CRIBBING

Cribbing

Cribbing or crib biting is an abnormal, compulsive behavior or stereotypy seen in some horses, and considered a stable vice. It involves the horse grabbing a solid object such as the stall door or fence rail with its incisors, then arching its neck, pulling against the object, and sucking in air. Windsucking is a related behavior whereby the horse arches its neck and sucks air into the windpipe without needing to grab a solid object. Windsucking is thought to form part of the mechanism of cribbing, rather than being defined as an entirely separate behavior. Cribbing and windsucking have been linked as a causal effect to colic and stomach ulcers.

The above text is a snippet from Wikipedia: Cribbing (horse)
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cribbing

Noun

  1. The members used to build a (structural) crib, usually of timbers or logs, but also of concrete, steel or even plastic; cribwork.
  2. As a whole, the heavy structure built to support an existing structure from underneath, as with a mineshaft or when raising a building off its foundation, as for moving to another location,
    After the Loma Prieta earthquake, they had to put cribbing under portions of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway, for fear it would collapse.
    If the structure is to be raised in place without relocation, once it is raised to the desired elevation the jacks are replaced with timber cribbing. -- US Army Corps of Engineers site
  3. The cribbing used to support anything from below or on a side, as with a retaining wall, or to prop up a piece of heavy machinery.
  4. A self-injurious tendency of certain horses to swallow air while slobbering and biting onto objects in and about their enclosure and regarded as an equine form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Verb

cribbing

  1. Present participle of crib.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: cribbing
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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