Eating manes and tails ???? HELP

J

jmichelle121

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Ok i need HELP after going away for 3 days got home today to find that my 11 month old filly has been eating her field mates tails,she has eaten 3 of her friends tails,my filly has done this before when she was about 5 months she totally destroyed her mum's mane and tail,my question is WHY,when she did it before I ended up using fly sray to stop her eating her mum's,but by then she had done a dam good job of eating the mane and tail,what is this all about ??? is it a vitamin deficency ??? bordom ??? does anyone else have any ideas ???
 
funny,i was going to post about this as well.

when we got J at about 8 months he was still with his mother and had eaten her mane and tail.
anyway,we got him home and he was put in with the other foalie and uncle shetland,they were in a yard with an open fronted stable at night and out in the day(winter),he eat the shetlands thick tail!!
when he was catchable we turned them out in the big field over winter and i thought he had grown out of it.
anyway,with the sun and the pink noses we have had a swap about and he is in part of the day with the other foalie and has started doing it again.he is 13 months now.
maybe it is a boredom thing?
interested in other views.
 
It is reputed to be due to a lack of minerals in the diet...neither of my two did this, although they probably didn't dare touch their aunty mare anyway.
I suspect it could also be a lack of fibre as the lush spring grass is high in sugar, but lower in cellulose. Try feeding a section of hay morning and night, and feeding vit/min supplements or offering a mineral block.
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mine have hay,i will look into getting a mineral block.which would you recommend?

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I fed Equivite Vit/Min supplement...so didn't use one often.
I would think any equine block will be fine - if you are worried that they will play (i.e. trample) or scoff it all in one, then only offer it for brief periods or break it with a hammer and give them little pieces.
Some people in the olden days also used to offer apple branches - for them to chew the bark from.
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At a stud I worked in we used a human antinflamatory cream - made your eyes water if you got near it!

Try adding more fibre to the foals diet - my own foals never do it but I have them on plenty of grass and when the paddocks get lower I then feed hay. Friends who summered their foals on really short grass found that their foals all chewed tails.
 
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It's nothing to do with the foal's urge to suck then?

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i did wonder about this too,sometimes it is bitten off and sometime looks sucked/chewed.
 
The science literature suggests that foals are motivated to chew for a certain number of hours per day, so if you are giving them hard feed, or they have short squelchy grass, they won't be chewing for long enough. Give them lots of low feed quality, high fibre to keep their jaws busy.
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So - more to do with chewing and less to do with sucking.
The foals mentioned above, ranging from 8 to 11 months, should certainly be naturally heading towards self-weaning anyway, with a diminished need to suckle (in nature they'd get booted off by the mare when the next foal appeared after about 1 yr).
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