Hay Nets and Eating

Good news - as I was doing the evening feeding the new horse watched me very closely, anticipating some kind of supper although he is currently free fed hay and hadn't finished his morning mash.  When I was done with all the other horses I spent a little time watching him as well, to make sure he didn't have a belly ache after his stressful trip and arrival in his new home.  He kept staring at me trying to tell me something, and so I went into the stall with him to offer a cookie or two.  He wasn't sure what to make of them at first but decided they were sort of tasty.  He kept telling me he needed something, though.  So I got him a bucket of water and hung it in the stall (he did have a large tank in his paddock).  He looked relieved and took a drink from the bucket.

Then I filled a small mesh hay net for him, and as soon as he saw me filling the net he got excited!  Turns out he is one of those horses that needs the oral stimulation of grazing in order to want to eat.  Often I find the hard keepers need to work at their food or they have no interest in it, so ironically free-feeding doesn't always work to put weight on the hard keepers.  At the track, horses are also often fed out of hay nets and so this may have felt familiar to him.  I could barely get into the stall with the net he was so eager to start eating from it.  I hung it at a safe height in the stall and he busily dove into it and kept right on eating even when I left the barn.  Happy to have started peeling the psychological layers off of this onion horse.