OBSERVATIONS ON CRIB-BITING.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2705, 8 December 1882, Page 3

OBSERVATIONS ON CRIB-BITING.

A crib-biter in a stable has a most unpleasant and disagreeable appearance. Opinions differ whether crib-biting should be regarded as a habit, or a disease, or a vice. Our observations on this point are as follows : —We imagine that it generally arises in horses in poor condition, and that, in the first instance, the habit is acquired from an effort of nature to got rid of the gases collected in the stomach, and in these cases it may or may not commence from irritation. We have not known a fat horse to take to crib-biting by standing next to another affected with it; but a lean horse that is difficult to get fat may do so. This habit, when once acquired, and when the animal is in condition, will seldom or never be left off; but the same diseased action and tendency to flatulency will still continue. We do not think that horses inhale the air in cribbiting ; we consider it an effort to expel air. We never saw a horse make a gulp, or attempt to swallow air. Whether any air is expelled from the stomach in cribbiting, we cannot determine, but think there is some portion, and that the principal noise is from the fauces. The construction of the fauces and stomach of a horse renders the eructation of air a difficult process, and wo have seen horses nearly choked by a sudden rush of gas up the oesophagus, but this effect was probably caused by the noxious quality of the gas. The distension of the stomach of the animal iu crib-biting depends, we consider, on the gases given out from the food ; as a proof of which, the hindering a crib-biter from his habit will not always prevent this distention. Wo all know that many persons of sedentary habits are peculiarly liable to dyspepsia and flatulency, and we must all have experienced the unpleasant sensation attending it. How are they relieved ? By exorcise, or by giving an agent to dispel these gases. So it appears to be with horses, and we have observed that, when crib-biters arc on long, slow, regular work, they crib less. We have seen many cases in which crib-biters, being debarred from their babit, have fallen away in flesh, and others in which the animal has beon much more liable to colic; and we think that in many crib-biters, the habit is necessary to the health of the animal. AVe usually see crib biters thin, but we think that proceeds more from a diseased action of the digestive organs than from the effect of the habit, and their being poor is no proof that crib biting makes them so. When a crib biter continues iu health and good condition, if he can be kept apart from other horses, wo see no reason why he should be debarred from cribbing; and indeed we think that, generally speaking, it would prove injurious to him. Any one who will take the trouble to examine onehalf of the different contrivances that have been made to prevent it, will wonder how it is possible for a horse to crib bite with some of them; and it will most strikingly convince them of the very great difficulty there is to overcome a habit once fully formed in a horse, or any other animal.