In the present study called “An Ethological Study of Young Horses” we focused on the behaviour of foals from their birth to separation from their mother. We observed and analysed their behaviour and daily activities, and from the achieved results we drew conclusions for practical horse breeding. We studied the following forms of behaviour of the foals: feeding behaviour (sucking, drinking, eating roughage and concentrates, gleaning, coprophagia), defecation and micturition, comfortable behaviour and mutual comfort behaviour, manifestations of relaxation (resting posture, lying down), movement manifestations, playful behaviour, stereotype behaviour, other manifestations (acoustic, olfactory etc).As a result we recommended several changes in the technology, e.g. larger stables, salt-lick out of reach of the foals, more frequent exchange of bedding, shelter for horses grazing in the open.

The Old-Kladruby horse is the only autochthonous Czech horse, a gene pool and national cultural heritage, which has been bred continually for more than 400 years in the Czech Lands. During such a long time span it has become perfectly adapted to a specific environment. The performance test is one of the most important factors, which decides whether the horse is to be incorporated in breeding and it is also a basis for efficiency testing. In our project we focused on a detailed analysis of performance tests of this breed with the aim to streamline the system of evaluation, above all in terms of increasing its objectivity.Our database records and evaluates the results of a performance tests of the Old-Kladruby horses from the beginning of keeping records in the National Stud Farm Kladruby nad Labem. The comparisons of horses were based on the colour variant, foundation stock, family, sex, owner and year of performance test. Apart from this we observed the correlations among the particular characters and features evaluated in the performance test. We also compared the systems of performance tests of the Old-Kladruby and Lipican horses.