Common Feeding Practices Pose A Risk to the Welfare of Horses When Kept on Non-Edible Bedding

Abstract

During the evolution of the horse, an extended period of feed intake, spread over the entire 24-h period, determined the horses’ behaviour and physiology. Horses will not interrupt their feed intake for more than 4 h, if they have a choice. The aim of the present study was to investigate in what way restrictive feeding practices (non ad libitum) affect the horses’ natural feed intake behaviour. We observed the feed intake behaviour of 104 horses on edible (n = 30) and non-edible bedding (n = 74) on ten different farms. We assessed the duration of the forced nocturnal feed intake interruption of horses housed on shavings when no additional roughage was available. Furthermore, we comparatively examined the feed intake behaviour of horses housed on edible versus non-edible bedding. The daily restrictive feeding of roughage (2 times a day: n = 8; 3 times a day: n = 2), as it is common in individual housing systems, resulted in a nocturnal feed intake interruption of more than 4 hours for the majority (74.32%, 55/74) of the horses on shavings (8:50 ± 1:25 h, median: 8:45 h, minimum: 6:45 h, maximum: 13:23 h). In comparison to horses on straw, horses on shavings paused their feed intake less frequently and at a later latency. Furthermore, they spent less time on consuming the evening meal than horses on straw. Our results of the comparison of the feed-intake behaviour of horses on edible and non-edible bedding show that the horses’ ethological feeding needs are not satisfied on non-edible bedding. If the horses accelerate their feed intake (also defined as “rebound effect”), this might indicate that the horses‘ welfare is compromised. We conclude that in addition to the body condition score, the longest duration of feed intake interruption (usually in the night) is an important welfare indicator of horses that have limited access to roughage.

Equine Activity Time Budgets: The Effect of Housing and Management Conditions on Geriatric Horses and Horses with Chronic Orthopaedic Disease

“…Horses in this study were eating 42% of their day, which is within the wide range of 10-64% measured in domestic horses but below the 50.82-66.6% reported for semi-feral horses [13,16,[23][24][25][26]36,[40][41][42][43][44][45]. Coinciding with the literature reporting 60-70% day-time and 30-40% night-time feeding [46], eating times were highest in the morning and the afternoon and lowest in the night and very early morning hours, even in horses that were turned out on pasture overnight during high summer temperatures. Notably, in horses with restricted access to forage (farms 1 and 5, during the fall tracking period also farms 3 and 4) eating peaked immediately after feeding.…”

“…However, food intake is controlled not just by energyrelated homeostatic signals but also somatosensory and motivational stimuli, explaining why diet has the greatest effect on equine time budgets [10,51]. Indeed, the incidence of stereotypic behaviour increases with decreasing access to roughage, non-edible bedding and corresponding lower feeding times [2,10,29,41,44,46,[51][52][53][54]. Furthermore, as the equine digestive tract has adapted to a continuous intake of fibrous low energy herbage, restricted access to roughage, may induce health problems such as gastric ulceration, constipation or dysfermentation [9,29,41,42,46].…”

Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare?

“…Insufficient eating times have also been associated with the emergence of stereotypes and abnormal behavior, such as increased time spent active walking [ 6 , 27 , 54 , 57 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ]. In contrast, management interventions providing increased foraging opportunities have shown to decrease abnormal behavior [ 24 , 59 , 61 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ] and yield time budgets for eating analogous to their wild conspecifics [ 41 , 42 , 45 ], further confirming that reduced opportunities for foraging may be a source of stress and poor welfare for domestic horses [ 27 , 41 , 45 , 54 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ].…”

Improving Horse Welfare and Environmental Sustainability in Horse Husbandry: Linkage between Turnout and Nitrogen Surplus

“…Compared with group-housed stallions, single-housed stallions engaged in more social grooming and more play behavior when being allowed to freely interact with other stallions on pasture after a period of confinement. An accumulated needs-fulfilment deficit leads to a "rebound effect" in horses, as shown in studies examining feed intake [40], resting [41], and locomotion in horses [42,43]. Because locomotion is always associated with stimuli (such as foraging underneath the fence or moving to conspecifics), horses on larger paddocks (150 m 2 vs. 300 m 2 vs. 450 m 2 ) or turned out paired compared to solitary release showed more activity [44,45].…”