From: Fran
Dear Jessica,
First I want to thank you so much for your informative emails. I enjoy them and learn a lot.
My question is about one, if not both, of my horses and his habit of licking. Sonny is a 16 year old Foxtrotter and he's always enjoyed licking hands a little bit. However, recently it has escalated to the point that it's almost obsessive. He licks the other horses some, but mostly he enjoys licking people. It is hard to get him to stop.
Here's the scoop on Sonny and his paddock mate, River. We moved "the boys" to our property in September. For a while we fed grain twice daily and they had free-choice hay. They always had a salt block and a mineral block available. Then we switched to free-choice hay only - no grain (and no supplements). We recently had to move them off our property because we'll selling our house and we need to clean up out back. Before the move, we noticed that Sonny was licking us a lot when we went into the paddock to be with them. Then River started licking us - he was never a licker until recently.
They've been moved away from our house for a couple of weeks now - still on free-choice hay. Sonny's licking has increased to the point where we're uncomfortable. It's obsessive. River's licking has increased also.
I'm trying to figure out if the licking is caused by some mineral that's missing in his diet - he has plenty of salt - or if he's bored because we're not riding him. I'm just not sure what he's trying to tell me. Can you help?
Fran
I have a horse like that on my farm right now. He's in his mid-twenties, I've known him since he was ten or eleven, and he has always liked to lick: people for preference, but also other horses, stall walls, gateposts, fence boards, metal round-pen panels... anything and everything. He doesn't do it all the time - in fact, he does it much less when we manage him correctly (more about this in a minute). But it can be provoked at any time, and it goes on year-round, in spite of a good diet, supplements, and either pasture or free-choice hay at all times. When he was much younger, he was an eventer, and his owner was a child who used to take him to competitions. The way she kept the horse quiet and happy whilst he was being groomed and tacked up was to have her sister stand in front of him so that he could lick her hand or arm. As long as he could do that, it didn't matter how many dogs were barking or how many people were yelling or how many golf carts went zooming just behind him or just past him.
I've known a number of other horses with the same habit. None of them seemed to be bored, so I don't think that's the issue. Over the years, I've taken notes and tried various things - supplements, toys, etc. - in an attempt to figure out why horses begin licking.
I do think that salt can be a factor, and I strongly suspect that there may be other minerals involved. Are you sure that your horse is getting enough salt? Having a salt block available at all times is NOT a guarantee of getting enough salt. Salt blocks aren't really designed for horses; they're designed for cattle, and cattle have very rough tongues. Cattle can easily get all the salt they want by licking a salt block; horses often can't get enough salt by licking a block, and some horses can't get any at all. In hot weather, horses lose mineral salts in their sweat, and if it's very hot and they are sweating a great deal, it could be enough to create a salt or other mineral deficiency if they were just on the edge of becoming decificient BEFORE the weather became hot.
You might try adding an ounce or two of loose salt to your horses' feed for a few weeks, and watching for any changes in their behaviour. This will involve a little more work than leaving out a salt block! Leaving granular salt outdoors for horses to consume free-choice usually doesn't work well unless you can get it under cover somehow. One hard rain can wash a pile of loose salt into the ground, or turn a bucketful of loose salt into a hard mass. If the horses' pastures includes a shed, that would be the ideal place to put the salt.
I know that sugar can be a factor! All of the "licky" horses I've known would invariably begin their licking behaviour within moments of being given a sweet treat. This particular horse may go for days, especially in winter, without licking things, but ONE peppermint, cookie, or handful of sweet feed, and he'll stand there and lick the treat-giver's hand and arm until the person goes away, then move over to the fence and lick the fence for half an hour or so. I've had to make a rule that this horse is not allowed ANY treats in the depth of winter. Whenver the temperatures are below freezing, we worry that triggering his licking behaviour might cause him to get his tongue stuck on one of the metal panels enclosing the winter feeding pen.
I have only a "one rat experiment" at home and a lot of anecdotes from others to back this up, but you might try these two things:
1. Remove all sugar from your horses' diet (it's not good for them anyway) Since yours are on a hay-only diet, that shouldn't be too difficult. You'll just have to make a "no sweet treats" rule.
2. Add some LOOSE trace-mineralized salt (horse mix, not cattle mix) to your horses' feed every day. Salting hay isn't usually very effective, so you might want to buy a bag of alfalfa pellets and just give each horse a small quantity of those with the salt mixed in.
Those two changes have made a big difference to the behaviour of all the "licky" horses I know. It's worth a try, anyway - and please let me know if it helps.
Jessica
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