Surgical Technique Stops Cribbing in Most Horses

Cribbing is a stereotypical behavior in which a horse sets its incisors against a fence board, stall door, or other horizontal surface and then tightens its neck muscles, making a gulping or grunting sound as though swallowing air. In some horses, this behavior becomes so time-consuming that the animal chooses cribbing rather than eating. Confirmed cribbers may lose weight, show excessive wear on the incisors, and develop some types of colic more often than non-cribbing horses. These horses also bring lower prices at sales; it seems that no one wants to own a cribber.

Despite numerous studies, no one knows exactly why horses begin to crib, what sort of reward they obtain from the behavior, or how to get them to stop. Does the habit relieve stress in the horse, or merely increase stress in the owner? Is cribbing the cause of, a pain reliever for, or completely unrelated to gastric ulcers? Do horses learn the behavior when they see other horses cribbing? Results of research have failed to provide conclusive answers to these questions.

Environmental, mechanical, and surgical means have been used to prevent cribbing. Property owners can cover fence rails and stall edges with slippery metal that doesn’t allow the horse to grasp these surfaces with its teeth. Horse owners can buy a specially designed collar that fits tightly around the horse’s throatlatch, preventing flexion of the muscles used in cribbing. A surgical solution, the Forssell’s procedure, involves cutting some of the muscles in the throatlatch area. To avoid disfiguring the appearance of the neck, the modified Forssell’s technique severs a nerve rather than cutting out a large piece of one muscle.

In a further refinement of this technique, the laser-assisted modified Forssell’s procedure, slightly more muscle is removed and a laser is used to cut the tissues, reducing bleeding. To assess the long-term result of this surgery, a team at Louisiana State University reviewed the records of 90 cribbers that had been treated with this technique during the last two decades. Only 14 of these horses resumed cribbing within a year after the surgery. Factors associated with an increased chance of resumed cribbing were infection or prolonged drainage after surgery. Horses that had cribbed for more than three years before surgery were also more likely to resume the habit.

Just as no single theory explains why horses crib, no technique can be guaranteed to stop the behavior in all horses. It’s also not known whether preventing cribbing has a measurable effect, either positive or negative, on the horse.