How to keep your horse safe? An epidemiological study about management practices

Abstract

International audienceAs animal welfare has become a major societal concern since the last decades, identifying the factors affecting it, is of first importance. Many studies have been conducted, mostly centred on one particular environmental factor. However, animal welfare is multifactorial, and evaluating the management as a whole seems more appropriate. In this particular study, we aimed to identify environmental parameters impacting riding school horses’ welfare. We focused here on four reliable welfare indicators (presence of wounds, stereotypic/abnormal repetitive behaviours, ear position and depressed-like posture) and recorded sixteen intrinsic (e.g. sex, age, type) and extrinsic (housing, feeding, social and working conditions) factors of impact. Using logistic regression models, we could identify and classify the management parameter according to their impact on the different welfare indicators and we were able to identify characteristics of good and bad management practices. Besides confirming the importance of feeding and housing conditions, our study is the very first to show that working conditions in developed countries have a crucial impact on several aspects of equines’ welfare, and that horses might be less resilient to inappropriate living conditions than ponies. This study leads to the identification of characteristics of “good” and “bad” management practices as a whole, based on scientific evidences on a large sample of horses

Common Feeding Practices Pose A Risk to the Welfare of Horses When Kept on Non-Edible Bedding

“…In order to respect the psychological and physical well-being of the horses, one has to be aware of the fact that the feed intake behaviour is a basic high priority need of the horse. Excessive feed intake pauses as found in the present study represent a risk of pain, suffering and harm [5,18,21,33,37,42,51]. For this reason, a German court confirmed in its judgement (2019, file number RN 4 K 17.1298, Regensburg Administrative Court) that it has to be ensured that the maximum duration of feed intake pauses is 4 hours and that the duration of feed intake must at least be 12 h.…”

“…In addition, if horses are restrictively fed with hay (non ad libitum) horses kept on shavings show abnormal repetitive behaviour more often than horses kept on straw [41,42]. According to Marsden [43], with horses that spend a shorter time on eating, there is a higher risk that they show abnormal behaviour for longer.…”

“…According to Marsden [43], with horses that spend a shorter time on eating, there is a higher risk that they show abnormal behaviour for longer. Lack of roughage is considered as one of the main causes of behavioural disorders in horses [7,8,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. However, a direct connection between the behavioural disorder "crib-biting" in horses and the occurrence of stomach ulcers has not been proven.…”

Indicators of Horse Welfare: State-of-the-Art

“…Despite the fact that having to "cope" with the environment means that the environment is inappropriate, the results concerning the coping efficiency of SB/ARB are not clear: although the acute stress state of stereotypic horses seemed to worsen when they were prevented from stereotyping [83], cortisol concentrations of stereotypic and non-stereotypic horses did not differ significantly [84][85][86][87][88], suggesting that stereotypic horses do not cope better with sub-optimal environments than their non-stereotypic counterparts. Evaluation of the presence and prevalence of SB/ARB was consistent over time [89]; therefore, reliably indicating impaired welfare of horses [35,42,90]. However, although some ARB are well known (e.g., weaving, cribbing) and their recordings present good inter-observer agreement [62], other ARB are more subtle and are more difficult to identify [91].…”

“…In some cases, chronic health disorders are related to typical postures, such as laminitis with an arched body that takes the weight off the fore feet [20]. Ear positions are good indicators: if ears pointing backwards are associated with negative states, including pain (e.g., [20] for a review) or agonistic social interactions [70], they are also associated with chronically restricted conditions-the time spent with ears backwards in homogenous conditions (i.e., foraging) is related to chronically restricted living conditions (strict social isolation [35]) and chronic welfare impairment (e.g., vertebral disorders, stereotypic behaviours [36,37]), while horses under naturalistic conditions are almost never observed with such ear positions. Although time spent with ears backwards while foraging is not related to one particular context, it is a reliable indication of impaired welfare.…”