Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Mare urinates on her hay

From: Jess

Jessica, My mare always urinates on the fresh hay that we throw out for her. We have two horses, the mare (33 yrs) and her son (12 yrs). They live outdoors with a run-in shed. They always have water and hay, salt, and pasture available. Sometimes the gelding will do it too. What's going on with them? Thanks, Jess

Hi Jess! I know that it's annoying when horses urinate on their hay, but most horses, like your gelding, will do this at some time or other. Young horses can sometimes be taught not to do this - hay can be fed in a feeder or a haynet to prevent the horse urinating on its hay - but since your mare is 33, she's unlikely to change a long-standing habit.

Different horses do this for different reasons - see if any of these sound likely. Some horses are much more possessive than others, and will urinate near (and yes, sometimes ON) their hay, to claim it as theirs and discourage others from taking it. Others will urinate on hay that they don't particularly like, as a sort of "restaurant review" - I've known several horses that would consistently urinate on grass hay, but never on alfalfa (of which they were very fond). Some horses will urinate on their hay rather than elsewhere in the pasture if the grass is thin and the ground is hard and dry - horses dislike the sensation of urine splashing on their legs, and so are far more likely to urinate on a soft surface than on a hard, flat one. If you think that this may be the case with your mare, you might leave some of that hay in place, or pull it into a particular area and watch to see whether she and her son will adopt that spot as a toilet.

Some horses that are kept in stalls with doors to runs or small exercise paddocks will walk back into their stalls whenever they need to urinate - again, because they prefer that soft, absorbent surface. Consequently, many horse-owners find that attaching a run or an exercise paddock to their horse's stall doesn't actually cut down on stall-cleaning time - unless the horses are shut OUT of their stalls during the day. This doesn't make sense to the horse-owners ("Why does my horse use his bedroom for a toilet?") but it makes perfect sense to the horses, because to them, the stall IS the toilet.

Jessica

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