July 6, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
Bad habits
Recent research has found that horses do learn bad habits from other horses, such as crib biting, weaving and box walking. Approx 5% of horses have such problems and the research proved that the risk of a horse developing such problems is significantly increased if a neighbouring horse has such a problem.
We had a horse with such problems and were always concerned that the other horses would pick this up, particularly the youngsters but this didn’t happen. Maybe because our horses were mainly kept outside for much of the day and so weren’t standing in stables for extended periods.
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July 6th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Hi,
Wanted to let you know that you’ve been awarded the Arte y Pico award. Your blog is kind of what I envisioned for my blog but I’m too long-winded :-), and I struggle to find content that will interest people. I love the range of topics you present and the way it’s always interesting and almost always new information for me! Very well done. Thanks!
July 6th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
A curious thought, but horses develop vices for darn good reasons… perhaps horses don’t ‘learn’ cribbing from others horses, they are just put in an environment that causes them to crib. I have two horses that are with each other 24/7–one cribs, and the other does not.
I think it’s too hard for science to ‘prove’ that horses learn it… too many variables in the equation. But interesting research, nonetheless!
July 13th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Many thanks Stacey for your kind feedback and award. Sometimes it is quite hard to find content that I find interesting and hope others will too, plus to decide how much info to include, so your feedback is very encouraging for me. I’ll take a look at your site and pass on some feedback. I’m sure it is great - we are often much more critical of our own efforts than others!
July 13th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Kelly,
Thanks for your feedback. Maybe it is just that some horses are more prone to boredom or more nervous, which makes them more likely to develop these types of behaviour. But I do think that if a horse sees a bad habit, it is more likely to copy it. Certainly as a child, I would never have thought of chewing my nails if I hadn’t seen someone else do it (although I didn’t do this myself).