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Let Them Eat: Preventing Welfare Issues In Stalled Horses

Horses stalls overnight can spend multiple long hours with nothing in their stomachs, making them eat more rapidly when fed breakfast. German scientists suggest that horses kept inside should have something to chew on nearly continuously through the overnight hours, whether that's a constant supply of hay or their bedding, reports The Horse.

The Horse also notes that any straw horses ingest should be high quality and introduced slowly; a veterinarian or equine nutritionist should be consulted before adding edible straw to a horse's diet.

Dr. Miriam Baumgartner, of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, noted that horses shouldn't be without food in their system for more than four hours at a time. Horses bedded on non-edible bedding like pellets or sawdust are without something to eat for an average of nine hours each night.

When horses are without food for this amount of time, they “rebound” during the day, Dr. Margit Zeitler-Feicht, Baumgartner's colleague, noted. The duo studied 104 horses that were kept in stalls; those that were stalled on non-edible bedding ate faster with fewer pauses than horses that were kept on straw. They also ingested their evening meals more rapidly than horses kept on straw. The research team reports that this could mean that horses housed on inedible bedding may have compromised welfare.

The team concludes that horses should be offered something to eat continuously throughout the night, whether in the form of hay or edible bedding. To deny them the ability to eat continuously can cause health and welfare issues.

Easy-To-Implement Ways To Reduce Parasite Resistance

Currently, equine internal parasites can resist all classes of dewormers on the market. This is especially concerning as internal parasites can cause so much harm—and there are no new dewormers on the horizon. However, there are some things horse owners can do to keep horses healthy naturally, reports The Horse.

Veterinarians originally recommended that horses be dewormed every two months, as that was when parasitologists began seeing worm eggs returning. Now, strategic deworming and an integrated approach to parasite management is preferred. This includes only deworming the horses that need it and not blanket deworming all horses on the farm.

Other ways to prevent worm burdens include:

Quarantining new horses—this includes not turning them out on fields other horses will eventually use. The point is to keep the horse and the worms it os carrying separate long enough for the eggs to pass through his system.
Feeding off the ground to prevent ingestion of larvae
Ensuring feed and water sources are not contaminated with manure
Removing manure piles before eggs hatch
Composting manure at temperatures above 104 degrees F to destroy eggs and larvae
Keeping grass taller than 3 inches to minimize larvae ingestion
Dragging fields on hot days to expose larvae in manure to temperatures they cannot survive
Implementing pasture rotation, which disrupts the parasite life cycle
Stocking pastures with an appropriate number of horses (one horse per acre at minimum) to reduce grazing around manure
Renovating pastures for better forage options
Including other species in the pastures with horses so different plants get eaten

Study: Chubby Horses Don’t Eat More Than Leaner Counterparts

Though it's long been assumed that fat horses would eat more than their leaner peers if given an option, a study from North Carolina State University shows that this isn't actually the case. When allowed to make their own choices, chubbier horses not only eat similar quantities of food, they also exercise the same amount as their thinner herd mates.

Drs. Jennifer Moore, Paul Siciliano and Shannon Pratt-Phillips used 10 horses that they separated into two groups: one group included six horses that had body condition scores of more than 7; the other group included leaner horses with body condition scores of 4 or 5. Over the course of 25 days, both groups transitioned from a diet that relied heavily on grazing to one that was based on free-choice hay. Once the horses were transitioned over, the scientists monitored their hay intake and metabolic state for the next 11 days.

Horses had blood drawn regularly throughout the study. Fecal samples were also collected from each horse to determine dry-matter digestibility and gross energy digestibility. The horses also wore heart rate monitors that had GPS trackers that collected data to calculate each horse's energy expenditure.

The study team found no significance difference in the energy intake and expenditures between the two groups of horses. Interestingly, the obese horses were more active for longer periods of time than the lean horses. They also spent less time eating. The scientists concluded that obesity in horses does not appear to be related to excess food intake or reduced activity; obesity is most likely related to metabolic issues.