Severe cribbing is like being hooked on a drug.  The horse almost gets "high" from sucking wind, it give them a sense of well-being or relief.  The best thing you can do it give them a very large pasture with a few other quiet horses as buddies year round.  Most cribbers start because they were stall sour.  Being cooped up 24/7 with nothing to do....can you blame them?  Horses are roaming, grazing, herd animals...believe it or not but they like being outside, even in bad weather.  They are healthier too.

Also...do not confuse cribbing with just chewing wood.  Many horses will chew on a fence or part of their stall ....kind of like a dog chewing on a stick.  This in NOT cribbing....it is the sucking of the air down their throat that determines cribbing.

I have had success with feeding beet pulp (a lg coffee can "wet")  1x a day building up to 2x a day topdressed with 1/2 cup of oil building up to 1 cup.  Also I would feed a complete pelleted feed with 14 - 16% protein and 5-6 % fat.  Also regular worming and teeth floating along with lots of good grass hay or pasture.  It will take a few months but has worked very well for me.  Good luck.

You might want to give the new supplement from Farnam, "Quitt" a try.  It got good reviews in "Horse Journal".  I sent my horse to the trainers a few months ago, and he started chewing the place up (didn't before he got there, which was weird).  We put him on "Quitt" and he stopped chewing but does lick the wood now (also weird).  It wasn't that expensive either.

The effectiveness may depend on if your horse is a true "cribber" or just chews around on wood - I think I read where it wasn't as effective on cribbers, but it may be worth a shot to see if it helps.

I second AbbyB's suggestion on the Dynamite Miracle Clay - it works wonders for many things as well as  soothing tummies.  My horse had started to chew wood, I used Miracle Clay for 30 days and 1 1/2 years later he has yet to chew any wood.

      Forget the Quitt - people at my barn have tried it and it doesn't do anything.  I suggested MC and they started using it, but were lazy and didn't finish the month treatment.

    I also give it to my horse everytime I trailer him as that can be stressful.  It's a powder you mix with water and give in a syringe (no needle) in the mouth.  My horse doesn't mind the taste and in fact will lick it off your arm.  It's also great for bee or wasp stings as it draws out the poison.

    You can only get it through Dyamite dealers and one container lasted me over a year, so it goes far. 

    I'm not saying it will cure a cribber, but if a horse is having stomach issues which cause it to be in pain, and you can stop that pain, it's a good thing.

Cribbing is a symptom of a larger issue.  Often ulcers.  Have you spoken to your vet about her problems?

It sounds like your horse probably has ulcers and may have some other health problems.  I would recommend a full vet work up on her and getting her scoped for ulcers.  If you don't have the money to scope her, I would just go ahead and treat her with Gastro Guard.  It is expensive, but the only real cure for active ulcers.

Once the active ulcers have healed, there are other , less expensive, supplements out there that should help prevent reoccurance.

Hiya Maeclara,

   I had a VERY bad cribber at my barn who could crib through the "Miracle Collar" with ease. The higher she could grab something, the easier to crib. She developed the habit as a jumper in a barn where the show horses had a small turnout yard and got ridden most days. Yup, she was bored. But now it's a habit that got...curtailed..by keeping her turned out and putting electric along the top edge of every board she could get her teeth on. She gets hay continuously plus grass in season and she doesn't crib with this setup. As soon as she comes inside, she's grabbing for something to crib on. I asked to owner to try a cribbing muzzle, which I have also seen work on bad cribbers, but she kept putting it off. The horse did finally move and is now cribbing almost continuously again on their fence boards and has lost weight.

   Quite awhile ago, I had seen an electronic collar which only activated when the muscles in the horses neck tensed to crib. Haven't seen it in years, too bad.

   About the Quitt.....worked on a couple of young horses I had that were starting to chew wood when they were teething. It worked on them.

  Good luck!!! Tough habit!!!

I have a 3 year old Irish Sporthorse that is a very determined cribber. I tried the Miracle Collar, but in order for it to work it had to be so tight that it caused sores. Then I tried a Best Friends Cribbing muzzle made of Nylon w/ an aluminum bottom. That worked, but started to fall apart w/in  a week. Next I tried a "freedom muzzle" which is a thick wire muzzle coated with vinyl that allows the horse to eat and drink. My horse would actually press the muzzle up against a wooden post, and crib through the muzzle. I also tried several of the paint on/spray on products that taste bad, none of which worked for more than  a week before they had to be re-applied. Currently I use a stainless steel muzzle made by Best Friends in conjunction with a spray on product that really works, and only needs to be applied once, and lasts for a year. It's called Bitterlicks, and the website for it is: www.bitterlicks.com   I hope some of this info. will be useful to you. It is definitely a good idea to try something to stop the cribbing. Cribbing, as you probably know, is a very bad habit that is detrimental to horses. It causes the teeth to wear down abnormally fast and uneven, horses destroy property when they crib, they can teach it to other horses, and it has been known to cause colic. Additionally, it makes it hard to keep weight on a horse. If  nothing else works, a last resort is a new surgery called the"Modified Forsell's " procedure done with a laser. They cut the accessory nerve w/ the laser, then remove 13 inches of two neck muscles. (the omohyoideus and sternothyrohyoideus muscles) and then close the wound up to heal. It sounds brutal, but is supposed to only leave a small scar on the underside of the neck. I might look into this procedure for my horse so he doesn't have to wear a muzzle. I'm not sure how expensive it is, though. 

 My horse goes out everyday in a large pasture w/ another horse, and doesn't crib while out in  the pasture since the pasture has an electric fence, but as soon as he comes in for the night he starts cribbing in his stall on the wood or on his water bucket. He seems to crib the most when he's eating. Horses crib for different reasons. Some crib because they're bored (ex.-a racehore who's stalled all day), some crib because they are stressed out, others crib because they have stomach problems, and still others crib because they learn it from another horse. My horse learned to crib from his mother, even though at the time he learned to crib he was turned out to pasture 24/7 so obviously he wasn't bored. The problem is that once they start cribbing, they will probably never stop. If you want to find more information, go to a search engine and put in "horse cribbing solutions" or "cribbing". That's what I did, and I got alot of good info. Hope you find something that works for your horse to stop the cribbing.

They have been doing cribbing surgery for years and I have seen it both work and fail.  They are the horses with great headsets and skinny throat-latches, I mean abnormally skinny, think supermodel.

I'd sell while you can and cut your losses, like was stated above.  I've seen Congress/World quality AQHA all-around horses that you couldn't hardly sell because they were so fixated on their habit.  Pawn him/her while you can!