The new horse watched us carefully as we were in the adjacent paddock looking at Garmin, my pony. When Dr. Landes and I wandered over to Highboy so the vet could appreciate how much Highboy has grown up in the last few months, the new horse grasped the fence with his upper incisors and began to swallow gulps of air in a behavior that is called cribbing, or wind-sucking. I had been given a heads-up that he would exhibit this behavior, but so far I hadn't seen him do it since he arrived here. Interestingly, when he is chastised for cribbing, he seems to do it more fervently, which tells me that it is (at least in him) a stress related behavior and an attempt to soothe himself. I don't know why he just started it today, unless the stress of the veterinary appointment set him off. It could be any number of things perhaps something obscure like the black hat the vet was wearing affected him, or even Highboy going to play in the round pen without the new guy for an hour before the vet arrived. When we approached Highboy the new horse may have been concerned that we were going to take Highboy away. I need to watch him in some different scenarios to gather more information about what sets him off.
At any rate, we worked our way through the herd, boosting immunity among the horses and addressing dental maintenance as we discovered issues. The new horse did need his teeth floated, or filed, and so he was sedated and the vet took care of him. This included making sure that his incisors lined up correctly, that he didn't have any sharp points on his molars, and that his jaw could slide smoothly to improve the grind he gets on his food and to make it easy for him to move his mouth when wearing a bit.
Once we finished with all of the horses, I went around feeding. I noticed that the new guy wasn't working on his hay, but standing by the fence he shares with Highboy and continuing to crib. I stood in the paddock for a while and watched to see if I could observe any specific details or clues as to why he did it. Highboy would come over to the fence and distract him, and that would stop the behavior. I decided to move a hay net to the section of fence where he was holding on and cribbing. This seemed to successfully distract him, because the place where he would grab the fence suddenly had hay tied to it. Why not eat the hay instead? I watched him swallow two or three times, and then go to the hay bag.
This of course created a fun new game for Highboy, who proceeded to try to get the new guy to play with him in a mock-argument about who the hay bag belonged to. The new guy didn't want to argue (he seems to be a peace-loving soul) and so he just gave up and let Highboy eat out of the bag. Then the new guy moved to a new section of fence and cribbed a couple times in the new location. I added a second hay bag, tying it to the fence in the new place. This created quite a conundrum for Highboy - how was he to commandeer hay bags in two different locations? I have to laugh, because Highboy also has an 1800 lb big round bale in a feeder in his paddock, but it is clearly more fun to pester the new horse about his hay.
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