as with commercially prepared repellents, this repels some horses and attracts others.
• Rubbing a dry bar of Irish Spring soap on wooden surfaces is also said to repel horses.

The problem with all of these topical applications is that their success is hit-or-miss; they must be reapplied often, and when it rains they wash off.

Furthermore, if you apply capsaicin (hot pepper) spray to wood surfaces, you run the risk of irritating your own skin or eyes when you come in contact with it.

Good Maintenance Discourages Chewing

Instead of incurring an ongoing expense with short-term topical preparations, you are probably better off with more permanent fixes. Consider these solutions:

• Replace chewed wooden gates and stall doors with metal ones.
• Replace chewed wooden fence rails with metal or resin rails.
• Install electric fence over popular chewing areas.
• Put metal caps on fence posts.
• Wrap trees with plastic mesh.

Some people use a grazing muzzle to control wood chewing, but this should be a last resort. If your horse is chewing because he is bored or frustrated, being muzzled will only make this problem worse and could lead to anxiety related ulcers and behavioral problems.

Be Consistent, Patient & Thorough

If your horse is a chewer, be sure to cover all the bases and address every possible cause. Most of the things you would do to stop this problem are simply good horse stewardship.

1. Keep your facilities in good repair using materials that can’t be chewed.
2. Feed a natural diet with ample roughage.
3. Keep your horse engaged and active.
4. Make sure your horse is healthy.

Follow the guidelines presented here in a consistent manner, and you should begin to see some improvement in your horse’s chewing habits with the passage of time. As with any goal you set for yourself and your horse, remember to be consistent, patient and thorough. Diligence will eventually pay off.

Frequently Asked Questions