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Sad Circumstance Allows Researchers To Study How Feral Horses Perceive Death

Researchers in Portugal who witnessed the decline and death of a foal in a feral herd were given a unique opportunity to see how wild horses reacted to the situation. Drs. Renata Mendonça, Monamie Ringhofer, Pandora Pinto, Sota Inoue and Satoshi Hirata watched the foal, who had been injured in a presumed wolf attack, for six hours; they noted his behavior as well as that of his dam and other herd members in the vicinity. Every two minutes, they recorded things like the distance between the horses and the injured foal; every five minutes they recorded horses moving, resting, eating and interacting with others.

The herd walked during the first several hours and the foal moved when prompted by his dam. He eventually went down and could not rise. His dam stayed near him and nuzzled him occasionally. After 15 minutes, the herd left the mare and foal behind. The stallion returned and attempted to move the mare from the foal, and succeeded on the seventh try. The dam whinnied to the foal 10 times and the foal responded once.

A second group of horses arrived and stood within 20 yards of the foal for 40 minutes. Though all members of the group were interested in the foal, two mares remained interested after the others had left to graze. These mares licked and sniffed the foal for several minutes, while the foal's dam watched from a distance.

During this interaction, the dam whinnied for the foal 44 times, but the stallion prevented her from returning to her foal. The foal responded only once after the other mares had left.

The dam returned to the foal once and fought with bachelor stallions who were interested in her. She left the foal to join the herd that was about 200 yards away. The foal stood and called for her one time after she left, then fell and died within an hour.

The research team notes that the mare moving away even though her foal was alive makes sense from an evolutionary context; it ensured her own survival, which allows her to reproduce again and benefit the species. The scientists were surprised by the reaction of the other two mares toward the foal. Traditionally, horses are antagonistic toward foals that are note their own; that the two mares were not could mean that they perceived something different about the foal.

Though there is still much to learn about how horses perceive death, the research team advises that owners and managers take equine emotions and reactions into account when dealing with the death of a domesticated herd mate.

High-fiber Diets Can Produce Large Thoroughbred Foals

Thoroughbreds sold at commercial sales are more appealing if they are big and athletic looking. To achieve this, young Thoroughbreds are often fed cereal-based diets that include oats, corn and barley; though this diet can assist in producing a large horse, it can also cause developmental bone disease and gastric ulceration.

Drs. Meriel Moore-Colyer, Philippa Tuthill, Isobel Bannister and Simon Daniels collaborated with Eclipse Feeds in Ireland to complete a study on supplemental feeding of foals. The team used eight foals placed in pairs and found that foals that were fed high-fiber diets while still nursing maintained a healthy gut environment when compared with those foals that ate a conventional cereal-based feed.

These findings are not in line with the industry belief that feeding high levels of fiber to foals will give them pot bellies and make their growth rate unsustainable. The growth measurements showed that high-fiber diets supported rapidly growing Thoroughbred foals in a manner similar to those foals fed cereal-based concentrates, without the possible growth abnormailities associated with the feed.

Weaning Woes: Is Artificial Weaning Hard On Horses?

Weaning, where a foal is removed from his dam, can be heartwrenching for both the humans and the animals involved. During traditional weaning, foals are forcibly separated from their dams at six months of age. However, left to their own devices, a foal will eventually separate from his mother on his own accord; this is considered “natural weaning.” Little research has been done on natural weaning.

The relationship between a mare and her foal focuses not only on providing sustenance to the youngster, but on the imparting of social skills that will allow the foal to become a well-adjusted part of an equine herd. Researchers in France studied natural weaning to determine if it could offer benefits to the mare and foal.
Drs. Séverine Henry, Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir, Aziliz Klapper, Julie Joubert, Gabrielle Montier and Martine Hausberger studied three groups of semi-feral Icelandic horses: 16 mares with their foals, all owned by a riding school. The researchers discovered that the weaning age of foals varied greatly, but that foals were on average nine months old when they willingly stopped nursing from their mother.

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Surprisingly, the foal didn't gradually taper off his suckling before weaning nor did the mare become more aggressive with her foal before weaning; it seems the foal simply stopped nursing. Immediately after weaning, the foals spent about as much time with and stayed as close to their mothers as before weaning, indicating that they still needed social contact with their mothers.
None of the mares lost any body condition even though they were in foal and had a nursing foal on their side, though their breeding may have something to do with this: Icelandic horses are notoriously hardy.

Artificial weaning generally causes high levels of stress in foals and this is often the time when stereotypies like cribbing or weaving begin. The scientists hope that this data will assist in providing a better understanding of what happens in the mare-foal relationship, specifically from a social point of view, and how artificial weaning can affect foals.

Does Light Color Affect A Horse’s Willingness To Load On A Trailer?

Loading horses into a trailer can be stressful, especially if they are walking from a brightly lit area into a dark horse trailer. New research out of France indicates that specific trailer lights, at the correct brightness, can ease the transition from light to dark, reports The Horse.

The equine eye takes a significant amount of time to adjust to changes in light, reports The Horse. To help determine if lighting affected horse's willingness to load, Dr. Claire Neveux, an equine behavior consultant and researcher with Ethonova, equipped trailers with LED lights of varying brightness. Researchers were able to adjust the whitness as well as the intensity of the light the bulbs emitted.

The scientists used 22 2- and 3-year-old French Trotting horses that were in race training; the horses had not traveled on a trailer since they were foals. The horses were asked to load into a two-horse, straight-load trailer in three different lighting conditions, all of which completely illuminated the interior of the trailer. The horses were also loaded in natural light. Twenty days elapsed between each test and common loading techniques were used, including halter pressure, food rewards for advancement and hindquarter pressure.

The scientists determined that horses had the lowest heart rate and showed the fewest negative responses when they loaded into a trailer lit to 4500 K and 50 percent flux. They loaded more readily and they exhibited less stress behaviors when the inside of the trailer was lighter. While inside the trailer, the horse's heartrates dropped fastest when the horses had lights that were more yellow or blue.

The study teams notes that additional research could show how lighting affects equine stress levels and welfare in housing, performance and hospital settings.