The practicality of foraging enrichment for stabled horses and its effect on behaviour.

Thorne, J.B., Goodwin, D., Kennedy, M.J., Davidson, H.P.B. and Harris, P. (2003) The practicality of foraging enrichment for stabled horses and its effect on behaviour. Ferrante, Valentina and The Scientific Committee, (eds.) In Proceedings of the 37th International Congresss of the ISAE. Fondazione Iniziative Zooprofilattiche e Zootecniche. P.100 .

Abstract

This trial aimed to establish whether the behavioural effects observed when stabled horses were provided with multiple forages (Equine Vet. J. 34:7, 686-691, 2002) persist over longer time periods. Nine horses (aged 5–20 years; mixed breeding) acting as their own controls participated in an 18-day cross-over Latin Square trial. They were provided with comparable weights of either a single forage (SF) diet (hay) or a multiple forage (MF) diet (three short-chop and three long-chop commercially available forages), in two daily feeds. Following a two-day acclimatisation, the horses were maintained on their treatments for seven days. Horses were observed on alternate days, morning and afternoon, during the 25 minutes following forage delivery. Horses then crossed over onto the other treatment and, after another two-day acclimatisation, the same protocol was followed for a further seven days. Observations from video were analysed using The Observer 3.0® and SPSS (version 11). Horses on the MF diet performed foraging behaviour significantly more frequently (T=0, P<0.01, Wilcoxon’s test for matched pairs) and for longer periods (T=2, P<0.05) than horses on the SF diet. Horses on the SF diet spent significantly longer performing behaviour thought to be indicative of a search for alternative resources, such as moving or looking out of the stable (T=2, P<0.05). On the MF diet, foraging on the six forages differed significantly in frequency (X2=37.435, v=5, P<0.001, Friedman test), latency (X2=21.643, v=5, P<0.01) and duration (X2=31.174, v=5, P<0.001). Horses demonstrated preferences for particular forages but sampled all forages during observations. It is concluded that the previously published short-term behavioural effects of MF provision do persist over longer periods of time (nine days). The methodology described also proved to be an efficient means of managing horses under forage enriched conditions and could easily be adopted by horse owners to facilitate foraging behaviour.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics