Horse eating poo?!

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frankieduck

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Went to fetch my gelding in today and was horrified to find him tucking into a fresh pile of manure in the field 😳

I’ve known foals to do this but never seen an adult horse do it?

Everything I’ve read has indicated nutritional deficiency, gut biome or lack of fibre. He’s fed on Spillers balancer and gets a gut balancer. There’s not much grass in the field but he comes in during the day and has ad-lib hay (never finishes it), and had only been turned out for around an hour at this point. When I brought him in and offered him hay he wasn’t hungry.

Has regular worm counts, all clear.

He’s recently moved to share fields with a new horse, could it be related?

Should I be concerned? Or just continue to be grossed out 🤮
 
Somewhat Off The Way said:
I had a horse do this. I put a salt lick in the field and he stopped doing it. I always make sure there's a salt lick in the field now and the behaviour hasn't reoccurred. Cheap and easy thing to try, it might solve the problem🤞
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I’ll try! He has a salt lick in his stable he doesn’t touch. I’ve tried adding salt to his feed but he’s fussy and won’t eat it. Not too fussy to tuck into a pile of steaming poo though!! :oops:
 
My old mare started doing this. It was only her own 'product' she was scoffing 🤢 The vet suggested a general vitamin supplement, so I put them all on Equivite and she seems to have stopped. Could be a coincidence though.
 
Has he had antibiotics recently? Changed main source of forage? How far apart are the fields he's swapped between?
 
Maybe a longstanding gut dysbiosis and the new horse's gut biome offered him something new/better? A horse I used to ride had a lengthy hospital stay with multiple rounds of ABs and on his first hack out after he recovered we came across a pile of manure on the road and he insisted on eating most of it. I thought he probably knew what he was doing, given the weirdness of the behaviour!
 
Burnttoast said:
Maybe a longstanding gut dysbiosis and the new horse's gut biome offered him something new/better? A horse I used to ride had a lengthy hospital stay with multiple rounds of ABs and on his first hack out after he recovered we came across a pile of manure on the road and he insisted on eating most of it. I thought he probably knew what he was doing, given the weirdness of the behaviour!
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It's so odd! He likes to 'inspect' poo on hacks but has never shown any interest in eating it. He's on Protexin Gut Balancer already as I just feed it as standard so no idea what else I could add.
 
frankieduck said:
I’ll try! He has a salt lick in his stable he doesn’t touch. I’ve tried adding salt to his feed but he’s fussy and won’t eat it. Not too fussy to tuck into a pile of steaming poo though!! :oops:
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You could try Safe Salt by Science Supplements. The salt is covered so they can't taste it.
 
Nocturnal said:
My grotty little boy is obsessed with poo. Gotta sniff it, roll it around with his nose, dig it up, and will occasionally have a taste. I think he’s just a wrong’un.
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Mine used to do this when he came across other horses poo on hacks as they can get the scent markers left by the horse before them, it tells them a lot.

But I don't thi k he did this to his own
 
Birker2020 said:
Mine used to do this when he came across other horses poo on hacks as they can get the scent markers left by the horse before them, it tells them a lot.

But I don't thi k he did this to his own
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Yes, tho Spud takes it beyond hobby to obsession 😝
He also drinks out of muddy puddles and steals dirty straw from other peoples wheelbarrows to eat.
 
I think an adult horse will do it to diversify their gut biome. We give probiotics but many of them have limited strains in them. Whereas fresh poop has loads of varying strains in comparison.
I’d be concerned if he did it all the time, and didn’t stop the behaviour.

An old trick to populate the water with healthy bacteria of a newly constructed fish pond was to get fresh horse manure in a hessian sack and tie a rock to it and let it sit at the bottom of the pond for a week. My relatives were koi lovers and told me this was a common thing done for ponds, and as fish are sensitive to water toxins, it goes to show how full of good bacteria horse poop has!
 
PurBee said:
I think an adult horse will do it to diversify their gut biome. We give probiotics but many of them have limited strains in them. Whereas fresh poop has loads of varying strains in comparison.
I’d be concerned if he did it all the time, and didn’t stop the behaviour.

An old trick to populate the water with healthy bacteria of a newly constructed fish pond was to get fresh horse manure in a hessian sack and tie a rock to it and let it sit at the bottom of the pond for a week. My relatives were koi lovers and told me this was a common thing done for ponds, and as fish are sensitive to water toxins, it goes to show how full of good bacteria horse poop has!
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I was told by one of the vets I worked with to allow my dogs to eat it (as long as it had no wormer in it) when one of them had had giardia and that it would help re populate the gut with good bacteria
 
I caught mine eating his own poop last week, never caught him before but guess he could do it often. He’d been sedated that day for an X-ray so thought that maybe why, or a dirty protest of restricted grazing
 
I was advised years ago jst to pop an actimel in my mares feed when she was eating her own poo. She had one a day for a week n that sorted it out
 
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