Horse digging for grass in the snow

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Steeleydan

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Does anyone elses horse do this? My sisters horse goes out everyday well rugged regardless of weather, we do have alot of grass, while we have had show he gets a pile of haylage, but the spoilt brat (thats what I call him!!) ignores it and digs little holes in the snow looking for grass and eats.
Horses must just be dumb animals, if I was him I would eat the haylage that was dished up, rather than work hard digging holes, to just eat freezing cold grass!
Well now just going out to top his haylage up, its blowing a blizzard here,straight into his stable and we have no top doors.
 
Both of mine do this.The youngster likes to snuffle about in the snow and the older one isn't doing it as much this year but last year she was really bad for it and ignored the pile of nice hay for the freezing grass.
 
Yeah they all do it. My horse was moved onto good grazing just before the snow and would rather dig up the grass than eat hayalge. He lives out too, you'd think he'd be hungry! :rolleyes:
 
Steeleydan said:
Does anyone elses horse do this? My sisters horse goes out everyday well rugged regardless of weather, we do have alot of grass, while we have had show he gets a pile of haylage, but the spoilt brat (thats what I call him!!) ignores it and digs little holes in the snow looking for grass and eats.
Horses must just be dumb animals, if I was him I would eat the haylage that was dished up, rather than work hard digging holes, to just eat freezing cold grass!
Well now just going out to top his haylage up, its blowing a blizzard here,straight into his stable and we have no top doors.
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The horse is doing what is natural and right for horses, Very odd thinking he is a brat. I don't think he's the dumb one, certainly not in this post.
 
AndySpooner said:
The horse is doing what is natural and right for horses, Very odd thinking he is a brat. I don't think he's the dumb one, certainly not in this post.
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psml! I'm afraid I was thinking similar, I just didn't have the balls to say.

Ime, those that think horses are stupid are often the ones rather lacking in IQ. Horses are super smart. If we don't/won't understand their way of thinking I'm afraid it makes us the stupid ones, not them!
 
As others have said, he's behaving like a horse. Mine happily dig throught the snow, they also dig up roots. They know what they need and if horses became so reliant on human beings that they could no longer fend for themselves,their future would be bleak.
 
hes doing what is natural and yay yay - mine are out in all weather snow ice rain etc never have hay in field - herd of 11 - and do you know in all the snow they have not dived in to thier hay when brought in - baby ate for half hour other night then had a snooze - isnt it great seeing horses being horses :)
 
We have over 2 feet of snow. The day before it snowed and snowed and snowed ..... I put a horsylyx in the field. The next day it was well and truly buried. Terrified my horse would gallop over it and break a leg I spent over an hour with a fork trying to find it ... no luck. Put horse in field and 5 mins later he had dug it up and was happily licking it! He too happily digs to get at the grass - and he is a thoroughbred - bred to race, probably kept stabled for the first 3 years of his life, too slow to race so suddenly 'useless' - I think he is the cleverest horse I have ever had - who needs to race when you can spend happy days digging! Without instinct horses would not be horses!
 
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