Re: Horses eating mud

["LINDA SWARTZ" <RudeCo@worldnet.att.net>]

When I was teaching Lamaze classes, I had to do research into why pregnant women wanted to eat dirt, clay or starch...  the cravings were triggered by mineral deficiencies and / or allergies which tend to trigger odd taste cravings.  

I'm sorry but where I live, we do everything we can to reduce dirt ingestion (sand residue, colic)...  I have a chronic selenium deficient 29 yr. old quarter, gelding, who runs like a banshee  to my potted plants when he is loose in the yard.  He then moves cypress mulch, wood chips, or rocks to devour the potting soil. He very rarely if ever bothers with our pasture soil or puddles on trails.

He gets minerals, he gets well water that has sulfur content; he gets Seminole Senior, he gets alfalfa and Bermuda bats, he's on excellent pasture that is fertilized twice a year.  He get small amounts of veggies or watermelon or cantaloupe in the summers.  But he eats dirt.  I have narrowed some respiratory allergies to heavy oak and pine pollen seasons in him...but that doesn't explain the dirt except that the potting soil is fortified with fertilizers, humus, peat, and the residue has to offer something to his taste...  I too have been wondering for a very long time....

Linda in DeLeon Sprgs.  "land of sugar sand ridges and ocean leached soils".