A note on behaviour of stabled horses with foraging devices in mangers and buckets

The Fibre Requirements of Horses and the Consequences and Causes of Failure to Meet Them

Failure to meet the minimum forage requirement of 1.5% of the horse's bodyweight and the opportunity for foraging for a minimum of 8 h a day (not going without this opportunity longer than four to five consecutive hours) can have both physiological and behavioural consequences. To provide an energy source for horses, rations often include starch rather than fibre. This can result in health issues related to the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) in the horse. In the stomach, the main concern is equine gastric ulcer syndrome (EGUS) and, more specifically, equine squamous gastric disease (ESGD). Ulcerations are caused either by increasing acidity in the stomach (from starch ingestion and reduced saliva production) or splashing of acidic juices caused by a lack of a forage barrier prior to exercise or prolonged periods without fibrous feed intake, which allows the stomach to collapse and spread acidic gastric fluids into the upper squamous regions of the stomach. In the hindgut, starch that has escaped digestion in the small intestine causes microbial instability and increased production of volatile fatty acids (VFA) and lactic acid. This puts horses at great risk for acidosis and subsequent laminitis. Shifts in the hindgut microbiota will also affect a horse's behaviour via the gut-brain axis, as well as potentially compromise immune function. Reduced fluid intake caused by reduced saliva production can result in colic. Choosing a fibrous alternative for starch in a high-energy diet greatly reduces the risk of EGUS and acidosis and improves digestion, GIT pH, body condition, behaviour, immune functions, and performance. Providing hay can reduce crib-biting, wood-chewing, coprophagia, the consumption of bedding, aggression, and stress, and subsequently increase social bonding and affiliation with conspecifics. Adequate fibre intake is related to reduced clinical signs of EGUS, reduced reactivity, and better adaptation to weaning. Lignophagia (wood chewing) has also been observed in horses that are foraging, and this is thought to reflect low fibre content in the available forage (for example, early vegetative, lush pasture).

Nutritional Considerations When Dealing with an Obese Adult Equine

Equine obesity is common, reducing quality of life and requiring dietary energy restriction. Equine obesity is identified using subjective body condition scoring. Considerations are given for life stage and health status when managing obese equines. Every effort should be made to maximize feeding duration, and minimize time spent without feed while meeting all essential nutrient requirements. Limiting total daily dry matter intake to 2% of current bodyweight per day of a low caloric, forage-based diet may result in adequate body weight loss. Weight loss and weight management plans should be monitored for success and potential gastrointestinal, metabolic, and/or behavioral complications.

Mutual interactions between cognition and welfare: The horse as an animal model

Research in cognitive psychology has repeatedly shown how much cognition and emotions are mutually related to one another. Psychological disorders are associated with cognitive (attention, memory and judgment) biases and chronic pain may affect attention, learning or memory. Laboratory studies have provided useful insights about the processes involved but observations about spontaneous animal models, living in different stress/welfare conditions may help understand further how cognition and welfare are interrelated in the « real world ». Domestic horses constitute such a model as they live in a variety of conditions that impact differently their welfare state. In the present review, we try and provide an overview of the scientific literature on cognition and welfare of domestic horses and their interrelationship. We address how emotions and welfare may affect cognitive processes in horses and impact the way they perceive their environment (including work). We propose new methods for assessing the relationship between welfare and cognition and open up the discussion on the evolution of the brain and the part domestication may have played.

The ability of lambs to form expectations and the emotional consequences of a discrepancy from their expectations

Appraisal theories developed in cognitive psychology are used here to attempt to better understand emotional experiences in animals. We investigated whether lambs are able to form expectations and whether their emotional responses are affected by situations discrepant from the expectations they may have formed. Forty-five female lambs were trained to obtain a small or a large amount of food reward by performing an operant task (introducing their muzzle into a hole). Then, half the lambs were shifted to the large or the small reward (i.e. positive or negative shift respectively), while the remaining half continued to get the same amount of reward. Thereafter, the lambs previously submitted to a reward change were shifted back to their initial amount of reward (i.e. successive shifts) while the lambs previously maintained on the same amount of reward were subjected to extinction (no reward, thus a negative shift). Behavior, cortisol levels and cardiac activity were analyzed, and the treatments were compared with ANOVAs for mixed models. When the amount of reward delivered was decreased, the lambs showed more locomotor activity and performed the operant task at a higher frequency but less efficiently, and there was a decrease in the parasympathetic influence on their cardiac activity. These responses were exacerbated when the negative shift followed a positive one. Similar responses were observed under extinction, and these responses were more pronounced when animals were trained with a large amount of reward before extinction. In response to a positive shift, we noticed a decrease in the frequency of the attempted operant task; this occurred only when the positive shift followed a negative one. Variations in plasma cortisol were not consistent with changes in the amount of reward. This study shows that lambs evaluate a reward according to their previous experience with that reward. They are able to form expectations, and a discrepancy from these expectations influences emotional responses, especially in the case of a negative shift. Given the appraisal criteria used by lambs and the matching emotions, we can assume that the emotional response to a negative shift expressed by lambs could reflect the despair caused by frustration.

Role of diet and feeding in normal and stereotypic behaviors in horses

This article reviews the effects of diet on equine feeding behavior and feeding patterns, before considering the evidence that diet affects reactivity in horses. A growing body of work suggests that fat- and fiber-based diets may result in calmer patterns of behavior, and possible mechanisms that may underpin these effects are discussed. In contrast, there is little evidence that herbal- or tryptophan-containing supplements influence equine behavior in any measurable way. The role of diet in the development of abnormal oral behaviors, particularly the oral stereotypy crib-biting, is also reviewed, and suggestions for future work are presented.