Pour a little sugar on it!

Every morning Draken gets two handfuls of grain along with Magvet (a natural magnesium supplement)  and Hyalun (hyaluronic acid supplement for horses that supports healthy joint and cartilage function).  To make sure he eats all of the Magvet powder he gets a bit of corn syrup on his grain to hold it all together.  Since he licks his feed tub clean we think he likes it and it works well for us, except that the corn syrup can get messy.  Unfortunately we ran out of corn syrup. 

The first day Mom just gave it to him plain.  He ate it but you could see that wasn't going to last long without some incentive.  The second day, Mom gave him a handful of Dad's coffee sugar packets. Slurp!  Draken's tongue found every granule of sugar in that bucket. Then next day she tried a few less and it still worked.  Now he's down to one sugar packet with his breakfast (which is actually less than Dad puts in his coffee, lol) and is eating it right up.

Not that he can have them often but Draken is a sucker for a treat.  He really likes Skittles and Little Debbie Oatmeal Cookies.  But really, anything that makes a crinkly wrapper sound is fair game.  He does like soda but he will not drink it out of a can.  Pampered horse requires that it be in your hand or he's not interested. 

The picture up top is of Draken's stable mate, Aiken, drinking a soda straight from the bottle.  Aiken and my Dad are known to drive down to the local convenience store where they get a bottle of soda each.

You're probably wondering if sugar is good for horses and the answer is it's not any better for them than it is for us. Somehow though Draken and I still manage to eat the occasional cookie together.