Pony digging large holes in field and eating mud?!

HBBambee

HBBambee

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Any ideas please? this is the second year in a row he has done this, the holes are of significant size. This year he has dug more holes than last.
He is in medium to hard work, eventing fit he is worked 6 days a week, in during the day and out at night.
He has a handful of pony nuts with electrolytes morning and night and a small flap of haylage.
Could this be due to a lack of minerals?
Any ideas very much appreciated.
 
Yes, it could be due to a lack of minerals. I'd try him with a fairly simple mineral salt lick - the brick type.

Mind you he might just be bored or seeing if he can find water / gold / oil!
 
My boy dug holes in whatever field he was in, waited for them to fill with rain water and used them as a wallow. Always could tell where he had been turned out! Never ate mud though, as far as i am aware.
 
Thank you both, He will do it at competitions as well, I will wash him down, untack etc. and take him for a bite to eat before loading and the first thing he does is rip up the grass from the roots and then start taking huge bites out of the soil. I am starting to wonder if maybe it is a vice that he has developed.
Will try him with a mineral lick and see if that makes any improvements.
 
My horse does the same however his are more stallion tendencies he will dig more holes and deeper if a mare is in season near by (he is gelded but not til he was 3) the eating mud I have never seen him do tough
 
My horse wants to do this while walking through the woods and sometimes i let him ncase he needs what he is looking for- but I feed pro balance and extra salt already.
 
soil will settle stomach acid that can cause pain if the horse has ulcers

soil eating can be a lack of a mineral but doing it at a competition would steer me more in the direction of ulcers.

we have a mare at work that eats soil but only when regularly competing she also gets girthy she has never been scoped but keeps having time off due to injury and every time the work reduces she stops doing it
 
Could the electrolytes be causing an imbalance? I will put my hands up and say I don't know enough to comment further but I don't think its very usual to give electrolytes on a routine basis at home
 
My mare does this. I've put a salt lick block in both the field and stable yard, which she used initially but now doesn't bother. Have also been giving her a vit/min supplement, but still she gouges out great chunks of earth and eats it.

She's always been prone to it, but this year is particularly bad. No idea why.
 
Hmm just read the stomach ulcer post. Are there any other signs for this? She's a 24 year old retired mare, weight fine (bit too heavy actually due to too much grass) and not stressed out as far as I can see. Cant see any signs of stomach pain either.
 
hmm interesting readin esp re the ulcers. He can bit a bit girthy at times, but only to the extent of ears back and nose wrinkled up and maybe around once a week. He is always very keen to work, never worried or tense and of a very clam and relaxed nature. So would perhaps pull away from the ulcer theory, but I won't brush it under the carpet. He is on a restricted diet during the day so there are periods when he is not eating and excess acid could build up but usually I make sure he has eaten before I ride him for this reason. May look to explore this with an ulcer liquid and see if he improves.
 
Mine does this from time to time. He actually seems to relish the taste of dirt!

He has a mineral lick, and vits and mins in his feed. He is healthy, is fed hay ad lib, is a bit heavy, is not girthy, is laid back.

After the recent field flooding, when he was turned out he went purposefully to the furrow portions of the ridge and furrow field and ate the stained, "spoiled" nasty grass first. Looked cack but he seemed to relish that too.

Strange horse.
 
HBBambee said:
Any ideas please? this is the second year in a row he has done this, the holes are of significant size. This year he has dug more holes than last.
He is in medium to hard work, eventing fit he is worked 6 days a week, in during the day and out at night.
He has a handful of pony nuts with electrolytes morning and night and a small flap of haylage.
Could this be due to a lack of minerals?
Any ideas very much appreciated.
Click to expand...

A few years back, my QH started licking dirt. I suspected some kind of mineral deficiency. I got him a mineral lick and hey presto - no more eating dirt!
 
They do it because they can. Instinct at work. He is practicing for the future when global warming creates a shortage of water and he has to dig for it!

Joking apart, animals do all sorts of things that they are driven to do by instincts created by natural selection over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. It may be there is something in the dirt that he isn't getting from our artificial modern world. It could be minerals, trace elements, bacteria, or just the urge to try something different. It probably won't harm him and we'll never know all the answers.

Think of the opposites. Children reared in a clinically clean environment who then become prone to asthma, allergies, and infections at the slightest chance.
 
I Had this a year ago with my newbie a 16hh ISH. I told the vet who said straight away a deficiency. Blood tests showed he was anaemic. I gave him forage plus winter supplement. He has never done it since.
 
Thanks for all your replies very helpful. hihosilver funny you mention about bloods as we had some taken around 3 years ago now and he was low so we added red cell to his diet and it really picked him up. haven't fed it for around a year now as his fitness has been good and no signs of lethargic behaviour. something else to look at though.
 
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