Horses love treats and what owner doesn’t love to feed them? But did you know that feeding treats can also benefit both your horses physical and mental health? More than something tasty you feed your horse, treats can be used in a multitude of ways, from a training tool to helping to build and develop core muscles.

In our latest blog, we delve into the many benefits of treats and look at how you can use them to maximise the positives both for yourself and your horse or pony:

Training with Positive Reinforcement

Horses can learn well through positive reinforcement – which is essentially rewarding good behaviour – because of how they learn through association. Horses respond better to positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement – like punishment or correction. When they are rewarded for a desired behaviour, they become more willing and eager to repeat it. This leads to better overall behaviour and a more positive horse-human relationship, and some research has even shown that horses trained with positive reinforcement have a more positive perception of humans.

Additionally, research studies by Innes and McBride (2007) and Warren-Smith and McGreevy (2008), have shown that positive reinforcement can enhance learning and the motivation to learn, so not only will your horse be able to learn lots of new things, but they will also learn them quicker.

Treats are invaluable for positive reinforcement, because they make excellent, tasty, rewards, and this means that they can be used to teach your horse or pony anything – from ridden training to ground training, to a range of useful body movements, like lowering the head, and helping them to accept being touched and handled anywhere.  So, when used correctly, treats really are an essential training tool to help your horse learn and offer the right behaviour, with the added benefit of increasing your bond with them.

Building Core Muscles

You may or may not have heard of dynamic stretches, otherwise known as ‘carrot stretches. There is a whole range of these unique movements, which expertly use your horse’s natural movement to improve motion through the neck to the back, build muscles and core strength and improve overall flexibility. While they may be called ‘carrot’ stretches, they can be performed with any form of treat, from fruit and vegetables to specifically designed horse treats.

By offering a treat in your hand, which your horse follows, you can ask them to progress through three different motions including rounding (flexion), hollowing (extension) and side to side (lateral) bending. During each exercise, your horse will gradually stretch the postural muscles and take each vertebra in the back and neck through a complete range of motion to reach the tasty treat.

Introducing dynamic stretches into your horse’s routine, can result in enhanced flexibility, core strength, and balance within as little as 2-3 weeks, and recent studies (Stubbs et al. 2011, Oliveria et al. 2015), have demonstrated that regular dynamic stretching significantly increased the size of deep core muscles known as the multifidus muscles in the horses back, when performed for 3-5 days per week, over a three-month period. These core muscles are integral to equine back strength and stability,  so using treats in this way can help your horse to carry themselves (and you) better.

The following link gives a straightforward guide to these dynamic stretches: to put them into practise with your horse or pony – http://www.horsesinsideout.com/ArticlePilates1.pdf

Boosting Mental Health

Through so-called ‘stable enrichment,’ treats can have a positive impact on your horses daily mental health, particularly if your horse or pony gets distressed when stabled. Horses have an innate need to ‘forage’, and being able to exhibit natural foraging behaviour – which can be defined as sniffing, manipulating, biting, chewing or ingesting food – is pivotal to their mental well-being.

Research (Henderson and Warren, 2001; Winskill et al. 1996), has shown that horses respond well to foraging devices, which encourage natural foraging behaviour. These are commonly called ‘snack balls’ or similar and are designed to fit ‘treats’ inside with the horse then having to ‘forage’ to get the treat, by pushing the ball around with their nose in a way that results in treats falling out of the hole which the horse can eat.

Using treats in this way to promote natural foraging can help reduce stress, and keep your horse occupied when stabled, resulting in a calmer, happier and relaxed horse.

Nature’s Rewards Natural Horse Treats

If you would like to introduce some healthy treats into your horse’s daily routine, you can do just that with Nature’s Rewards Natural Horse Treats – a versatile, tasty treat with the added benefit of great nutrition in every bite.

Nature’s Rewards Natural Horse Treats are made from 100% natural ingredients, namely alpine grasses, and CoolStance Copra, with zero binders or fillers ensuring your horse gets nothing but nature’s finest. They are also naturally low in starch and sugar and high in digestible fibre to support digestive health and integrity and support the essential hindgut microbes.

The mix of alpine grasses within Nature’s Rewards Natural Horse treats also provides diversity for the hindgut microbiome. Research has indicated that the equine hindgut microbiome contains a diverse range of bacterial species. This diversity is associated with a healthy microbiome and a diverse diet promotes a diverse microbiome, which helps promote optimum hindgut health.

Nature’s Rewards Natural Horse Treats are produced in an easy to feed form, and provide a convenient, nutritious, and healthy treat, in whichever way you use them, and are perfect for all horses and ponies, including those who suffer from laminitis and metabolic issues, and those with sugar and starch intolerances.

If you have any questions about creating the best diet and nutrition for your horse or pony, please contact 01488 73322 or info@boomerangnutrition.co.uk