Thank you to Ed for sending me Jon Carroll’s found horse cookie recipe from SFGate.com:
Here’s one I got from sherlockfarms.com/horse treats.htm that will tickle the equine taste buds:
Sunday Cookies
– 1 cup uncooked oatmeal
– 1 cup flour
– 1 cup shredded carrots
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1 tablespoon sugar
– 2 tablespoons corn oil
– 1/4 cup water
– 1/4 cup molasses
Mix ingredients in a bowl in the order listed. Make small balls and place on sprayed cookie sheet. Bake 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Horses love ’em!
More adventurous horse cooks might like to branch out into flavourings. A Southampton University study of eight horses discovered that they could be every bit as finicky as humans:
The investigators started with fifteen flavors. They eliminated three (echinacia, coriander and nutmeg) as these were not accepted by all the horses in an initial trial. One horse refused to eat food flavored with echinacea or coriander. And three did not eat all of the food when it tasted of nutmeg, or echinacea.
Apple, turmeric, garlic, and ginger flavors were accepted by all of the horses. But foods with these flavors added were not eaten as quickly as the other flavors. The eight flavors that were eaten the most quickly were chosen for the second part of the study: banana, carrot, cherry, cumin, fenugreek, oregano, peppermint and rosemary.
The researchers went on to determine the horses` order of preference for the flavors. They offered the horses a choice of two small meals with different flavors in each test. Eventually each horse had been offered all combinations of flavors. The investigators then calculated the preferred flavor overall. Fenugreek and banana came top of the preference list, followed by cherry, rosemary, cumin, carrot, peppermint, oregano.
Donkeys, on the other hand, are fools for gingerbread. I’m told this is because in the wild they grub up ginger roots and they’ve retained a taste for it despite millennia of domestication.