On Cribbing

Hopefully cribbing myths are being debunked with these latest studies, DAVID, Look! & all you others who think i'm full of sh*!t...
& I quote here: June 2003
The ENPS meetings held in Michigan this last week had some very interesting papers. Of great interest to horse owners were three papers; one on stomach pH & cribbing behavior in adult horses & two on the incidence of stomach ulcers, anti-acids in feed & cribbing in foals.

From a paper presented by H. C. Lillie et al, at Auburn University: the PH of the stomachs of cribbers were compared to non cribbers: & I quote again: Cribbers all had a more acidic stomach (lower pH), than the non-cribbers. There was greater variation in the pHs of the stomachs of cribbing horses which might be related to the amount of cribbing they did. The authors concluded that this supported the theory that horses crib to relieve their stomachs & GI tracts of irritation. It has been hypothesized that that cribbing causes production of more saliva, & as saliva is alkaline it can help off set the acidity.

I think it is still a guess as to which came first, the chicken or the egg, but I'm anxious to see further studies on genetic predispotion to the behavior as opposed to horses just mimicking each other because they are bored.

I'm a firm believer that there are certain triggers for the behavior--stressors which create a physiological response in the stomach, or just inconsistancy in feeding programs and thus, the cribbing begins in some horses--but not all--my gelding had a bad stomach when I got him and his response was to park out which has also been associated with ulcers. I do think that in some cases it becomes a conditioned response and can become entrenched in the horses behavior over time kst