Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2014
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Cecilie Marie Mejdell Grete H. M. Jørgensen Linda J Keeling Janne Winther Christensen Knut Egil BøeAbstract
Group housing of horses is not very widespread, despite obvious advantages for their development and mental well-being. One often expressed rationale for this is that horse owners are worried about the risk of injuries due to kicks, bites or being chased into obstacles. To address this concern, we developed and validated a scoring system for external injuries in horses to be able to record the severity of a lesion in a standardized and simple way under field conditions. The scoring system has five categories from insignificant loss of hair to severe, life threatening injuries. It was used to categorize 1124 injuries in 478 horses. Most of these horses were allocated to groups to study the effect of group composition (i.e. same age or mixed, same gender or mixed, socially stable or unstable groups) on behaviour and injuries. The material included mainly riding and leisure purpose horses of different breeds, age and gender. Most injuries occurred the day after mixing. Injuries of the more severe categories 4 and 5, which normally would necessitate veterinary care and/or loss of function for some time, were not observed at all. The vast majority of the recorded injuries were category 1 lesions (hair loss only). A few such injuries were found on most horses, some horses had none, and a few had many. The second most common injury type was category two (abration/scrape into, but not through the skin, and/or a moderate bruise/contusion). Category 3 injuries (a minor laceration and/or contusion with obvious swelling) were only recorded in a baseline subset of 100 riding horses, there comprising 4% of the injuries. Whereas most of the injuries were found on the body, the category 3 injuries were mainly found on the limbs and head. The reason for this is probably that the skin there is tight and thus is more easily lacerated. Icelandic horses tended to have fewer and less severe injuries compared to other breeds. There was also a breed effect on location of the injuries. We conclude that the risk for serious injuries when horses are kept in groups is generally low and fear of injuries should not be a reason to prevent horses from social interaction with other horses. However, we emphasize that most of the recordings were performed during the summer period, and many horses were unshod. The situation might have been different in winter, and special caution should be taken if mixing horses shod with ice studs.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
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No abstract has been registered
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No abstract has been registered
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No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Blanketing of horses is a very common management routine. Sometimes, this practice may seem unjustified. Therefore, we wanted to investigate the preferences of the horses themselves. First we developed a method by which the horse learned to communicate its wishes. Thirteen horses were trained to associate three different neutral visual symbols presented to them on a board with the actions 1) blanket is taken off, 2) blanket is put on, and 3) stay as is, and subsequently to communicate their wish by pointing at the relevant symbol. These horses had experience of wearing a blanket, but daily routines varied. All individuals which started the training programme succeeded in learning the task. Second, we tested the horse’ opinion under differing weather conditions. Horses normally wearing a blanket were tested with the blanket on, and those which normally did not, without. At the test days, the horse was taken out of its group and placed in a round pen. To be allowed to leave the round pen and join its pals again, the horse first had to make a choice among two symbols presented to them; to stay as is or to have the blanket removed/put on. The test was repeated under different climatic conditions (from -15 to + 20°C, sunny days and days with precipitation and wind) for each horse during winter, spring and autumn 2013. Preliminary results show that all horses made “sensible” choices. Nine out of the 13 horses wanted to remove the blanket for at least one test day. Naturally, cold blooded horses more often preferred to stay without, and shaved warm blooded horses more often preferred to stay blanketed. However, there were individual differences in both groups, showing that owner perception and the horse own opinion not always matched.
Abstract
Blanketing of horses is a very common management routine. Sometimes, this practice may seem unjustified. Therefore, we wanted to investigate the preferences of the horses themselves. First we developed a method by which the horse learned to communicate its wishes. Thirteen horses were trained to associate three different neutral visual symbols presented to them on a board with the actions 1) blanket is taken off, 2) blanket is put on, and 3) stay as is, and subsequently to communicate their wish by pointing at the relevant symbol. These horses had experience of wearing a blanket, but daily routines varied. All individuals which started the training programme succeeded in learning the task. Second, we tested the horse’ opinion under differing weather conditions. Horses normally wearing a blanket were tested with the blanket on, and those which normally did not, without. At the test days, the horse was taken out of its group and placed in a round pen. To be allowed to leave the round pen and join its pals again, the horse first had to make a choice among two symbols presented to them; to stay as is or to have the blanket removed/put on. The test was repeated under different climatic conditions (from -15 to + 20°C, sunny days and days with precipitation and wind) for each horse during winter, spring and autumn 2013. Preliminary results show that all horses made “sensible” choices. Nine out of the 13 horses wanted to remove the blanket for at least one test day. Naturally, cold blooded horses more often preferred to stay without, and shaved warm blooded horses more often preferred to stay blanketed. However, there were individual differences in both groups, showing that owner perception and the horse own opinion not always matched.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered