🐴 Exploring the Causes of Head Flicking in Horses

Exploring The Causes Of Head Flicking In Horses.

I am contacted by around ten horse owners every week who are desperately searching for answers to head flicking.

In most cases, I can hear the pain and frustration in their voices straight away. Watching a horse repeatedly flick their head without being able to help them is deeply distressing. Many owners feel helpless and exhausted by the time they reach out.

Head flicking is one of the most misunderstood issues in horses.

It is often dismissed as a habit or a training issue.

In reality, head flicking is almost always a nervous system response.

Much like laminitis, it is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Resolving it requires understanding what the nervous system is responding to, rather than focusing on the behaviour itself.

There is rarely a single cause.

Head flicking usually develops when multiple stressors stack up and overwhelm the nervous system.

What matters is not how extreme each factor is, but how many small, everyday inputs are present at the same time.

Think of the nervous system like a car’s electrical system.

The wiring carries signals.

The battery powers the whole system.

When everything is working properly, the car runs smoothly.

But when the system is overloaded, strange things happen.

Lights flash.

Controls activate unpredictably.

Signals misfire.

The individual parts are not broken.

The system is overwhelmed.

The horse is reacting to the environment.

What often goes unnoticed is that the environment includes far more than what we can easily see.

It includes inflammatory inputs, mycotoxins and neurotoxins in forage, allergens such as pollens including pine pollen, dusts and mould spores, mechanical pressure from equipment, and repeated low grade physical irritation.

When these inputs accumulate, the nervous system can become overwhelmed. Normal sensory information such as airflow, light, movement, or touch can then trigger exaggerated responses, even though the reaction is rooted in real, everyday environmental causes.

Mycotoxins are a common contributor.

Mycotoxins place a significant inflammatory load on the body and directly affect the central nervous system.

Reducing exposure is often an important first step, and many horses do improve.

However, when exposure has been present for long enough, the nervous system does not always reset immediately. It can retain a memory of that disruption.

The trigeminal nerve plays a key role.

This nerve supplies sensation to the face, nostrils, sinuses, and upper jaw.

When it becomes hypersensitive, normal sensations such as airflow, pollen, dust, or light touch can feel threatening.

This is why head flicking can appear sudden, seasonal, inconsistent, or unrelated to anything obvious.

Bit pressure matters more than many people realise.

You do not need to be pulling hard or riding aggressively for irritation to occur.

Simply having a bit in the mouth applies pressure to the diastema, an area covered by very thin tissue with bone directly underneath. This region was never designed to tolerate sustained pressure.

Over time, even quiet contact can irritate tissues and the nerves that pass through this area.

Once a nerve has been irritated, the nervous system can remember it.

Even if the horse is later worked bitless, the learned nerve response can persist.

When horses are transitioned away from bits early, before nerve hypersensitivity becomes established, this pattern can often be avoided altogether.

Dental factors are another commonly overlooked contributor.

Minor enamel points, food packing in the diastema, low grade gum irritation, and subtle periodontal inflammation can all irritate branches of the trigeminal nerve and refer discomfort into the face and head.

These are everyday findings, not extreme pathology. But in a horse with an already overloaded nervous system, even low level irritation can contribute to head flicking.

Paraesthesia can also play a role.

This occurs when the nervous system misfires and creates false sensations such as buzzing, crawling, or irritation, even when no obvious external cause is present.

When driven by inflammation, toxin exposure, or allergen load, this can sometimes be temporary. However, the nervous system may continue behaving as if the threat is still present.

Nerve memory matters.

The nervous system remembers painful or threatening experiences.

Touch a flame once as a child, and your body remembers forever.

The same process can occur in horses. Even once the original trigger is removed, the nervous system may continue reacting as if the danger remains.

This memory lives in the nervous system, not in behaviour.

Mineral balance adds another layer.

Soil affects forage.

Forage affects the horse.

Magnesium, sodium, and calcium are particularly important for nerve stability. Imbalances can amplify nerve sensitivity and make head flicking harder to resolve.

Diet matters more than many people realise.

Highly processed hard feeds, mixed muesli style feeds, and bagged pelletised rations can increase inflammatory load.

In a horse with an already reactive nervous system, this can significantly worsen symptoms.Inflammation anywhere in the body affects nerve signalling everywhere.

This is why a forage first approach is often essential.Stripping the diet back to basics and removing inflammatory inputs allows the nervous system space to settle.

Good quality meadow hay, fed ad lib from a slow feeder, with minimal processing, creates a foundation the nervous system can actually work from.

Poll and cervical comfort also matter:

Restriction or discomfort in the upper neck alters nerve signalling to the head and face. Body work can help in this area.

Sinus irritation.

Sinus irritation, particularly during high pollen seasons, can also share nerve pathways and contribute to head flicking.

Head flicking is not bad behaviour.

It is the nervous system asking for relief.

Like laminitis, it requires a whole picture approach.When head flicking is treated as a mystery to solve rather than a problem to manage, the horse often shows you exactly where to look.

🐎 A Real World Case Study: Jack

Michelle contacted me after months of trying to resolve head flicking in her gelding, Jack.

For two years, Jack had been a reliable and much loved trekking horse for Michelle and her daughter. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the head flicking began.

Jack’s head flicking was unpredictable and distressing. It occurred when he was being ridden, but it also happened when he was left alone grazing in his paddock.

Michelle’s vet was just as perplexed as she was. Despite thorough investigation and several treatment approaches, nothing had produced lasting improvement.

Over the following months, Jack underwent extensive veterinary assessment. Pain relief, anti inflammatory strategies, medications aimed at calming nervous system reactivity, and trigeminal nerve blocks were explored. Dental care, bodywork, physiotherapy, mineral support, vitamin E, and targeted mycotoxin support were also trialled. Advanced imaging ruled out structural causes.Each step provided information, but none resolved the issue.

Rather than adding further treatments, we shifted focus to methodical elimination.

The aim was not to suppress symptoms, but to reduce total inflammatory and neurological load and allow Jack’s nervous system space to settle.

Diet was the first major change.

All fermented and wrapped forages were removed from Jack’s diet, including haylage, baleage, and shop bought fermented or pressed grasses.These products carry a higher risk of mycotoxin contamination, including neurotoxic compounds that are well recognised in research to affect the central nervous system.

Once those were removed, Jack’s diet was simplified to:

• Ad lib meadow hay fed from a slow feeder

• One small, simple daily feed to carry minerals and salt

At the same time, synthetic supplements were removed and replaced with an all natural formulation designed to support the body without adding further inflammatory load.

The second change was removing bit pressure.

Jack was transitioned to bitless work to eliminate ongoing irritation to the mouth and trigeminal nerve pathways.This removed another source of sensory input to an already overloaded nervous system.

The changes were not dramatic overnight.

But they were consistent.

As the weeks passed, the head flicking reduced, then stopped completely.

I am very pleased to report thatJack has not had a single day of head flicking since, and Michelle was delighted to get her happy and healthy boy back to his normal self.

🧠 A final note on research and tolerance

Research into mycotoxins, neurotoxins, and allergens and their effects on the nervous system is ongoing and well established. Individual horses vary greatly in how much they tolerate before showing signs.

I hope Jack’s story and the information shared here offer some reassurance to those living with head flicking horses.

We are learning more all the time about how inflammation and nervous system load affect horses. Sometimes simply widening the lens and exploring different possibilities can make a meaningful difference, both for the horse and for the people who care so deeply about them.