Equine Science encompasses the study of horses and their management, health, and performance. This field integrates various scientific disciplines such as biology, genetics, nutrition, physiology, and veterinary medicine to understand and improve the well-being and capabilities of horses. Areas of focus include equine anatomy, reproduction, behavior, and disease prevention. Research in equine science aims to enhance horse care, optimize training and performance, and address health challenges. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the diverse aspects of equine science, providing insights into the latest advancements and methodologies in the field.
SAVARD K.The urinary ketonic estrogens were studied at monthly intervals in five pregnant mares. Estrone and equilin appear to be the principal components and equilenin a minor constituent of the mares’ estrogens. The levels of equilin rise from the 4–5th months to equal and in some instances exceed those of estrone in the late months of pregnancy. A partition chromatographic method for the separation of the ketonic phenolic steroids of pregnant mares’ urine is described.
Pope DC, Heslop CH.An outbreak of myoglobinuria under unusual circumstances in a group of four horses, together with the events leading up to the diagnosis, is described, and a brief mention of two previously recorded similar cases is made.
Price HA, Logan AA, Snyder AJ, Higgins AH.Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) competitions evaluate riders on equitation and skills when riding randomly drawn horses. This study considered demographic and competition-related variables of horses involved in IHSA competitions, and their correlation to performance through points accumulated. Demographics were recorded for fifty-nine horses in two-day Hunter Seat and Western IHSA shows along with use of artificial riding aids, day of competition, number of rides, and points, to evaluate performance. Data were analyzed using a mixed effect model and correlation coefficients with ...
Pereira LO, DE Souza AF, Spagnolo JD, Yamada ALM, Salgado DMRA, DE Zoppa ALDV.Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent condition in horses, leading to changes in trabecular bone structure and radiographic texture. Although fractal dimension (FD) and lacunarity have been applied to quantify these changes in humans, their application in horses remains nascent. This study evaluated the use of FD, bone area fraction (BA/TA), and lacunarity in quantifying trabecular bone differences in the proximal phalanx (P1) in 50 radiographic examinations of equine metacarpophalangeal joints with varying OA degrees. In the dorsopalmar view, regions of interest were defined in the trabecular bo...
Kenny LB, Smarsh DN.Existing data on the equine hay market and buying preferences in Pennsylvania (PA) is outdated and more recent data is needed. The objective of this project was to characterize the practices and attitudes of PA horse hay buyers. An online survey was created and distributed. It received 435 total responses (of these, 346 were complete responses) from PA horse hay buyers from October 2021 to February 2022. Data presented (descriptive statistics) represents the percentage of respondents answering that question. Most (76%) respondents were in the recreational sector of the horse industry and the m...
Stedman JM, Lutter JD, Hallman C, Laverty S, Richard H, Santschi EM.High-field MRI of the equine stifle provides high-resolution information about soft tissues that is useful in the diagnosis of stifle lameness. The aim of this prospective anatomic study was to describe the appearance, position, size, and shape of the equine femorotibial ligaments, meniscal ligaments, and menisci using 3 Tesla MRI under extended, extended-loaded, and flexed conditions. Additionally, histologic examination of the collateral and cruciate ligaments (CLs) of a single stifle was performed to compare with MRI images. In extension, mild variations in MRI signal intensity were apparen...
Asgenbaatar N, Yi M, Wang X, Ulaangerel T, Shen Y, Wen X, Du M, Dong X, Mengkh Y, Dugarjav M, Bou G.The preparation of paraffin sections is an important experimental technique in animal histological research, and key factors that determine the quality of a section include the dehydration time, waxing time, and drying temperature of the paraffin section. Paraffin sections obtained from testis tissue of adult horses exhibited higher quality with clear tissue structure and complete cell morphology after they underwent gradient dehydration for 6 hours, were immersed in wax for 60 minutes, and were dried in a 75-degree oven for 15 minutes. The detailed, optimized procedures that are developed in ...
Onouchi S, Yoshida T, Saito S, Atoji Y.We examined the relationship between inherited motor-related conformation and orientation of facial hair whorls in Japanese Kiso horses. Eleven horses were divided into clockwise, counterclockwise, and radial groups according to facial hair whorls. We placed six markers on anatomical landmarks of each lateral side in a horse and measured the height of the landmarks, the distance between adjacent landmarks, and the angle of the adjacent landmarks. In the counterclockwise group, the horses tended to exhibit higher values on the left side than on the right side, and the comparison of the height o...
Campbell MLH, Sykes BW.Prioritising equine welfare, making evidenced-based policy, and consistent decision-making across sports are crucial to maintaining the social licence for equestrian sport. Regulations on the use of omeprazole during competition differ; all regulators argue that their rules prioritise welfare. This discrepancy is a matter of concern to the public and equestrian stakeholders. Objective: To apply Campbell's Ethical Framework for the use of Horses in Sport to the question: 'Should the use of omeprazole be allowed during equestrian competition?' Methods: A desk-based ethico-legal study. Methods: C...
Gräschke L.Every year, many horses are transported by air. Alongside sport horses traveling to tournaments worldwide, mainly breeding horses, such as shuttle stallions and broodmares, thoroughbreds traded at auctions, and leisure horses are transported by air. Research in veterinary science has highlighted welfare concerns during air transportation. Equine welfare is constituted in the language and discourse evolving from social, political, and ethical views about the treatment of horses. Consequently, this study targets power in creating equine welfare by analyzing the welfare discourses, transportation...
Jastrzębska E, Siemieniuch M, Bizio A, Pietruszka J, Górecka-Bruzda A.Horse users and caretakers must be aware of the risks of mixing social groups. The current study investigated whether eight equine practitioners can assess the social dominance rank of 20 horses. The horses' feeding time and agonistic/aggressive and submissive behaviours were observed during the feed confrontation test, and the dominance index (DI) was calculated. Kendal's W, Spearman correlations and factor analysis were applied to test the raters' agreement, the relationship between dominance ranks and the behavioural variables, and to determine the clustered behaviours. The agreement betwee...
Pickles KJ, Marlin DJ, Williams JM, Roberts VLH.Equine trigeminal-mediated (TGM) headshaking (HS) is a neuropathic facial pain syndrome characterised by varying intensity and frequencies of head movements and signs of nasal irritation. An accurate method for quantification and/or characterisation of HS severity is lacking. Objective: To develop and validate an objective measure of TGMHS. Methods: Prospective case control study. Methods: Horses presenting for investigation of HS were recruited alongside those presenting for forelimb lameness (LAME) and pre-purchase examination as well as healthy controls (CONTROL). Head movement data were co...
Ross C, White JM, Hibner-Szaltys M, Stephenson RS, Withers JM, Marcatili M.To describe the surgical technique for removal of hoof wall masses in horses under standing sedation (SS) and local anesthesia (LA), and to report complications and long-term outcome following surgery. Methods: Observational retrospective study. Methods: Client-owned horses (n = 30). Methods: Horses undergoing keratoma removal under SS and LA in a single equine hospital between August 2016 and July 2023 were included in the study. Signalment, affected foot, history of lameness and/or foot abscesses, degree of lameness on admission, imaging findings (radiography and magnetic resonance imagi...
Azizi S, Mazaheri-Khameneh R, Davoodi F, Gooran MM, Ghoreishi SS, Mozaffari N, Dalir-Naghadeh B.In this case report, we present an unusual clockwise torsion of left colon around mesenteric root in a 10-month-old Arab filly, highlighting the clinical presentation, diagnostic approach and successful surgical intervention. A 10-month-old Arab filly weighing approximately 250 kg was referred with signs of acute abdominal pain. The history revealed anorexia, restlessness and severe abdominal pain that had begun the previous day. The local practitioner had previously administered flunixin meglumine, an analgesic, but it proved ineffective in relieving the pain. Upon physical examination, the ...
Grzyb J, Podstawski Z, Bulski K.Horses stay in different types of stables; especially during the cold season, they stay inside for most of the day. A stable is also a place where many people spend quite a lot of time either as employees who care for and train horses or as equine enthusiasts. Keeping horses in stables causes their constant exposure to high concentrations of particulate matter (PM) and molds in the air inside these facilities. The study was conducted in Udórz Stud Farm located in the southern region of Poland. It was carried out in two different types of stables: three runners and two box stables. The study c...
Kabi L E, Zor TA, Göktaş EF, Güneş E, Yatanaslan L, Tektaş MH, İnceman B, Tufan M.The use of prohibited substances in horse racing is a major concern that jeopardizes both the fairness of competitions and the health of horses. This problem can stem from the use of licensed drugs for animal health, as well as unlicensed substances. Horse doping laboratories monitor the potential use of these substances in racehorses within the framework of regulations set by the International Federation of Horse Racing Authority. In this context, sildenafil and its major metabolite n-desmethyl sildenafil were detected in a post-race horse urine sample sent to the Pendik Veterinary Control In...
Bachmann M, Schusser GF, Wensch-Dorendorf M, Pisch C, Bochnia M, Santo MM, Netzker H, Woitow G, Thielebein J, Kesting S, Riehl G, Greef JM....Concentrations of starch, mono- and disaccharides, fructans, hemicellulose and cellulose were analysed in feed and gastric digesta of horses in relation to acid insoluble ash as a marker indigestible in the stomach. Twenty-four horses were allocated to pasture 24 h/d (PST; n = 4), hay ad libitum (HAY; n = 8), hay ad lib. and oats at 1 g starch/kg body weight (BWT)/meal (OS1; n = 6) and hay ad lib. and oats at 2 g starch/kg BWT/meal (OS2; n = 5). One horse was excluded from the analysis. The horses were fed the ration a minimum of 34 days. Following euthanasia and dissection, digesta was sample...
Korim F, Revajová V, Koľvek F, Bujňák L, Hreus S, Všianský D.The parotid duct has been reported to be the most common site of sialoliths in horses. In this case report, we described the first confirmed case of the equine sialolithiasis in Slovakia. The work was aimed to describe the transcutaneous approach to removing the sialolith, which manifested as a hard painless mass in the area of the maxillary cheek teeth, in a 14-year-old Slovakian warmblood mare. Pathological-anatomical and histological examination after extirpation confirmed the presence of parotid duct ectasia resulting from calculus. The mineral composition of the sialolith was determined w...
Puccetti M, Pilati N, Beccati F, Denoix JM.To describe the clinical diagnosis, ultrasound findings, and outcome of 11 endurance horses with injuries to the serratus ventralis thoracis (SVT) or serratus ventralis cervicis (SVC) muscle. Methods: 11 endurance horses competing in medium- to high-level competitions and presenting with lameness caused by injuries to the SVT or SVC muscle, as confirmed by ultrasonography. Methods: Physical examinations revealed swelling caudal to the shoulder region associated with dorsocranial displacement of the scapula and edema of the ventral thorax for horses with SVT injuries. Swelling cranial to the sc...
Chiara M, Mariaelena C, Alessandro C, Davide B, Lavinia C, Paola MM, Barbara L, Chiara DP, Flagiello F, Pia PM.The advanced-PRF+ (A-PRF+) is a platelet concentrate, showing a higher concentration of growth factors, an increased number of cells and looser structure of the fibrin clot than leukocyte-PRF. A high variability in the size of PRF associated with patients, haematological features and centrifugation protocols was reported. The aims of this study were to evaluate the feasibility of A-PRF+ production in the field and the correlation between haematological parameters, macroscopic and microscopic features in equine A-PRF+. Samples from twenty Standardbred horses (3-7 years) were harvested with gla...
De Schryver M, Oosterlinck M.Perineural anesthesia of the tibial nerve can be performed ultrasound-guided or blindly, with the latter still being commonly used in equine practice due to practical constraints, despite its lower accuracy and hence, common failure to achieve desensitization. This may be associated with anatomical variations or inadequate landmarks for injection. To examine the course of the tibial nerve, document potential anatomical variations, and determine optimal landmarks for perineural injection, dissection was conducted along the medial aspect of the tibia in 10 paired cadaver hindlimbs. No anatomical...
Manning H, Sampson S.Antimicrobial prophylaxis for elective orthopaedic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in equids is a topic of debate among practitioners and can have negative detrimental effects on patients if used unnecessarily. Objective: To describe the complications with elective orthopaedic MRI of horses, mules, and donkeys under general anaesthesia without the use of peri-anaesthetic antimicrobial prophylaxis at a single large tertiary referral centre. We hypothesised that horses, mules, and donkeys undergoing general anaesthesia for elective orthopaedic MRI, without antimicrobial prophylaxis, will not be...
McGill S, Coleman R, Hayes M.Indoor arenas do not always include mechanical ventilation or stirring fans and occupancy by horses and humans can be sporadic and inconsistent, which creates a challenging space for understanding and predicting variations in temperature, moisture, and airflow. To understand the interior environment within indoor arenas, monitoring was conducted at 15 facilities within 200 kilometres of Lexington, KY. Environmental monitoring of dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, dew point temperature, air speeds, and solar radiation took place over 7 days in the winter and summer to examine temporal var...
Leishman EM, Sahar M, Cieslar S, Darani P, Ellis JL.To properly formulate diets, the ability to accurately estimate feed intake is critical as the amount of feed consumed will influence the amount of nutrients delivered to the animal. Inaccurate intake estimates may lead to under- or over-feeding of nutrients to the animal. Individual differences in equine forage intake are well-known, but predictive equations based on animal and nutritional factors are not comprehensive. The objective of the present study was to consolidate the current body of knowledge in the published literature on voluntary forage DM intake (VFDMI) in equines and conduct a ...
Tahir AM, Guo L, Ward RK, Yu X, Rideout A, Hore M, Wang ZJ.Laryngeal hemiplegia (LH) is a major upper respiratory tract (URT) complication in racehorses. Endoscopy imaging of horse throat is a gold standard for URT assessment. However, current manual assessment faces several challenges, stemming from the poor quality of endoscopy videos and subjectivity of manual grading. To overcome such limitations, we propose an explainable machine learning (ML)-based solution for efficient URT assessment. Specifically, a cascaded YOLOv8 architecture is utilized to segment the key semantic regions and landmarks per frame. Several spatiotemporal features are then ex...
Flores JG, Bueno VC, Bastos HBA, Rechsteiner SMDEF.Reproductive biotechniques in the equine species have advanced in the last decade and horse breeders have started to question the possibilities of interfering in the determination of foal sex. The aim of the present study was to verify whether the variables mares and stallion's age, side of the ovary containing the preovulatory follicle, preovulatory follicle diameter, time between breeding and ovulation, and ovulation inducing hormones influence the sex of the foal. A total of 259 reproductive cycles of 160 mares and 22 Thoroughbred stallions were used. Statistical analysis was performed usin...
Doyle JL, Egan S, Berry DP.Many sport horse studbooks worldwide use microsatellite markers for parentage verification. However, many have expressed a desire to introduce genomic selection using genome-wide dense single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes to complement their current breeding programmes. Hence, it does not make sense to genotype the same animal for both microsatellite markers and SNP markers. Transitioning to SNP-based parentage verification is an obvious solution but one barrier to this transition is the lack of SNP data on parents from which to verify parentage against. Therefore, the objective of t...
Medeiros BB, Barcelos KMC, Andrade MO, Cristina da Paz Carvalho M, Miranda VR, de Oliveira Maia K, Reinhardt S, Patterson Rosa L.The genetic diversity of Breton horses in Brazil is a critical concern, mainly due to the small population size and low number of births per year. Given that the inbreeding was overlooked by breeders for multiple generations, we estimated the genetic diversity of this population utilizing pedigree-based measures of population diversity. A total of 1394 six-generation pedigrees representing the full population of registered Breton horses in Brazil defined a total population (TP, = 2679), with horses born between 2000 and 2022, reproductively active and alive, as reported by the breed assoc...
St Blanc MP, Mirza MH, Riggs LM, Leise BS.The aim of the study was to evaluate time to closure, bursting pressures and luminal diameters of a single and double-layer end-to-end anastomoses in normal equine descending colon. Methods: Experimental study. Methods: Eight adult horses. Methods: Four segments of descending colon from each horse were randomly assigned to a control (n = 8, CON), one-layer (n = 12, group 1; continuous Lembert pattern), or two-layer group (n = 12, group 2; simple continuous oversewn with Cushing pattern). Anastomoses were performed, and time to closure and luminal diameter were measured. Bursting pr...
Ishii H, Shigematsu R, Takemoto S, Ishikawa Y, Mizobe F, Nomura M, Arima D, Kunii H, Yuasa R, Yamanaka T, Tanabe S, Nagata SI, Yamada M, Leung GN. The use of osilodrostat, developed as a medication for Cushing's disease but categorized as an anabolic agent, is banned in horses by both the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities and the Fédération Equestre Internationale. For doping control purposes, elimination profiles of hydrolyzed osilodrostat in horse urine were established and the detectability of free forms of osilodrostat and its major metabolite, mono-hydroxylated osilodrostat (M1c), was investigated. Post-administration urine samples obtained from a gelding and three mares were analyzed to establish the eliminatio...
Kafka UCM, Beukes P, Slabbert JP, Carstens A.The main aim of this pilot study was to determine how the energy spectrum of scatter radiation emitted from horses after injection of the radiopharmaceutical Technetium-methyl diphosphonate (Tc-MDP), changed behind lead shielding of varying thicknesses (0.25 mm, 0.35 mm, and 0.5 mm Pb thickness), and if beam hardening occurred. The effect lead shielding has on the emitted gamma radiation energy spectrum has not been documented. In particular, the presence of beam hardening effects behind lead shielding was investigated, to determine whether or not it could discourage the use of lead shields du...
Data in briefAugust 3, 2024
Volume 56 110799 doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2024.110799
Gmel AI, Lamas LP, Rosa TV, Stefaniuk-Szmukier M, Klecel W, Martin-Gimenez T, Cruz A, Weishaupt MA, Neuditschko M.Conformation traits are important in the selection and distinction between horse breeds, but tend to be evaluated subjectively within a breed and cannot be compared between them. The horse shape space model, using a combination of 253 landmarks and semi-landmarks, provides objective information on the shape of a horse photographed from the side that can be compared between breeds. In this dataset, we are providing the full set of 253 landmarks for 1241 horses from seven breeds, including an R code file to extract joint angle information and transform the raw data into csv files for further ana...
