Feeding advice for a windsucker? do Rennies work?

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pollypock1211

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My horse has cribbed since he was weaned off his mother (he is now 8yrs old!!) his teeth are worn - although not to a great extent and, my main worry, is that he is developing severe muscles on the underside of his neck. He has also had mild colic twice in 12months, he has no topline, and not to mention causing loads of damage to the fencing and his stable!

He is out 10 hours during the day with plenty of grazing and stabled at night with constant good quality hay! I have tried feeding him coligone after his feed, i have tried cribbox all over, ulcer calm (from feedmark), and various collars as a last resort the recent one paying £50 for the miracle collar which is does not work and makes him suck harder to get a gulp of air! None of these work.

He is currently being fed half large round scoop of spillers conditioning cubes, speedibeet and molassas mollichop twice daily. Not sure if this diet contains alot of sugar ? Also i was tempted to try Settlex from feedmark but dont want to waste anymore money - i have also read that rennies reduce windsucking when fed immediatly after feeding.

Overall im not sure if i should just accept the way my horse is, as this is just a habit, but then i dont want his health to suffer either. He only seems to do it after every meal but i have caught him on a couple of occasions in the field.

Has anyone got simular problems and how to reduce the windsucking or help it in any way. Many Thanks. x
 
My big lad is a wind sucker, though he does not crib. I use Coligone, both the powder as an every day supplement and in liquid form as an emergency measure. I have found his wind sucking has decreased enormously, not gone completely but decreased. He is colicky, gaseous colic, and it works well when he colics.

Don't know about Rennies, never tried them.

FDC
 
Fany Du Champ said:
My big lad is a wind sucker, though he does not crib. I use Coligone, both the powder as an every day supplement and in liquid form as an emergency measure. I have found his wind sucking has decreased enormously, not gone completely but decreased. He is colicky, gaseous colic, and it works well when he colics.

Don't know about Rennies, never tried them.

FDC
Click to expand...

Thanks, i didnt know they did Coigone in powder. The liquid forumla was really hard to give to him in the syringe which is mainly why i stopped, and he wouldnt eat his food with it it. so prehaps i didnt give it chance to work. I might try the power again. Thank you x
 
Be careful with the coligone powder - introduce it gradually as my chap who is a cribber would not touch it......
I imagine Rennies would be no different to settlex etc as contain similiar ingredients and doubt would work for such an established windsucker, but worth a try.
I was always told to feed a cribber/windsucker a high fibre non cereal diet, so would cut out the conditioning cubes. I feed my chap allen and page's fast fibre with hi fi which he does very well on.
Good luck as know how frustating these habits can be!
 
I had a Horse that windsucked and cribbed like crazy. A lot of research I found suggested it was not so much a vice as was previously thought but caused by gastric ulcers or acid reflux type issues. It is thought to be brought on by feeding high concentrate feed, not enough access to grazing and incresed stress (such as competion/lots of travelling).
Unfortunalty I cannot find the article I read at the time!! I will try and find them and post the links.
To tackle it we stopped feeding anything high in concentrates or containing mollasses or too much suger, and put him on Settlex from feedmark. This stuff is brilliant!! He got as much time out grazing as physically possible. and then to break the habit he had aquirred we opened his door when we fed him (as this is when he used to do it most) and put a door chain across so he had nothing to get hold of. We also gave him a treat ball, which gave him something to think about other than cribbing when he finished eating. All these things combined stopped his cribbing completely within a few months. Now he only does it if something really stresses him out, and we know when he does it now there is something wrong with him.
Hope this helps some!
It is deffinately something that can be stopped if the root of the problem is found.
Emily
 
^^^^ like this

My friend has a bad cribber, he's not putting on the condition he should be because of all his cribbing. she has had a top door grille fitted to his stable which stops him from cribbing on it (which he can do even with the collar on) and has therefore improved things enormously. She is very pleased, he is a lovely kind horse who would be perfect in every way if it wasn't for the cribbing.
 
we use feedmark supplements. the one the lady recommended to us was the new one that they have recently intoduced.its called ulcer calm. its got the same ingredients as settlex but extra ingredients for soothing the gut.if you look on there website it tells you about them. it is quite pricey but they dont need to much off it.and i brought mine in bulk @ your horse live as it was 50% off. its deffinately made him much happier in his self and calmed his cribbing down. plus hes now collared but he still manages to find ways to do it sometimes.

rennies apparently do work but you would need to give so many to get an effect your probs better off with a horsey product.i asked my vet about it recently....he also said the same about giving them gaviscon? not that i had ever thought of that one.lol

never tried colligone but loads of people seem to rate it.
 
Sidney said:
Be careful with the coligone powder - introduce it gradually as my chap who is a cribber would not touch it......
I imagine Rennies would be no different to settlex etc as contain similiar ingredients and doubt would work for such an established windsucker, but worth a try.
I was always told to feed a cribber/windsucker a high fibre non cereal diet, so would cut out the conditioning cubes. I feed my chap allen and page's fast fibre with hi fi which he does very well on.
Good luck as know how frustating these habits can be!
Click to expand...

I agree with the non cereal hi-fi diet. Cappy is on Calm and Condition with FibreG and beet. He was on Bailey's Outshine, which has even less cereal, it was good but he went a bit loopy because of the oil.

I did find it hard to get my lad to eat Coligone at first but with some perseverance he took it and is now quite happy with it, IMHO It was worth the trying.

FDC
 
My horse cribs, didn't know this when I bought him but hey. you live with these things! He is an ex racehorse who has raced in Hong Kong and in the UK and I do feel, having learned of the conditions in HK and some racing yards here, that it is not surprising he has some 'bad habits'. personally, I would never use a collar or Cribbox. That just increases the anxiety in the horse. Once mine is settled in a routine, he rarely cribs but we moved yards 6 weeks ago and he is cribbing quite a lot, but it is starting to settle down. Interesting to read about Settlex. Only problem is that mine is such a messy eater, I'm not sure how much would go down.
When it's milder, he is out at night and in for a few hours during the day, and you would never know he cribs.
Yours doesn't sound too bad if he's just doing it at feed times!!
 
Emily91 said:
I had a Horse that windsucked and cribbed like crazy. A lot of research I found suggested it was not so much a vice as was previously thought but caused by gastric ulcers or acid reflux type issues. It is thought to be brought on by feeding high concentrate feed, not enough access to grazing and incresed stress (such as competion/lots of travelling).
Unfortunalty I cannot find the article I read at the time!! I will try and find them and post the links.
To tackle it we stopped feeding anything high in concentrates or containing mollasses or too much suger, and put him on Settlex from feedmark. This stuff is brilliant!! He got as much time out grazing as physically possible. and then to break the habit he had aquirred we opened his door when we fed him (as this is when he used to do it most) and put a door chain across so he had nothing to get hold of. We also gave him a treat ball, which gave him something to think about other than cribbing when he finished eating. All these things combined stopped his cribbing completely within a few months. Now he only does it if something really stresses him out, and we know when he does it now there is something wrong with him.
Hope this helps some!
It is deffinately something that can be stopped if the root of the problem is found.
Emily
Click to expand...

This sounds a great approach to me. :)
 
kirstyl said:
Interesting to read about Settlex. Only problem is that mine is such a messy eater, I'm not sure how much would go down.
Click to expand...

Sounds just like mine!! He likes to throw half his food out of his bucket!

I've never tried to stop mine cribbing. He's been doing it since he evented (started 20yrs ago) He's happy which is the main thing and i have no problem (as do non of the liveries) with him cribbing if he wants to. I have been shot down so many times because of this but it's not like he is cribbing 24/7! He seems to crib more when fed haylage rather than hay.
 
Only to say that is can not always be solved - but there is a lot you can do to try to reduce it. The biggest with cribbing is that there are many reasons why a horse does it - if your horse starts doing it for a physical reason (i.e ulcers) then you have a much better idea than if it is a pyschological problem.
 
Try global herbal herbs acid x.
It really worked on a horse i had, settled his stomach.

Can you make your stable un windsuckable?

A horse on our yard wasa windsucker, but couldnt in the stable as the walls were too high, put a grill on his door or use a chain and leave the door open.
use tub trugs or a flexible bucket that he cant get a grip of.
In the field he was in a fenced off area, electric tape was used to he could suck off anything.

You need to sort out the cause and not just treat the symptom though and i think stomach acid is usually the problem, diet or lifestyle can cause this.
 
PennyJ said:
^^^^ like this

My friend has a bad cribber, he's not putting on the condition he should be because of all his cribbing. she has had a top door grille fitted to his stable which stops him from cribbing on it (which he can do even with the collar on) and has therefore improved things enormously. She is very pleased, he is a lovely kind horse who would be perfect in every way if it wasn't for the cribbing.
Click to expand...

I have tried him with the top grill door also, he just cribs on the side of the grill, Ive also tried leaving the door open after his feed with the chain there, but he can still reach the corner of the stable door!! it is so fustrating! x
 
louised1henry said:
we use feedmark supplements. the one the lady recommended to us was the new one that they have recently intoduced.its called ulcer calm. its got the same ingredients as settlex but extra ingredients for soothing the gut.if you look on there website it tells you about them. it is quite pricey but they dont need to much off it.and i brought mine in bulk @ your horse live as it was 50% off. its deffinately made him much happier in his self and calmed his cribbing down. plus hes now collared but he still manages to find ways to do it sometimes.

rennies apparently do work but you would need to give so many to get an effect your probs better off with a horsey product.i asked my vet about it recently....he also said the same about giving them gaviscon? not that i had ever thought of that one.lol

never tried colligone but loads of people seem to rate it.
Click to expand...

Ive tried the new ulcer calm from feedmark and it didnt even reduce his cribbing/windsucking :/ i found this article about rennies so i may give them a try if they are not so expensive, i have no idea how much they cost! ha..x
Research

""Five years ago Michael Peace and his wife Susi came up with a theory that rather than being stress related, wind-sucking could possibly be due to a problem horses have in digestion. They'd noticed years before that wind-sucking horses kept on limestone soils tended to wind-suck less than if they were kept on clay soils for example. They decided to try feeding Rennie (the human antacid treatment for indigestion) to a wind sucking horse they owned at the time. They gave the horse 6 Rennie tablets after his feed and his wind sucking decreased. The results were amazing albeit in just a one horse trial. So simple, yet nobody had come up with it in years of research. They went to De Montfort University with their idea who carried out an extensive trial on 100 horses and the results proved to be significant. This has changed the whole direction of research into wind-sucking in horses""
 
There is a school of thought that preventing a horse displaying a vice can make it more stressed, akin to removing cigarettes from a smoker.

As others have suggested I would have it scoped first to eliminate ulcers then decide on a course of action, but may find that it is a habit that cannot be broken.

My chap cribs but only at feed times or if given a treat, but as he has no dental wear, and have had him scoped with no evidence of ulcers, now just keep him on ad lib fibre/non cereal diet when stabled, and turn a blind eye to the cribbing.

He is a lovely horse in every other way and would rather he cribbed than had ridden vices, and as plan to keep him fo life, will have no issues with re-sale.
 
Like a few on here I allow the windsucking/cribbing. After extensive scans etc and no ulcers to be found so that ruled out a physical cause.

So must be in his head! Just like a smoker craves a cigarette so a windsucker needs to suck! Have found that it does seem to be the bright sparks in the horse world that crib/suck-he's a super dressage diva. He sadly has scars around his neck where some one previous to me put on a collar.

He has his own crib post in the field which he goes to and cribs when he needs to. He is fed on ad lib haylage too and this is fed from the floor. He has a hook on manger for the stable door so he doesn't waste feed when wanting to crib in between mouthfuls. He has worn his teeth but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

I guess I don't notice it as its part of him.
 
I would think about getting him scoped for sure. My mare is a windsucker but it has been virtually eliminated since she was treated for ulcers and then we also found she has several allergies as well which have now been addressed.

She still regularly gets colic, but we have put this down to the fact that she tested allergic to a good selection of grasses and herbs so at certain times of the year, while these are growing she is going to be more prone.
 
Thanks for your replies. I am definatley going to ditch the Miracle Collar. This morning it was half hanging off and all twisted!! quite dangerous!!

I just think it is habit rather than ulcers as he has done it all his life nevertheless it will be worth probably getting him scoped just to put my mind at rest.

He does, usally, only do it after EVERY meal time or after EVERY treat but like i said beforehand i have caught him on the trees in the field despite lots of lush grass. He has lots of toys in his stable, including a mirror, playball and horselyx!

I think i will contact a feed merchant see what they suggest in regards to a high fibre low starch diet not sure what types of feed this would be as i would like to maintain his condition and topline which is also suffering as a result of his windsucking - Any ideas ? x
 
Last edited:
Hi,
As others have said I would def get him scoped, although I understand the ulcer treatment is very expensive so maybe only an option if you are insured? May not be if you've had to claim for colic?

However, on the feed front, I would swap your mollassed chaff for something unmollassed. I think Dengie now do an unmollased Hi Fi or Top spec do one. Speedi beet and Kwiki beet I find are great for my mare who has as sensitve tum but don't use the older style mollased sugar beet. Not sure about the conditioning cubes.

As someone else said, hay rather than haylage is s good idea.

I have tried coligone in the past but found it only worked the first few times I fed it so then tried Ulcer Guard from Equine America which was great for about two months but again this only seemed to have a temporary effect.
Hope that's of some help :)
 
I found with Lady 24/7 turnout really helped, as she spends the time eating and not standing in the stable bored.

She is on a high fibre diet as windsucking often a ulcer related issue. She is also on Saeweed. She has a lick in her field as we found after eating instead of sucking she'd lick instead.

She doesn't like cribox so that does work for me on the field posts therefore now she has no where to crib and suck.

It is stress with her. If i'm playing with her then leave she wants to do it then as well.
 
I bought a windsucker/cribber in September who didn't have a lot of condition or weight and was really bad, he used to prefer windsucking to eating hay.... I've found as he has put on weight and remembered to eat hay the windsucking has dramatically reduced. He started stacking on the weight with D&H Build up mix, although I think it might be sending him a bit loopy now!
I thought I might get him out of it as he's only 4, so tried collars, crib stop, stable toys to no avail and stopping him from doing it made him really grumpy and miserable and he started chewing wood. I've accepted he'll probably always do it a bit and binned the horrible collar, but it's much less than it ever was thankfully!

I did read about the Rennie option but was never convinced so didn't try it, I am trying Pink Powder as a halfway house as I'm not convinced he has ulcers and neither our vet, just a habit
 
bought an old pony that cribbed and has done so for some time as he has no top front teeth left. I put him on dengies digestive health plus as he was very poor and after two weeks he had stopped altogether.
 
pollypock1211 said:
Ive tried the new ulcer calm from feedmark and it didnt even reduce his cribbing/windsucking :/ i found this article about rennies so i may give them a try if they are not so expensive, i have no idea how much they cost! ha..x
Research

""Five years ago Michael Peace and his wife Susi came up with a theory that rather than being stress related, wind-sucking could possibly be due to a problem horses have in digestion. They'd noticed years before that wind-sucking horses kept on limestone soils tended to wind-suck less than if they were kept on clay soils for example. They decided to try feeding Rennie (the human antacid treatment for indigestion) to a wind sucking horse they owned at the time. They gave the horse 6 Rennie tablets after his feed and his wind sucking decreased. The results were amazing albeit in just a one horse trial. So simple, yet nobody had come up with it in years of research. They went to De Montfort University with their idea who carried out an extensive trial on 100 horses and the results proved to be significant. This has changed the whole direction of research into wind-sucking in horses""
Click to expand...

It was in 1996 that this first study was done. It was proved significant that digestion was linked to wind-sucking. The best diet to feed is just hay/grass even in heavy work ReadiGrass could be added. Rennie did help but feeding good hay and turn out was the most important point.
 
if a horse cribs at feed time after feeding, put in the feed and hay and before letting the horse eat it put a handful of the feed on the hay, he will soon learn to go to the hay and not crib, don't feed treats as this encourages the habit
 
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