If you have one horse with a nice tail, and all the rest of your herd’s tails are mangled, you might have a tail-chewer on your hands. Seeing these tips in a few places including from Dr. Karen Hayes on Equisearch.com, shows that these three tips are effective in getting that pesky horse to stop chewing:
1) Isolation
The first option you should try is isolating the horse that is doing the chewing. Keeping him away from the rest of the herd for at least a month might give him the idea to break his habit. It’s also the method he’ll mind the least.
2) Spicy Concoction
The next option involves putting a taste on your other horses’ tails that the chewer won’t like. For this you will need latex gloves, ground cayenne pepper and petroleum jelly. Take about two ounces of the petroleum jelly and mix a little bit of cayenne pepper in it. Apply it to only to where the horse’s tail that has been chewed while avoiding contact with its skin. When the chewer takes a bite, he will get unpleasant taste in his mouth, discouraging him from biting anymore.
3) Two for one special
The other nasty-tasting option for the tail-chewer is applying concentrated mane and tail conditioner in the tail of the horse getting chewed on. Coat the conditioner on the lower half of the horse’s tail and the tail-chewer will get a distasteful, and most importantly non-toxic, portion of the gooey conditioner. In addition, when you rinse it out, it will make the horse’s tail softer.
Source: EquiSearch.com