What is your horse eating throughout the day when you’re not around? After reading some new university studies about diet restrictions and horses, I found some interesting information you should know about!! According to a recent university study, researchers looking at horses on restricted calorie diets found that nearly half of them were eating wood shavings in their stalls.
Wood shavings aren’t a horse’s “go-to” snack, but when they are put on a diet, bedding can look pretty tasty. Although all the horses in the study remained healthy, ingesting wood shavings can cause potentially serious digestive problems, including colic, and should be discouraged.
If your horse is eating his bedding, one obvious solution is to reduce the amount of bedding in the stall. The SmartStall™ Memory Foam Mattress by IGK Equestrian features a waterproof woven top cover that fits wall-to wall within the box stall, creating a “moisture tray” that allows all liquids and manure to be captured on top and easily removed with the bedding. This not only reduces the amount of bedding needed to provide comfort (or a snack), but also reduced odor, labor to muck out stalls, and disposal costs.
The SmartStall™ Top Cover is constructed of tough fabric that can be custom fit for everything from a 12’ x 12’ box stall to a 12’ x 24’ foaling stall
Let IGK Equestrian know, Have you ever caught your horse eating in bed? What did you do?
