Wind sucking

[Furry_footed_TB]

When waiting to for his dinner or waiting to get turned out, or at anything in particular that makes him impatient, my pony has started wind sucking.

Do you think a cribbing collar would be useful to help with this? He doesn’t do it at any other point.

thanks in advance

 

[AmyMay]

Nope. They’re awful, cruel things.

 

[Squeak]

Have you spoken to a vet at all? It's often a sign of ulcers and might be worth checking for. The vet might be able to rule out other things as well to make sure you're treating the cause and not the effect

 

[Flowerofthefen]

Unfortunately using a collar to stop the wind sucking can cause a horse to take up a different vice. They are horrible things. If your horse has only just started this, as above, possibly ulcers. Wind sucking is usually a horses way of telling you he is unhappy with some aspect of his life.

 

[HashRouge]

Don't use a collar, we've never even tried one on our crib biter as I just think they're cruel. As others have said, if this is a new habit I would be wondering about ulcers and consider getting him scoped. Unfortunately though, once they've started it's very hard to get them to stop even if the ulcers have been successfully treated. We used a weave grill on one yard to stop our gelding cribbing on the door and that was very effective. Where we are now he lives out but I do have electric rope along the top of any wooden fence posts as he will go through phases of crib biting and this is an easy, cheap way of preventing him wrecking the fencing. He isn't stabled very often but there is a half height partition between his stable and my mare's so I put cribbox on that as I have seen him crib on it on occasion. I find cribbox works really well, though it does need re-applying periodically. The only downside is that he is always sticking his head into the mare's stable and getting cribbox on his neck the daft sod!

He was treated for ulcers about 6 years ago and scoped clear after two lots of treatment, but unfortunately the habit seems to have stuck with him. What I tend to find now is that he will not even try to crib for ages and ages, and I will get complacent and not run electric rope round the top of the fence posts or just forget to switch the electric on. And this will be fine for ages, but then one day I'll catch him cribbing and once he's started again he will get fixated on it and do it consistently until I sort out the fencing so that he can't. I do think it's a real addiction for them and once they've started you can never "cure" them completely.

 

[Lois Lame]

I'm not in favour of collars either.
Does your horse get enough roughage to eat? Once the habbit is formed, it doesn't seem to stop, even when turned out 24/7.

 

[Not_so_brave_anymore]

A slightly more positive story: my mare started crib biting earlier this year. I tried a gastro guard type supplement, which didn't help at all. But then I started her on prascend because she tested positive for cushings for the first time, and a few weeks later I removed her companion pony (who she hated), and one of those things seems to have done the trick- she's completely stopped.