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Hiya Linda,
There are a couple of primary reasons why horses eat manure. One,
insufficient fiber content, which doesn't sound like the case with your
guys. However, do make sure they're getting at least 1% of their body
weight in hay or pasture to maintain gut motility. Sounds like they
are. Two, they're deficient in something in their diet, sometimes a
mineral. If you're supplementing with Dynamite, a mineral deficiency
probably isn't the problem but just for grins, see what happens if you
allow a vitamin-mineral mix free choice. There are some feeds you
shouldn't trust the horse's judgement on (Katy says to trust her, she
needs LOTS more grain, please), but minerals usually don't taste good
enough to munch up unless something is telling them to do so.
Also, feeding an all-grass ration could very well be lacking in the
right amino acid profile. Even though a grass may contain eight or ten
or 12 percent crude protein, that doesn't necessarily mean that all the
individual amino acids are being provided in sufficient amounts. I'd
bet almost anything they're deficient in lysine on a grass diet, though
I honestly don't know if that would result in coprophagy (the fancy word
for eating poop).
Newborn foals normally nibble Mom's manure to seed their gut with
microflora---it MIGHT be (and this is all just musing out loud) that the
horses have an insufficient microflora population and are trying to
supplement it. It might be worth supplementing the Dynamite with
another type of probiotic for awhile to see if that makes a difference.
The third reason is just that some horses get into the habit. It's
harmless, except for the recycling of parasites issue, just kinda icky
to think about. Horses actually aren't particularly efficient at
digesting food and the ummm..."end product" still qualifies as food in
some animals books. It used to be a common practice to put pigs into a
pasture that had recently held supplemented cattle and horses. What was
left behind in the field was of sufficient nutritional quality to raise
pigs to almost market size without ever throwing a pound of pig feed
over the fence.
I wish I could give you a blinding beam of certain knowledge and a
crystal clear solution, but I don't have a solid answer for you, just
some possibilities to consider. The main problem with nutrition and
horse management is that the darn horses haven't read the books, and I
suspect they send out incognito messages to each other pondering new and
unusual ways to drive their owners up a tree.
Hope this helped a bit. Good luck!
Susan
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