How much and how slow aren't the only questions we should be asking when we are choosing slow feeders
If we consider only the physical health, then yes. But we can't rule out horse's mental health and their experience on the matter. There's been a lot of discussion about horses' physical well-being around the world and how feeding should be arranged to support the gut health the best possible way. Now we need to take another step to discuss about the mental well-being and how we can support it by feeding.
There are a lot of different factors that influence a horse’s experience of eating. In the wild, a horse’s entire life revolves around grazing and searching for food in herds. For domesticated horses, however, eating is often limited to just 2–3 times a day for a couple of hours, from a single place, monotonously, and alone.
When a horse can be an active participant and has the opportunity to influence the feeding situation itself, it plays a significant role in its well-being. In addition, the choice of materials can positively affect horses’ experience. Based on our observations, horses tend to choose soft materials over hard ones.
Imagine how it feels if your teeth hit metal, or how hard plastic feels against your gums. After picturing that, it becomes easier to understand the horse’s experience and choices.
Often when we discuss slow feeders with horse owners, one of the first questions we are asked is how much they slow down eating. Our concern tends to be more from the horse’s perspective, how it feels for the horse if eating becomes too slow. We believe that, fundamentally, a horse should experience pleasure when eating. If a horse is hungry, it can be distressing to eat from a hay net where it can only get one strand of hay at a time.
We always recommend offering some hay freely alongside the Fluffy Feeder and the Saggy, so the horse can make a choice based on its own experience. If it is very hungry, it may prefer to eat the easier hay first. If it is bored, it is more likely to choose the slow feeder.
One of the best features of the Fluffy Feeder is that the horse can carry it to wherever it wants to eat at that moment. It may be that the place we selected has unpleasant smells or doesn’t provide a good enough view of the surroundings. The horse might want to eat closer to, or farther away from other horses. When a horse can decide for itself, it experiences a sense of control over its own life, which is directly connected to its mental wellbeing.
Our goal is not simply to slow down eating, but to create feeding experiences that feel good for the horse.