boredom | Horse Racing Free Tips

Is A Happy Horse Or A Needy Horse More Inventive?

Horses are goal-driven innovators when seeking out food, but they're also innovators when it comes to playing and developing comfort behaviors.

There is ongoing debate among behaviorists about whether horses invent solutions in response to needs, or if they innovate more when their needs are met. Dr. Konstanz Krueger and a team of scientists contacted horse owners and caretakers directly and through web postings to find horses that exhibited unusual behaviors and also scoured the internet for videos of horses doing unusual things. In total, the team found 746 cases of horses that had developed an innovative behavior, like opening doors or gates.

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The team then investigated the behavior to see if there was a need or an opportunity for the different innovations. They also looked at the frequency of the behavior and the sex, age, and breed of the horse, as well as the influence of management factors like access to pasture, social contact and housing condition.

The study team had so many responses relating to horses, mules or donkeys opening doors and gates that a more specific questionnaire had to be developed. In total, 632 reports described 1,011 innovative behaviors. They were from 427 horses, four donkeys and three mules.

One equine science professor and two people with bachelor's degrees in equine science rated the behaviors to determine if they were truly “novel.” The actions not deemed “novel” were excluded from the study.

The team found that the innovations were not affected by age, sex, breed, or specie. Though both groups of horses were innovative, horses housed in groups and those that were turned out 24/7 developed a wider variety of innovative behaviors because they had the opportunity – they were not seeking relief from environmental pressures.

The team concluded that equids that experience social conflict, those that are stalled, or those that are hungry produce a restricted amount of goal-driven innovations they repeated often to try to address their needs, such as escaping or foraging.

Read the study here.

The Scoop On Eating Dirt

Many horse owners have been told that a horse that eats dirt is missing specific nutrients in his diet—but this line of thinking is outdated. Seeing a horse licking or chewing dirt is concerning as the ingestion of soil can increase the likelihood he will develop sand colic.

A horse fed the proper amount of a commercial feed formulated for his age and lifestyle should lack for nothing with regards to vitamins, minerals and nutrients; so ingesting soil isn't to “make up” for a deficiency in his diet. If a horse was lacking something in his diet severely enough to make him want to eat dirt, he would show other signs of the deficiency, including weight loss or a dull coat.

Horses typically eat dirt because they're bored. In a natural setting, horses graze nearly constantly—and that time spend chewing is good for their mental health. A horse eating dirt might be seeking the feeling the chewing motion brings, so offering him something like hay in of a slow feeder might give him something to pass the time. Increasing his workload (if possible) or giving him a playful pasturemate may also help ease his boredom.

Does Boredom Cause A Horse To Weave?

Stereotypies in horses are repetitive, compulsive behaviors that serve no purpose. Weaving and stall walking are classic stereotypes: weaving is when a horse shifts his weight from one foot to the other while swinging his head and neck to the left and right; a horse that walks compulsively up and down his stall is called a stall walker. Some horses compulsively walk fence lines when they're turned out.

Though many people think these behaviors are caused by boredom from being alone, these actions are actually caused by stress over the horse's forced solitude. Horses are herd animals—when they are by themselves, they don't feel safe. A horse's natural response is to move away from danger and weaving is an escape behavior: the horse is walking in place. Horses tend to weave at their stall door, which is his escape route.

The easiest way to get a horse to stop weaving is to turn him out. If a horse must be kept in a stall, ensuring he can see other horses may help. The ability to see horses outside on a pasture may be more comforting than to see another horse in a stall.

A shatterproof mirror may also help him feel less alone in his stall. Though the reflection doesn't smell or react like a horse, it may offer some comfort. Some people have had success with simply hanging posters of horses in the stall.