Horses have evolved to consume large amounts of forage and are therefore highly motivated to eat (Baumgartner et al, 2020). Naturally, horses would spend a large portion of their day engaged in the...
Starch and sugar are classed as non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) and are a main source of energy in a horse's diet. Low amounts of NSCs can be found in natural food sources such as grass and hay,...
Crowell-Davies (1986a) identified three developmental stages: the dependent period from birth to 3–4 weeks, the socialisation period from 2–3 months and the stabilisation period from 4 months...
Track systems involve placing a track around the outside of a field or several fields, and keeping the horses on this tracked area rather than in a central paddock. Items such as water, shelter, hay...
Data from 30 horses were included in the analysis. The sample consisted of 12 mares and 18 geldings of mixed breeds (10 Warmblood, four Thoroughbred, seven Cob, three Connemara ponies and six Irish...
The science of human behaviour change incorporates a breadth and depth of different disciplines and expertise that we can learn from, first to understand behaviour and then how to change it (Figure...
Ruet (2019) considers there to be four behavioural indicators of poor welfare state in horses: stereotypic behaviour, aggression toward humans, withdrawn state and the expression of stress...
A useful way of thinking about how change happens is to divide it into stages, as in the stages of change model (Prochaska and Velicer, 1997; DiClemente and Prochaska, 1998) (Table 1)..
When horses are handled by nervous humans their heart rate increases (Keeling et al, 2009). Horses also react differently to odours from nervous humans, they touch people more and spend more time with...