Help horse eating trees!!

[GHALI]

Have a field of 3 horses and one has taken to eating the bark of the trees, this isn`t going down well with dad!. Heard it`s a sign of lacking something in diet but their all fed the same and only she is doing it. Can anyone help?

 

[JustKickOn]

Fence the trees off, offer your horse vitamin suplements like a salk lick ect, or you could all the feed nutrition hotline thing.

Lizzie

 

[pixie]

What are you feeding them all? What's their workload?

Have you tried giving her a mineral lick?

 

[MagicMelon]

I dont think its necessarily anything lacking - Ive heard it can be a forage deficiency, but if you're feeding lots of that then that's probably not it! Its meant to be natural so I wouldnt worry about it. But the only way to stop them is to fence off the trees or possibly giving them big branches to chew on? We give our lot massive branches (with the little sticky bits taken off and obviously making sure the leaves arent poisonous!) and ours love them! They spend ages stripping bark off, yet all of them get loads of forage, balanced diet etc.

 

[GHALI]

Fencing trees off is a no go. dads not impressed that she could possibly kill tree by stripping bark off all round. She`s in a 10 acre field full of grass so is quite irrating that chewing the trees is her main hobby. She has recently been away at stud and is in foal could it be hormones?. Cheers for the branch idea magicmelon, the saw will be out tomorrow!!!

 

[soph21]

my friends horses (4 of them and 3 are geldings) were eating the bark off all her trees through winter while the grazing was short, her fields are surrounded by trees and most of them are ''barkless!!!'' so it cant be that they were hungry? if you're mare has 10 acres!!! maybe boredom? but then all hers were exercised regularly? very strange creatures aren't they!!! i had to buy bear a pasture lick today, even though he has got loads of grass he's taken to eating soil and roots off the hedges!!! i think he's a weirdo in general though!!!

 

[merlinsquest]

You could try wrapping chicken netting round the trunks to stop her getting a purchase on them.

Why is fencing them off such a problem???

 

[AmyMay]

Horses love chewing trees - it's a fact of life!

You're dad is going to have to do some creative fencing if he wants to prevent it from happening.