Right after we moved the horses Bestie started chewing on her door. Because there are no bars, she can easily lean over and chew on the crosshatching. I felt bad because I kept forgetting to buy something to dissuade her from this destructive habit. Finally I remembered to get a pack of Ivory soap and I've been rubbing it onto the chew areas, which seems to be helping. One day I forgot to put the soap on, and it was clear that she went right back to chewing.
When we moved them out to a small barn in Underhill one summer a few years ago, she did the same thing until she settled in. They were confined in stalls for about a week at that barn, then got slowly settled into turnout, and then her chewing stopped. I guess it's a stress reaction. Or maybe boredom. But I tend to attribute it more to stress because for all the (boring) time they spent indoors in the barn we just moved from, she didn't chew.
She's not cribbing, because she doesn't latch on with that funny air-sucking noise. She just methodically chews on an edge with small little bites. Unfortunately she can reach one of the beautiful large square support beams for the barn; bad idea, as Laura says, to start chewing away on any of those! Her stall door has taken most of the abuse.
I need to get to the tack store and see if there's some other product I can buy. So far I've used up only a half bar of the soap, which surprises me since I rub it in like a crazy woman every time I'm there at the barn.
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