August 1, 2009 @ 10:41 am
Crib biting research
As a horse owner who once suffered the problems of a crib-biting horse, this research caught my eye. From the survey, about 5% of horses had this vice. This fitted in approximately with my personal experience.
Thoroughbreds were twice as likely to crib bite as any other breed. Again, my horse with this problem was a thoroughbred racehorse. 55% of owners surveyed though environmental factors were to blame, about 40% thought environmental and genetic were to blame, and 5% thought there were genetic factors. I’m with the majority here as I think that boredom in stabled animals is mainly to blame.
50% of owners thought horses copied anormal behaviour but only 1% of horses started to crib when one was introduced to a yard. I was quite concerned when I had some youngsters stabled and grazing with my cribbing horse but none of my horses copied this behaviour.
The main problem with my horse was his ability to crib on most of the fence posts in his field, which meant we were continually doing fence maintenance. Electric fencing would have been very useful but it really wasn’t used much for fencing horses 20 years ago in the UK.
Filed under Animal Behaviour Problems Permalink
Bookmark This Post About Crib biting research
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.