One of the most heart-breaking, exasperating, baffling conditions to affect horses anywhere.

It has been established that it involves the trigeminal nerve in the horses head. The trigeminal nerve originates behind the horse's eye and has branches down to the mouth, nostrils and up to the ears. When this nerve is surgically 'cut' or 'blocked' the symptoms immediately cease but unfortunately, in the case of cutting, the nerve eventually heals up again to some extent after which symptoms are worse and in the meantime the horse has a 'droopy lip'.

People with trigeminal nerve trouble describe 'sharp, electric shock sensations' in their face. It is an extremely painful condition and warrants urgent action. 

Globally, nobody has any idea of the cause of head-flicking. Many treatments have been tried, everything from nose nets, to masks, to contact lenses, melatonin, spirulina, drugs such as cyprohepradin, even surgical cutting of the nerve.

Until now, the prognosis has NOT been good for head-flicking horses. Often they are turned out only to get worse. When distressed owners see them flinging around the paddock, banging their head on the side of the water-trough or trying to stuff their head in the hedge they are often put down.

How I came to realise the cause

For the last 13 years I have had many opportunities to learn all about head-flicking, what causes it and how to reverse it. Having owned one of these horses myself and met many more during my time as a Horsemanship Instructor, especially since I have been studying all the diet issues, I have been able to test theories and observe the results.

About 8 years ago I 'acquired' a little quarter-horse 'Buddy'. Unbeknownst to me, amongst his other 'bad' behaviours, he was a head-flicker. I had no experience of head-flicking until then, had never heard of it. At first episodes were sporadic and I went thru all the usual things: he didn't like the bit, my hands must be bad etc, etc. Things got worse when we moved to a property with ex dairy, (rye-grass and clover) pastures where he became so bad he was unridable.

Bright, sunny, breezy days would really set him off, as would riding him on sandy arenas which reflected any light. In the picture he looks happy but in actual fact he was fixated on the bright bits of the sand and the next frame would have shown his head jerking up! He would usually be fine at the walk but the increased blood flow with exercise would trigger the flicking, just like a bug had flown up his nose.

Unpredictably he would suddenly jam on the anchors by plunging his head down to rub his nose on his leg. Very unnerving at the canter!! Riding him was no fun and as it was obviously uncomfortable for the horse I gave up riding Buddy altogether.

Then we moved grazing again. The new pasture was all cocksfoot (orchard grass). When I next rode Buddy after being on this new grazing for several months, it was a bright, sunny day and he did not flick his head at all. Thinking it must be a fluke, I rode him again and again: no more flicks and he has been pretty well 'flick-free' ever since. To add to this, a few years ago, I conducted the Equine Health & Behaviour Survey. 25% of the owners who filled out the Survey, had horses who were head-flickers. Some of these horses had a long list of other issues too. Noticeably there was a 100% correlation between head-flicking and rye-grass and clover pastures, especially if they had been fertilised.

One year later I contacted some of these people. Several of them had horses who also no longer flicked. It turns out that they also had happened to move grazing, to brown-top or cocksfoot type pasture where they no longer had the problem. The penny started to drop that it was something about the pastures, in particular the rye-grass and clover that was causing the head-flicking syndrome. Also it was observed that it was easy to induce the head-flicking by feeding lucerne (alfalfa) to these horses. There had to be a 'common denominator' between these plants.

Without pinpointing the exact cause, I started recommending to people that they take their head-flicking horses completely off all grass and lucerne and instead feed non rye/non clover, non lucerne hay along with a feed of soaked beet every day in which they put the Alleviate and the Premium New-Zealand-Horse Minerals (Supreme Australian-Horse Vit & Min). The idea was to remove the cause at the same time replenishing the horses system with vital minerals.

Two such people were Tracey Austin from Auckland and Nic Greene from Hawkes Bay. Both had chronic head-flicking horses, both followed instructions and both horses recovered to be happy useful horses. 

The same regime has now worked just as well for lots more head-flicking horses. 

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