Soap – it’s not just for getting clean

Use soap to stop wood chewing

Horses are designed to graze most of their waking hours.  But we’ve removed them from their natural habitat and placed them in paddocks and stalls.  We feed them two or three times a day and the rest of the time they are left without the ability to graze.  Naturally, horses in their resourcefulness find other things to do.  Unfortunately, one of those things is chewing on the wood structures of their stall and wood fencing.  

Wood chewing can be dangerous for horses.  Horses can get splinters in the soft tissues of their mouth causing infections. Treated and painted wood are full of toxins dangerous to your horse.  So how do you prevent and stop this habit?

Prevention

Like I mentioned before, horses are designed to graze most of their waking hours.  The best option is to mimic the grazing they would do in the wild.  This should prevent the behavior from developing. There are options you can try.  Find a place with acres and acres of land for your horse to live.  Not an option?  If only we could all be so lucky.  Other solutions include using slow feeders, hay nets, and community round bales in turnout locations.

Fixing the problem

Sometimes even when we give our horse all the best food and best stall and daily turn out on pasture, they still find chewing on that rail a little enjoyable.  Maybe it’s soothing.  But we can’t have them chewing down the barn or hurting themselves.  A quick fix is to use a bar of soap.  Yep, it’s that easy!  Buy a cheap bar of soap and rub it over any place the horses find nice to chew on.  Undercover, this can last months and disrupt the habit.  I find I only need to do it twice a year. Rain, of course, will wash it away faster.  But soap is cheap.  Just re-apply as needed.