Always fun to make something new for the horses. This time I had free fir wood 7″ thick and 2.5″ wide, and I decided to make them enrichment boxes. I had been planning it for a month after seeing examples on a Track System Facebook group.

I made each horse their own box, about 4′ long and 3′ wide. I had cut up rubber conveyer belts that I put down as matts.

Inside the boxes are cut up pieces of redwood bark (left over scraps) from their horse barn. I also plan to cut up thin pieces of an apple tree trunk. They can chew away! I was thinking about wiring the box to the fence so it won’t move, but it’s heavy enough that it’s staying in place.

The point of this activity is that when you throw in small treats, apples, and/or carrots, they have to dig around for them, slowly. They will work through the enrichment for 30-40 minutes, even returning to see if they missed something. When you hand feed a treat, they will gobble it down in less than 5 minutes.