Plasma cortisol and faecal cortisol metabolites concentrations in stereotypic and non-stereotypic horses: do stereotypic horses cope better with poor environmental conditions?

Abstract

BackgroundStereotypic behaviours, i.e. repetitive behaviours induced by frustration, repeated attempts to cope and/or brain dysfunction, are intriguing as they occur in a variety of domestic and captive species without any clear adaptive function. Among the different hypotheses, the coping hypothesis predicts that stereotypic behaviours provide a way for animals in unfavourable environmental conditions to adjust. As such, they are expected to have a lower physiological stress level (glucocorticoids) than non-stereotypic animals. Attempts to link stereotypic behaviours with glucocorticoids however have yielded contradictory results. Here we investigated correlates of oral and motor stereotypic behaviours and glucocorticoid levels in two large samples of domestic horses (NStudy1 = 55, NStudy2 = 58), kept in sub-optimal conditions (e.g. confinement, social isolation), and already known to experience poor welfare states. Each horse was observed in its box using focal sampling (study 1) and instantaneous scan sampling (study 2). Plasma samples (collected in study 1) but also non-invasive faecal samples (collected in both studies) were retrieved in order to assess cortisol levels.ResultsResults showed that 1) plasma cortisol and faecal cortisol metabolites concentrations did not differ between horses displaying stereotypic behaviours and non-stereotypic horses and 2) both oral and motor stereotypic behaviour levels did not predict plasma cortisol or faecal cortisol metabolites concentrations.ConclusionsCortisol measures, collected in two large samples of horses using both plasma sampling as well as faecal sampling (the latter method minimizing bias due to a non-invasive sampling procedure), therefore do not indicate that stereotypic horses cope better, at least in terms of adrenocortical activity.

The physiological consequences of crib-biting in horses in response to an ACTH challenge test

“…Crib-biting horses may therefore not be capable to react as efficiently as other horses to an external stimulus, suggesting that crib-biters are more stress-sensitive and less flexible when coping with stress [7]. By contrast, and in accordance with our results, other studies did not find any significant difference in the mean HR or in the HR variability between crib-biters and other horses [18,30,47,48].…”

Prevalencia De Estereotipias Clásicas en Caballos Chilenos De Las Comunas De Pinto Y Coihueco, Biobío, Chile

“…valencia era de entre 0,31% y 1% (Muñoz et al, 2009;Tadich et al, 2012). Sin embargo, esta baja prevalencia llama la atención, ya que en caballos FSC la prevalencia de balanceo varía entre 2,15 y 2,94% (Tadich et al, 2013;Muñoz et al, 2014) y en caballos árabes es mayor a 15% (Benhajali et al, 2010;Fureix et al, 2013). Por lo que se puede inferir que podría haber factores hereditarios y/o de manejo que hacen que esta estereotipia sea de tan baja presentación en el caballo chileno.…”

“…Ninguna de estas conductas ha sido observada en caballos de vida libre (Hosthersall y Nicol, 2009;McGreevy, 2012). Entre los factores de riesgo intrínsecos están la raza, edad y sexo (Sarrafchi y Blokhuis, 2013), y entre las consecuencias asociadas a las estereotipias clásicas están algunos problemas de salud tales como atrapamiento de intestino en el foramen epiploico (Archer et al, 2008), osteoartropatía temporohioidal (Grenager et al, 2010), cólico recurrente (Malamed et al, 2010), disminución de la fertilidad (Benhajali et al, 2014), y disminución del peso o de la condición corporal (Houpt, 2005;McGreevy, 2012), por lo tanto la presencia de estas estereotipias hacen que el valor comercial de los caballos afectados disminuya (McGreevy, 2011).…”

Prevalence of Crib-Biting and Weaving in Stabled Horses Tie Stalls

“…The total prevalence of both stereotypies found in tiestall stabled horses, although it is within the wide range from 0 to 59.2% described by other authors, is one of the lowest reported in the literature (9,11,17,(20)(21)(22)24,(27)(28)(29)32,33,(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51)(52)(53)(54). Notoriously, the total prevalence is close to the 4.2% reported by Pagliosa et al (33) in a study conducted in 72 military horses kept in tie stalls, including that weaving in both studies does not exceed 1.4%.…”