Study: Owners Might be Missing Equine Welfare Issues

French behavior researchers recently observed that many people are missing signs of poor welfare in their horses or, worse, they might even think those signs are normal.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

How’s your horse’s welfare? Does he look good? Are you sure? Go back and look again, a little longer and harder this time. French behavior researchers recently observed that many people are missing signs of poor welfare in their horses—or worse, they might even think those signs are normal.

“Humans are often not detecting welfare issues in their horses because they don’t know how to recognize them, or they’re not paying attention, or they don’t want to believe it; or, they have just gotten so used to seeing poor welfare that they’ve lowered their threshold of what they consider to be a suffering horse,” said Clémence Lesimple, PhD, researcher at the University of Rennes, in France.

In a recent study, Lesimple and Martine Hausberger, PhD, research director at the University of Rennes, investigated 373 riding horses of various breeds in 26 riding schools throughout France. The primary caretaker of each riding school completed a welfare questionnaire about each study horse in the facility. Lesimple and Hausberger then observed each horse for 18 hours (six hours, three days in a row) to check for signs of poor welfare—in particular, stereotypical or abnormal repetitive behavior (such as cribbing and weaving).

More than a third of the horses (37%) showed at least one kind of stereotypic behavior, and some of these exhibited as many as seven different behaviors, Lesimple said. However, caretakers had estimated that only 5% of the horses had any stereotypic behaviors and assumed that none of the horses had more than one

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Passionate about horses and science from the time she was riding her first Shetland Pony in Texas, Christa Lesté-Lasserre writes about scientific research that contributes to a better understanding of all equids. After undergrad studies in science, journalism, and literature, she received a master’s degree in creative writing. Now based in France, she aims to present the most fascinating aspect of equine science: the story it creates. Follow Lesté-Lasserre on Twitter @christalestelas.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
280 votes · 280 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!