There are a number of stable toys for horses on the market, but as well as being fun for your horse to play with, they also provide some important enrichment to your horses environment. It is often unavoidable to have to confine our horses for a number of reasons such as stabling at night during the winter, but this is essentially a very unnatural and sometimes unnerving position for a prey animal such as a horse to be in, so it often helps to provide some form of entertainment for them to distract them and make them feel at ease.
The most popular stable toy is probably the Boredom Breaker, a simple but effective toy consisting of a smooth plastic ball suspended from a rope with a pair of plastic plates designed to take a "Likit", a hard, sweet tasting horse treat available in a number of flavours.
Little likits can be inserted either side of the ball itself which provides further amusement, as the horse wants to bite the treats but has to work hard to get even a few licks. This helps to pass the time, and most horses enjoy the challenge of trying to seize the tasty reward, but make sure you place the toy away from a wall or most horses are clever enough to quickly learn they can trap the toy against the wall and get a good bite of the treat!
These stable toys can also be useful for horses that weave or kick the door. In this case it is usually ideal to place the toy in the doorway so that the horse encounters it when he looks out of the door which will often then distract him from the intention to perform a vice.
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