Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] In the Most Popular Breeds podcast, I asked you who your favorite horse was. I named T, an American Quarter Horse, as probably my personal favorite — and then a famous racehorse. And if you haven't listened to that, you can go back and listen to the first few minutes and see who that was. But who was yours? You know — what breeds were they? What discipline were they in?

[0:34]

It’s amazing to think about how much love we have for these animals, and how they all touch us in different ways. And then here’s another story about a champion horse that’s still with us today. This is a mare who was born on April 1st, 2004 — April Fool’s Day — but I’m going to tell you, this mare was no fool. Her father was Street Cry, her mother was Vertigineux, and just this year, in June of 2023, she actually delivered her seventh foal — a filly. And I could sit here and argue that being a mama was her most important job, but when it came to competing, this mare could not be touched.

[1:19]

At the peak of her career, no horse in her discipline could come anywhere close to what she did. She’s a true champion. She was actually voted Horse of the Year in 2010. Her lifetime earnings were $7,304,580 — an incredible athlete. Unlike the other horse I talked about, in her first race, it was in California — the place of my birth — on November 22nd, 2007, she won by three lengths. So right off the bat, you knew there was something special about this horse.

[2:00]

Then just a few weeks later, she won again. And then, guess what — in a Grade 2 stakes race a month later, she won again. This horse is now 3-0 and entering the prime of her career. In her four-year-old year, she went out in a Grade 1 stakes race and won. And she just kept winning. Later that year, she was 8-0, racing in the biggest race of her life — the Breeders’ Cup — against all other mares and fillies. And guess what? She won.

[2:44]

The following year, entering the pinnacle of her career, she’s 13-0 and going to get her shot at the boys in the biggest race of the year — the Breeders’ Cup Classic — $5 million purse. And guess what? She beat each and every one of them. She won again. See, this female racehorse went on to win her next five races. She was 19-0. And as I tell her story with tears in my eyes — I’m not kidding — 19-0, going for her 20th win.

[3:15]

All of our hearts broke in that final race when she lost by a head. This is the greatest, not only female racehorse, but probably the greatest racehorse ever to grace our planet. Her name is…

[3:43]

Zenyatta. And Secretariat being… oh, he is the horse, and the horse is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? Ponies always — I’ve always loved them, really, ever since I was a little girl. “Everybody’s in line… and they’re off! Secretariat away very well, has good position…” The love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me. “Secretariat now taking the lead…” The madness. “What kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that before…” Lightning. “Now he is moving like a tremendous machine…”

[4:22]

Their story — Mustangs — is more involved in the early development of this breed than I thought they were. “But they were… Secretariat has opened the 22-length lead… He is going to be the Triple Crown winner!” Welcome to…

[4:40]

[Music] Horses. Welcome back. I’m Dr. Chris Mortensen. I’ve been an equine researcher and scientist for over 20 years.

[4:47]

Telling that story of Zenyatta — it does bring a tear to my eye, and I’m not kidding as I tell it. I had to take a break after telling that story, because knowing horses, and knowing what they do for us — and, you know, not just in entertainment like a race, but being in her hooves and understanding her drive, and how she beat every horse she came across except that final, final race — and she barely lost. I remember watching it live. I remember my heart sank, because I wanted to see her go 20-0 and retire. But the great news is, she’s gone on to give birth to seven foals, and she’s now retired, nearing 20 next year, and living out her days in Kentucky. Incredible horse. Incredible performance.

[5:52]

In this podcast, we’re going to continue on where we left off — what makes horses perform as well as they do? We talked about conformation, we talked about strides — stride length and stride rate — and, again, if you haven’t listened to that podcast, you might want to start there and come back to this one. But you can listen to this one and then go back to that. We touched upon conformation, which is a massive topic, and it’s very important because that is how we judge in horse sales and how well that horse might perform in their life.

[6:31]

We talked about that, and then we ended previewing this podcast discussing age. Zenyatta was five years old at the peak of her career — and is that true for all racehorses? So we’ll talk about age. But what about other disciplines? What about show jumping? Eventing? What does the data show? Then we’ll look at gender — that’s a big one, because here we did talk about Secretariat and Man o’ War and all these other great racehorses, but how would Zenyatta have done against them? Could she have beat them? Some people say yes. But what about in other disciplines? Does gender make a difference, and is there any bias — which may surprise you?

[7:07]

Then we’re going to talk a little bit about behavior — that’s a massive topic, and I want to introduce it, and then in further podcasts we’re going to delve into it, because equid behavior is so fascinating. It’s just amazing. Then diet — briefly — diet’s impacts. What do we know? Does that help horses perform? And then we won’t get to breeds in this podcast, but we do have one in the works in an upcoming podcast about breeds to specific disciplines. But as I go through this podcast today, obviously some of the breeds will be attached to the studies that we talk about.

[7:45]

When it comes to age in horses, there’s chronological age and then there’s physiological age. Chronological age is, you know — yearling, two-year-old, three-year-old, and so on and so forth. Physiological age is really referring to the internal functions of the animal. They reach an age of peak performance, and then senescence, or older age, starts to creep in. Generally, for most horse breeds, it’s accepted that a horse hits its peak at 15 — that’s like middle age for a horse — and then they gradually enter old age until they live to be 25 or 30.

[8:30]

I’ve got a couple of studies on when the average age is when they move on to the great green pasture in the sky. But we also know there are some individual differences, there are breed differences — some horses peak earlier — and then it’s also environment: how well they were fed, how well they were cared for. All of those play a big factor into how well a horse can perform, and then how long they can perform, and then into their later years, how long they can live.

[9:02]

I think it would be easier also, when we talk about horse ages, to compare it to our own ages — and we do this with our pets, right? With our dogs — you know, one year in a dog is seven years in a human. Horses — little bit different. What’s interesting about horses is they mature relatively quickly — they grow fast. Anybody that’s worked with foals, yearlings, two-year-olds — you see they reach their adult size within three to five years. By the time they’re five, they’re considered fully mature.

[9:42]

It is generally accepted that by the time they’re one year old, they’re close to 90% of their adult height. Two years old — 95%. Three years old — close to 100% of their adult height. Then you get them filling out more — the bones changing a little bit, and teeth, which again we’ll cover in a future podcast. But by the time they’re five, they’re considered physically mature.

[10:07]

Now, if we back it up a little bit — in human years, by the time a horse reaches the age of one, they’re roughly six and a half years in human terms. I was nowhere near close to my adult height when I was six. My children, when they’re six, they are not as close to their full adult height — but in horses, they are. Very interesting. Then by the time they’re two, when they’re really close, it’s roughly 13 years in human terms — so that’s adolescence, puberty. When horses are three, that’s roughly 18 years — and that’s a teenager, right? So that’s our two- and three-year-olds — their level of maturity is like a human at those ages.

[10:56]

Then when they hit four, they’re about 20 and a half. So it slows down — you see you get this massive growth in those first few years, and then it starts to slow down a little bit for them. By the time they’re four, they’re roughly 20 to 21 in human years. At age five — about 24 and a half or 25 in human years. Now, depending on the study, 13, 14, 15 — that’s when they hit like 45 years in human terms — that middle age. So a 15-year-old horse is like a middle-aged human. Then when they hit 20, they are definitely a senior horse by that point. Generally, in human age, it’s about 60. Then when they hit 30, it’s comparable to a human of 85 and a half or 86 years old.

[11:53]

So that’s extreme old age for a horse — anything past that, for a horse, is icing on the cake. It’s the cherry on top. Those are some extra years. That’s a horse that probably has some extremely good genetics, has been handled very well, taken care of very well, well into their old age.

[12:11]

So that gives you an idea of age. If you think about performance, which activity you’re doing — if you’re racing, and if you compare it to humans, our top fastest human beings — women and men — teenagers, young 20s, maybe into their late 20s. In horses, that’s around four, five, six years old. But if you think about some of our other competitions, into their 30s and 40s, some of our professional athletes do very well — especially the ones that are extreme athletes, the best of the best. Doesn’t matter what sport — they can go into their 30s, sometimes into their 40s. So you see horses in that 15-year-old range still being very competitive. But I’m going to tell you what the data shows here in a minute as far as performance.

[13:07]

Just to throw this tidbit in here — the oldest horse ever on record was named Old Billy. Old Billy lived in the 1700s. He was born in Woolston, Cheshire, England in 1760. It was rumored he was a riding horse until he became a barge horse that pulled the barges up and down the canals in northern England. He was 62 years old when he died on November 27th, 1822. He is the oldest known horse ever, which is an incredible feat.

[13:43]

So it is possible for horses to live into their 40s and 50s, and I’m going to give you some data to show you how good our domestic horses have it when we look at wild horses. There are a few studies out there looking at average ages of wild horses that die naturally in the wild. There was a study in Quaternary International published just a couple of years ago, and it was “Determination of Season of Death and Age of Equus ferus…” — it’s a long title — but basically looking at the bones of these horses and determining how they died. They were not hunted — this was all natural.

[14:26]

It just shows you how harsh and cruel the wild can be. The average age of the horse that died during the cold season — because you would think during winter that’s when most horses would die, right — was 7.43 years. But during the warm season, the average was 8.08 years. So there wasn’t a significant difference. It means maybe the cold winter was a little bit harsher and they died younger then, but mostly what the data is showing is wild horses live, according to this study, seven and a half to eight years until nature takes them — either illness, colic, starvation, predation. The wild is a harsh, cruel place.

[15:21]

But then, yet, when we look at our domestic horses — they can live to, like Old Billy, 60, which is abnormal — most horses are not going to live that long. But I know of horses that have lived into their 40s, well into their 30s. A couple of studies that I pulled some averages from — this one in Preventive Veterinary Medicine that was published 10 years ago, so the data is still pretty current — out of the UK, when they looked at mortality of geriatric horses — which is, again, after 20, that’s when they enter their senior years — the average age was 24.4 years. And that was data from hundreds of horses. So 24, 25 — that’s pretty good. Once they make it to that 20-year mark, they have some good years left to enjoy their retirement, or, you know, riding — a lot of horses still ridden into their 20s.

[16:12]

Another interesting study that was talking about care of aged horses — this was a study in Veterinary Pathology published again just a few years back — they were looking at the causes of death in older horses. Like young horses, it always comes back to the digestive system. Over 51% of the horses that were older than 20 — their cause of death was some digestive disturbance or colic. We know that’s the number one cause of death for young horses. So in a future episode we’ll talk about colic and nutrition, but that’s why we always go back — feeding the horse is so important. How we feed the horse is critical, and what we’re feeding the horse is critical. That was the majority cause of death of old horses. Then the next cause of death was only 12% of all the horses that died of old age, and it was pituitary gland — so there was some abnormality there. So nutrition was the most critical when it came to older horses passing away.

[17:23]

So there you go — horses living into their 20s and 30s, wild horses not making it, on average, past eight years old. We know the oldest horse ever could live to be 62. The big question is — at what age are horses most competitive? Which is probably what you’re most interested in.

[17:42]

So, getting to the point — like I said, it’s going to be discipline-specific, but let’s look at just racing and Thoroughbreds. We talked about Zenyatta — in her five-year-old year, she was at her peak. And that is actually what the data shows — generally, in horse racing, four- and five-year-old Thoroughbreds will beat the three-year-olds. So the big races — the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont — the Triple Crown — is only for three-year-old horses. The Breeders’ Cup Classic is for three-year-olds and older — mares and stallions or geldings. At her peak, at five, Zenyatta beat them all. Then the next year, she lost by a head. She still placed second — I mean, come on. Nineteen and one — incredible career. And that was when she was six.

[18:41]

So, at the peak of her prime, she couldn’t be beat. And the data shows, in Thoroughbreds, four- and five-year-olds are the top of their game. Doesn’t mean three-year-olds can’t win — but in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, that hasn’t been done in 15 years. It really takes an exceptional three-year-old horse on that day to beat the older four- and five-year-old horses. And that’s because four- and five-year-olds are more mature. Like I said, at five they hit their full maturity. In this study, “The Effect of Age on Thoroughbred Racing Performance,” that was published in the Journal of Equine Science a little over 10 years ago, they just looked at performance and age in racing. On average, the peak for all Thoroughbreds was about four and a half, then they start to gradually decrease.

[19:31]

So when you look at just pure speed — okay, so we’ll take out other factors like wins and all that stuff — if we just look at the speed of the horses, two-and-a-half-year-old Thoroughbred — really low. And then they really don’t start to really increase until three and a half years old. Then they peak at four and a half, which maintains a little bit until they’re five, and then you start to see this decrease. When they’re six, it’s lower, and by the time they’re nine, it’s back to similar to when they were two-and-a-half, three years old. So that’s when they peak, and then they go down.

[20:09]

So, not to keep talking about Zenyatta, but she was six when she did that final race, and that was right before she saw, against the averages, this big decrease. So it just shows you the heart that she had and how incredible she was, because by six she was racing against three-, four-, and five-year-olds, and the speed figures would show that she was at a little bit of a disadvantage with her age.

[20:33]

Now, let’s take it away from racing. Let’s look at some other disciplines. This was a very interesting study — and I’m going to summarize it — but it was “The Effects of Horse Age and the Number of Riders on Equine Competitive Performance.” This was out of Europe and published just a couple of years ago.

[21:00]

So really two goals — they were looking at the number of riders over the course of the horse’s career, so it’s like how many times they either changed riders or were bought and sold and moved somewhere else. But I felt the more interesting part of this study was they were trying to identify the age at which a competitive jumping horse reaches its maximum competitive performance.

[21:24]

This was a big study — 3,997 horse competitive result histories were used, and participation in 277,000 — close to 300,000 — jumping competitions. To summarize, what they found is the performance in a jumping horse really culminates — it peaks — between their 9th and 11th year. Beyond that, performance starts to decrease. In the really good horses, performance in the 10th, 11th year — that’s really when they peaked, and then they kind of just reach their peak, they don’t go beyond that, and then they kind of decrease over time.

[22:11]

So when you compare that to racing horses — again, racing horses hit their peak really early. Jumping — probably eventing and show jumping, which I have a study that’s going to talk about that in a second — horses reach their peak midlife, 10, 11, that’s about it, and then they start to gradually decrease. Looking at their results at four years old — very few were competing at the top level of competition. Seven-, eight-, nine-year-olds — doing really well. Then again, peaking that eighth, ninth year, 10th year, they’re there, and then you see this gradual decrease in numbers of horses that are able to compete at the top levels, where this study looked at horses that were 19 and there were still a few in there competing at the top levels in show jumping.

[23:07]

So just because they hit 10 doesn’t mean their careers are over. Sometimes you get these special horses, like good old Old Billy, that push the limits — and that’s exciting data, because as we care for these animals better — better diets, better veterinary care — we’re seeing them live longer and perform better at older ages. So it’s really exciting.

[23:35]

Now, quick on the number of riders — because I mentioned it — this study showed horses with fewer riders, one or two over their careers, did better compared to horses with three to four riders, and then even way better than horses with five or more riders in their prime years. You can look at that data in a bunch of different ways. In my head, I’m thinking, okay — was this horse just kind of a poor performer and so they sold him quickly? Is there behavioral issues with this horse? Did this horse hit some health issues that affected performance? There’s a lot of different factors into that. But if I’m looking to purchase a top show jumping horse, the data shows — in this study at least — that those that have had fewer riders will do better in their careers. So that’s probably something you can put away if you’re out shopping for jumping horses.

[24:32]

Now, when I talked about eventing just a few minutes ago — what is eventing? Eventing, for me, is probably one of the most incredible sports out there in horses, because it combines dressage, show jumping, and cross-country. If you listened to the previous podcast, I talk a little bit about dressage — I’m always blown away whenever I watch horses doing dressage. Those riders are so incredibly talented — doesn’t mean show jumpers aren’t, doesn’t mean our jockeys aren’t — I just watch the riders do dressage, and the cues are so subtle. I think it’s just the epitome of the relationship a rider has with their horse. So I enjoy it just as a lover of horses.

[25:22]

But eventing goes way back to the Olympics — since 1912 — and it combines these three events: dressage, show jumping, and cross-country. Each horse-rider combination takes part in each phase over about three days today, and then they’re judged on all three phases and given a final score. So you’ve got to have a horse that’s extremely talented. And in an upcoming podcast, talking about performance breeds, I’ll talk about some of the top eventing horses in the world.

[25:56]

I found a very interesting study out of the UK, talking about the impacts of horse age, sex, and number of riders on horse performance in British eventing horse trials — and this was published just a couple of years ago. When you dig into the data, the authors state, in all cases and looking at all the data they had — and this was again thousands of data points — when it came to performance, age is the most important variable for predicting how well the horse is going to do. So again, that 8–10-year-old range is really where horses do the best — that’s what their data showed.

[26:39]

Now, when it came to gender, I will say in this study, mares did worse. Geldings overall did best. Mares overall had the worst performance in eventing. Stallions — it depended. They were really polarizing. It’s interesting — when you look into the data, and why they talk about it — you had stallions that did incredibly well, and then you had stallions that did very, very poorly. They associate that with breeding season — stallions could be distracted. We know physical changes that happen in mares and stallions during the breeding season. Stallions tend to have a little bit more cortisol — their head’s not in the game, let’s just put it like that. So that could be some of the impacts, and that’s what the authors stated.

[27:36]

Now, looking at ages at the top level of eventing — mares were 8 to 9 years old, geldings about 10, 11. And then there was no data on stallions because they didn’t have any to make any statistical analysis at that advanced level. I know when we talk about breeds and the top stallions in the world, there are some incredible stallions that are at the top of their game — dressage horses, show jumping horses. This is just this study saying, hey, we didn’t have enough data, so generally, stallions may not be desirable because they are such a handful sometimes.

[28:19]

Taking all that together, though, the authors do admit sex or gender is generally the weakest variable in predicting performance. So that made me think — do male horses perform better than females? Or are geldings better? I know many friends — and being in this for over 20 years — geldings are preferred. They’re great — they’re like puppy dogs. Once you remove their testes and they don’t have that testosterone, they’re less aggressive, and people tend to think they’re easier to train. But I’ve trained stallions, worked with stallions, have had friends that have ridden stallions, and they will say stallions can be the best — and that’s kind of what that data shows. If you have a very well-trained stallion, they’re going to do very well because they have that testosterone, so they’re able to develop more muscle.

[29:11]

Yet Zenyatta — that’s why I opened up with her — she proved them all wrong. She was one of the top Thoroughbreds ever to live, if not the top Thoroughbred. Nineteen and one. So it really makes you think — okay, what does the data say? I’m going to tell you, it’s going to be discipline-specific, I think, and the data isn’t very clear. Like I just showed you with gender — it’s not the true chooser all the time.

[29:47]

I know this from personal experience dealing with reproduction in horses and polo horses. In polo, they want mares — they don’t want geldings or stallions at all. Females always preferred over the males because they perform better in polo, they’re easier to train in polo, and they have greater agility. I’ve ridden polo mares — they can cut on a dime. They are incredible horses — incredibly intelligent.

[30:17]

And working in reproduction, embryo transfer — the research I’ve done and my colleagues down in Argentina — anything in the polo industry, they only want to implant female embryos when they do. In a future podcast, we’ll delve more into reproduction and technologies, but the things we can do today — they are breeding those polo horses for females. So there is definitely a gender bias in polo, and with good reason.

[30:54]

But what about all the other competitive events? In horse racing, you know, Zen was able to compete with the boys because she was such a spectacular horse — she had the numbers, she had the statistics as far as speed, things like that. So you could see it, say, “Oh yeah, she’ll be competitive against the boys. Let’s put her against the boys,” and she raced and beat them. But in some of these other disciplines — eventing, show jumping, dressage — is there a bias?

[31:20]

There was a very interesting study done down near me here in New Zealand and Australia. It was published just three years ago. The title is: Reported Behavioral Differences Between Geldings and Mares Challenge Sex-Driven Stereotypes in Ridden Equine Behavior. The premise of the study was — yes, we know there’s gender bias with polo — but what about in show jumping and some of these other events? Is there a gender bias? So the authors did a large survey of horse owners, and they had 1,233 responses. These were horse enthusiasts, riders — most of them had over eight years riding experience — and they wanted to get these ideas: did you have a preference?

[32:02]

And in fact, they did — riders actually did prefer geldings over mares and stallions. But when they looked at behavior, and then compared it to the breed — so you had all sorts of different breeds of horses that these owners worked with: Andalusians, Arabians, Hanoverians, Quarter Horses, Thoroughbreds, bred crosses, Welsh ponies — so it was a wide range of disciplines. But overall, they preferred geldings. Then when they looked at behavioral differences — so they asked them, “Do you notice these 11 behavioral traits, any differences with your horses?” — the data showed that, and it’s actually kind of funny, they found that mares would be significantly more likely to move away when being caught. And that made me laugh because I’ve worked with hundreds of mares in my reproduction studies, and they never wanted to get caught. But I don’t know what horse does.

[33:00]

And geldings were most likely to be chewing on their lead ropes when tied up, or chew rugs — which I found kind of funny. The other ones — you know, will stand for being clipped, signs of aggression, some of these other things that would be undesirable traits — you don’t see differences between gender. So these authors think there’s some preconditioned or preconceived ideas about horses, and mares particularly, that they’re a little bit more difficult to work with. That could lead to some welfare concerns — that’s a big issue down here in this part of the world. We talk a lot about animal welfare, and mares may be punished more often, people may give up on them quicker than, say, a gelding or a stallion.

[33:54]

So I think that was kind of an interesting study, and that’s again why I talk about Zenyatta and these other super mares — so we can make the playing field even in some of these disciplines. But sorry, boys — in polo they’re not going to want you. Just speaking from experience. And then, you know, in other events like Thoroughbred racing, generally the boys will always do better — they’re just bigger, stronger, faster. But you get one like Zenyatta come along and destroy those myths, or destroy those preconceptions.

[34:25]

Okay, so that leads to behavior. Massive topic. It’s so fun — it’s so fun to study horse behavior. I was literally on the phone the other day talking about this topic with my best friend, Dr. Angie Atkin. We did research together at the University of Florida, and she’s still there while I’m down here in New Zealand. She was one of my first graduate students that came through my program and really impacted my life in so many positive ways, and our families are very close. But we got talking about behavior because she’s the one that got me into behavior — she really talked about how important studying behavior is.

[35:08]

There are some incredible behaviorists — equid behaviorists — out there. Dr. Sue McDonnell’s one of them, many, many others. And when we thought about behavioral differences, we got talking about a couple of things — and one was diet. Because Dr. Atkin’s master’s project was a PhD-level project we did with Dr. Lori Warren there in Florida. That was feeding pregnant mares during their last 90 days of pregnancy and then through lactation — we were supplementing them with DHA omega-3 fatty acids, which we find in cold-water fish — tuna, salmon.

[36:03]

What we found as far as behavior was incredible, and this was all Dr. Atkin’s urging. So what she did is she looked to see how easily foals — you know, fear responses, as far as target training — then she went and looked at them a year later, and then two years later, to look at memory and training ability. Going to talk about this more in the future, but in general what she found is mares that were supplemented with DHA — and for many women, if you look at prenatal vitamins today, DHA is a big one on there because it’s believed, and the science is showing, it helps with brain development in utero during gestation and then postpartum when babies are nursing — foals are nursing.

[36:39]

To summarize this whole study — the foals that she found were easily trained, less fearful. Then a year later, they were able to be trained to bridle a lot quicker, they were less fearful when crossing a tarp or a novel object, and this carried on to the second year — memory recall. These horses were able to recall tasks easier than horses that weren’t supplemented. So that’s tying behavior in with diet, right? And diet is such a big one in performance, and that’s going to get its own podcast one day. It is so important that we give these horses all of the proper nutrients to be able to gestate foals that come out smarter. It’s giving you a competitive edge.

[37:31]

So this is all the research that’s ongoing around the world now, compared to, say, 20, 30, 40 years ago. That’s why I get excited about it, and I keep talking about all these studies — I’m like, “Look at this! Look at this!” — because there are so many great researchers out there doing so much great work. And it impacts you — if you have a foal or a yearling or a two-year-old that’s easier to train, that remembers the tasks quicker, is smarter, that’s going to make them more competitive — but it makes your life easier, too, and they’re safer to be around.

[37:58]

So that was fascinating. In this talk with Dr. Atkin, we got talking about — okay, because she’s my expert on behavior and I always turn to her — and she’s got such an incredible mind — and we were talking about, well, is there a tie with temperament because of this study looking at mares that are a little bit harder to catch? And we both giggled, talking about geldings chewing rugs — we were cracking up about that. But is there any association with temperament of a horse and its ability to perform?

[38:33]

She told me there is some work ongoing looking at startle response in horses and then tracking their careers. We don’t have definitive data yet. I got asking — I’m like, well, you know, because a lot of my background was horse racing and then Western riding — but I said, “You know, I remember horses at the racetrack wear blinders,” and we had this interesting conversation about why. You know, why would you put blinders on a racehorse? We just talked about senses, how they see the world — we know horses have a 350-degree view. But when you put blinders on, you take that away so you focus them in on binocular vision, right?

[39:19]

So we had this long discussion, and when you do a little bit of digging, yes — that’s why they use blinders. The trainer is really trying to reduce any distractions to the horse, focus them forward, running down the track, trying to reduce any startle reaction. So this could be a horse that is flighty, maybe temperament’s a little off — but also, they think it promotes a competitive edge.

[39:49]

So I did do some digging and found a very interesting study on temperament and how well Danish Warmbloods were evaluated in performance trials. This was a study in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science published in 2014. They looked at 322 Danish Warmbloods — and funny enough, they were all female, about three years of age — and they were going through their field tests for Danish Warmblood mares. I think gender you take out of it — it’s really what they were looking at, which is the reactivity of the horse and their grades during this test.

[40:21]

So they had a four-point behavioral score system: zero — no reactions; one — a little bit of reaction; two — you’re getting some head movement, pawing, snorting, sideways 90-degree movement; and then three — like defecation, rearing, other behaviors of being fearful, right? That fight-or-flight response. When they looked at the data of these mares, the results suggested that highly reactive horses actually did receive lower grades in rideability and free jumping. Yet when it came to dressage, there was no difference — they couldn’t find any difference in that. But again, it can show you behavioral differences, maybe by discipline, and it’s definitely an area to investigate further.

[41:11]

It’s an area that we need more research in. We really need more research in looking at equine behavior. And just my experience in academia and going to these equine meetings — most of it’s about nutrition because it’s so critical to their overall health and performance. But we need more research in the areas of behavior because I think if the industry, or specific disciplines, want to learn more about what makes a champion a champion, that’s an area that we really need a lot more research in. But I will do more digging, so when we get to a behavioral podcast we can talk a little bit about that.

[41:59]

To wrap all this up, I think the most important thing is heart. Your champion horses — your Zenyatta, your Verdiros, one of the greatest Dutch Warmbloods; your Stroller, a pony — a 14.1 pony — that won show jumping at the Olympics; and then you’ve got your Sapphire, your world championship mare. It takes heart, it takes grit, it takes determination, it takes proper diet, and then it takes a lot of love from you. You are the key to this horse’s success. There is no doubt a rider’s skill plays a big role in how well a horse does in competitions — don’t forget that. Yet behind every one of you great riders, well, there’s a great horse.

[43:01]

[Music] It’s such… I spend hours — I’m telling you, I’m spending hours and hours looking up studies, reading the latest research in this one area, and I’m learning so much. Despite my 20-plus years of teaching and doing research in reproductive physiology and in general equine 101 courses and nutrition, I’m still learning new things. And I really am hoping that you’re learning with me. If you are, and if you’re enjoying this podcast, I just ask that you give us a five-star review on Spotify and iTunes, or whatever app you’re listening to. If you don’t mind just clicking the five stars, writing some comments — that will make this all worth it. And I just want to thank those that have already given us five stars.

[44:01]

Also be sure to subscribe — it’s going to help us get this information out and circulate so we can make the world better for horses. And then, if you don’t mind sharing this with your equine-enthusiast friends, just say, “Hey, check out this podcast.” If there’s one — we’re at episode 10 — if there’s one that you really enjoy, say, “Listen to this.” Week in, week out, we’re going to keep bringing these topics, tell these stories — tell these stories of not only famous racehorses, but how about Old Billy? You know — how did Old Billy live to be 62? Or how do horses today live into their 40s and 50s? And maybe we will eclipse that 62 at some point.

[44:50]

So those are the stories we want to be telling — and then just provide free education. This is free — it’s free to you, free to anybody. So if you don’t mind giving back just a little bit and sharing this with friends on social media, we will absolutely go bonkers and appreciate it. You can also go to our website, madbarn.com — that “Learn” tab — we just pushed out today the Falabella breed guide. I just… I had the biggest grin on my face — the cutest, smallest horse breed in the world. So go check that out — madbarn.com under the Learn tab. There’s a whole host of articles — over 400 — and as I do these podcasts I go back and go, “Oh, we need an article on this,” or, “We need an article on that.” So we will keep building that base of knowledge that’s free — free to you, free to anybody.

[45:35]

Also check us out on social media — Instagram, TikTok, Facebook — just look for Mad Barn. Any comments or any topics, please email me: podcast@madbarn.com. I just, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for listening, thank you for subscribing, thank you for all the five-star reviews. And just stay tuned — some great episodes coming your way.

[46:06]

[Music]