Division of Food Production and Society
Giving the horse a voice - Horse welfare and owner awareness
End: dec 2027
Start: jan 2025
This is an international research project funded through the Equine Research Foundation with funding from both Swedish and Norwegian contributors. The project runs over three years and has the main aim to investigate how to contribute to improved horse welfare by increasing people's awareness and deeper understanding of what a horse is and its cognitive abilities.
The project partners are NIBIO, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), the Norwegian Veterinary Institute (VI), Ridskolan Strømsholm Flyinge (RSFlyinge) and Malmö University (MU). The project has also linked up with professional horse trainer Turid Buvik from Trondheim Hundeskole. She will be responsible for operative design and teaching the horses the symbol method.
Project participants
Ceclie M. Mejdell Karin Morgan Knut E. Bøe Linda Kjellberg Susanna hedenborg Lovisa Broms Turid Buvik
| Start - end date | 06.01.2025 - 31.12.2027 |
| Project manager | Grete H. M. Jørgensen |
| Division | Division of Food Production and Society |
| Department | Grassland and Livestock |
| Partners | Veterinærinstituttet, NMBU, Ridskolan Strømsholm, Malmø Universitet, Trondheim Hundeskole |
| Total budget | 5 791 973 |
| Budget this year | 1 908 566 |
| Funding source | Stiftelsen Hästforskning |
The project is organized into five work packages as follows:
- WP0 = Administration and dissemination of the project
- WP1 = Teaching the symbol method to students in equine subjects both in Norway and in Sweden
- WP2 = The students train horses and carry out preference tests with the symbol method to ask horses whether they want to wear a blanket or not when they are sweaty.
- WP3 = The students' attitudes towards the horse are examined by means of interviews before, during and after the symbol method has been learned and experiments in WP2 have been carried out.
- WP4 = We are making a handbook that will be available to anyone who wants to learn how to use the symbol method on their horses
The project is already well underway with planning meetings and work on protocols for carrying out trials. The handbook has also been started.
The project has linked up with a reference group consisting of Torunn Knævelsrud, Rebekka Morset, Matilda Wennström, Gabriella Torell Palmquist and Maria Eisersiö.
If you want to learn more about the symbol method, you can read the articles Mejdell et al., 2016 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2016.07.014) and Mejdell et al., 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2019.02.001)
Contact the project manager if you have any questions.
