Transcript:

[0:04]

[Music] Do you ever imagine what your horse would do each day if they could decide what they wanted to do?

[0:10]

To set the scene: a little over 10 years ago I had set up my camera. I was outside a large pasture or paddock — multiple acres — and I had my set of binoculars and a stopwatch. I was about to start recording behaviors on one of the most endangered equids on the planet.

[0:27]

This was in Florida — a warm day, as usual for that part of the world — and I just stood in awe of these creatures. I was excited, because it was my first behavioral study that I was ever going to do, and I felt at the time that I was actually going to be doing some good in helping preserve this very rare species of equid.

[1:00]

I set up my timer, pressed “go,” the camera was recording, and every 15 seconds my timer would vibrate. I would look at my focal animal and write down what they were doing. I would do this for 30 minutes, take a break, and do it again and again all day. I was so excited, because behavior is such a fun area of research — not only in horses but in any animal — just watching their behaviors and what they do day in and day out.

[1:46]

Just to give you a glimpse of doing this research — and we did this over a few months — I would look up through my binoculars at my focal animal. They all looked pretty similar, but with the ear notches and other little defining marks I was able to determine what this Somali wild ass was doing.

[2:06]

15 seconds — boom — look up: foraging. Then I would take my pen and write down on my paper, on the ethogram: foraging. 15 seconds later — it goes quick — boom — look up: foraging, write it down. Look up: foraging, write it down. Look up — you guessed it — foraging, and wrote it down.

[2:37]

At the end of this research experiment I went back to Dr. Angie Atkin, who trained me in behavior research, and I said, “Angie, this is the most boringest study I’ve ever done in my life.” But you know what? I learned more by studying their behavior. It was those few moments when you looked up and they were doing anything but foraging — affiliative behavior (that was so rare), or moving, or urinating — anything but foraging. You would get excited when you looked up in that 15 seconds. But that’s what they do — that is the day in the life of an equid.

[3:21]

And the day in the life of a horse...

[3:27]

[Archival audio] Secretary being led — he is the horse, and the horse is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? 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…

[3:41]

The love — I never thought owning a horse could mean so much to me… Secretariat not taking the lead… The madness — what kind of a horse is that? I’ve never seen a horse like that before… Tightening now… He is moving like a tremendous machine…

[3:59]

Their story… Mustangs are 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’s going to be the Triple Crown winner!

[4:12]

Welcome to Mad About Horses. Hello, I’m Dr. Chris Mortensen. I’ve been an equine educator and researcher for over 20 years, and in this episode of Mad About Horses we’re going to talk about a day in the life of a horse and a day in the life of some of the other equids.

[4:33]

Now, I opened up talking about the Somali wild ass, and I was very fortunate — and I’m going to go a little bit more into that study — because we did do a comparison between the Grevy’s zebra (which is endangered) and our domestic horses, and we compared their time budgets — what they did day in and day out on pastures under human care. Granted, this wasn’t out in the wild.

[5:00]

The Somali wild ass — there’s maybe one to two hundred left in the wild, in Ethiopia and Eritrea, that part of Africa. The Grevy’s zebra — it’s thought there’s a couple thousand in East Africa. But it was very amazing to look at one of the most rare equids on the planet and hopefully do some research that helped the conservation center we were working with there in Florida, White Oak, understand their equids a little bit better.

[5:33]

But it did give insight into what wild equids do day in and day out, and that brings me to why I care about this. If you own horses, this is a critical podcast for you. If you’re interested in horses, you probably want to listen to this podcast, because like I opened up — behavior is a fascinating topic and so fun to study, to an extent, with equids. But it’s so important — it is so important to know what their natural behaviors are, because it explains why we manage them the way we do.

[6:07]

Why the way we feed them is changing — because we’ve done so much behavior research in the last couple decades that we now realize how we manage them is critical to their overall health. Looking at what a horse or an equid does day in and day out helps us give insight into: okay, we need to extend feeding hours, we need to feed more hay, how long do we turn them out, when do we turn them out? All of these questions surround the idea of: what is their natural behavior? How do we support them?

[6:54]

One thing we haven’t even talked about — and we’ll touch upon at the end of this podcast — is abnormal behaviors, because we’ve seen a big increase in that in maybe hundreds of years. When I do a podcast specifically on stereotypies — I know colic has been something domestic horses have experienced for thousands of years, we have it in the literature — but how we manage them today has a direct impact on incidence of colic. All of that.

[7:18]

So, starting off on our natural horse behavior — it is one of the reasons in this podcast that I started with their history. I do allude to it a little bit in those episodes talking about not domestication, but going before that: the evolution of the horse, how they’ve evolved from little Eohippus standing three foot tall at the shoulder, four toes on the front feet, three toes on the back feet — and then throughout that evolution, getting to that mid-range Mesohippus that maybe browses on leaves but starts to graze, and then getting into Equus, and then Equus caballus — today’s domestic horses.

[7:57]

Now we have a Shire horse that stands over 6 feet tall at the shoulder, or 19 hands — massive beasts. How did we get there? And then, what did they do before 5,500 years ago when we corralled them and said, “Hey, you’re going to be our companion. And hey, we’re going to saddle you. And hey, you’re going to pull this cart. And hey, you’re going to go do chariot racing. Or hey, play polo,” or some of these more ancient sports?

[8:28]

The only thing we can really do to look at what normal horse behavior is, is look at those wild equids. This is what Dr. Atkin proposed when we were working with White Oak. She came to my office — I had not done behavioral studies before; I was really into reproductive physiology, nutrition, exercise physiology — that was my focus of my research program at the time. She sold me very easily on behavior, because I thought this was going to be so great — we’re going to go out and watch them do affiliative behavior and allogrooming and all these wonderful things.

[9:02]

And you do get to see those — it depends on how you set up your study — but like I opened up with, it’s mostly watching them eat. But if you talk to her and ask Dr. Atkin what’s so great about it, she’ll tell you she could watch horses eat all day long — that just… she loves it. It is what drives her in some of her research. She sold me on it, and we designed this study.

[9:24]

What we were looking at is differences in the critically endangered Somali wild ass, the endangered Grevy’s zebra, and domestic horses that were housed at the University of Florida. We did this over a period of months — late spring, early summer — so it was warm (Florida’s always generally warm). We collected the data 8 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. Now, in further studies that I’m going to talk about, behavior does change throughout the day, so we’re going to talk a little bit about that. But basically we were just trying to get a snapshot: what are these animals doing each day on these large pastures — especially when we’re comparing our domestic horses to our wild counterparts — because again, we’re trying to help the conservation center understand their equids better, to help manage them.

[10:18]

Because when I was looking at the Somali wild ass — that was one of the last of their kind, with less than 300 left on earth — when you look at that animal and you go, “Wow, you’re one of 300, or one of possibly 150” — that population was that low — it was a special moment in my life, and I’m glad Dr. Atkin sold me on this.

[10:38]

So we set this study up — and I’ve got to give Dr. Atkin credit. She helped write the ethogram, and so the ethogram is basically a list of behaviors that we’re looking for. Some of them are reproductive-related, but then also like chasing, fleeing, flehmen response, marking behaviors — some of those were just the reproductive behaviors.

[11:02]

Then we did social behavior — so aggression, affiliative (which is friendly), submissive. You saw that a lot with younger animals. And then the maintenance behaviors — and that’s where we’re going to spend a lot of time in this podcast: what do horses do every day? Because very rarely do you see some social behaviors or reproductive behaviors — it just depends. They pop up.

[11:24]

Just to give you an example of the entire study — just in horses — 2.3% of their day was social behavior. We didn’t have stallions in with the mares that we studied, so we didn’t get reproductive behaviors, but in the Grevy’s zebras reproductive behaviors were less than 1% of the time, and that was a lot of following them around to see if they were in heat, stuff like that.

[11:52]

Social behaviors — just really quick, across the three species: Somali wild ass, 3% of the day was doing social behaviors; Grevy’s zebras, 2% of the day was social behaviors; and the mares, 2.3% of the day was social behaviors — with most of them affiliative behavior.

[12:11]

A lot of that is reinforcing social bonds. These are animals that know each other — they’re family groups and they’re all used to being around each other. So their affiliative behaviors are the ones like allogrooming (they groom each other), friendly nickers, things like that.

[12:29]

We saw very little aggression. So the flip side of that — the Somali wild ass, 0.17% of the day. So very, very rarely would you catch aggressive behaviors. And the Grevy’s zebra was 0.9%. We saw no aggression at all in mares. I’ve been around a lot of mares, I’ve done a lot of reproductive research, I’ve seen aggression between mares — and I see that a lot when we’re moving them, or trying to catch them, or humans interfering with them.

[13:05]

This research was done outside the pastures or paddocks. They couldn’t see us, or generally wouldn’t see us, and ignored us as we did our observations throughout the day. Okay, so there was no human interaction.

[13:17]

The whole gist of this episode is to look at the maintenance behaviors — and I’m going to give you different scenarios and talk about different maintenance behaviors. So what do they do all day? Like I opened up with — they’re eating. They’re eating, eating, eating.

[13:29]

If we look at the Grevy’s zebras, they actually spent less time eating — only 46.4% of the day was spent foraging. The Somali wild ass — close to 59% of the day. Whereas our horses, who were really the focus of this podcast, were 67% of the day. So in a large pasture, mares have plenty of forage to graze — 67% of the time, they would eat.

[13:57]

The next biggest behavior was standing — so that was where they’re just inactive or even resting. They could be resting their eyes, taking small bouts of sleep. Grevy’s zebras rested a lot more — 28% of the time; Somali wild ass, surprisingly, only 7% of the time standing; and then 18% of the time for horses.

[14:18]

Where the Somali wild ass rested a lot was lying down. So lying-down behavior — Somali wild ass was 11% of the time; 6% of the time for Grevy’s zebra; but mares — domestic horses — 8%. So rarely did the mares ever lay down.

[14:37]

Then the next biggest behaviors were locomotion — so up to about 5% of the day they’ll move, and that’s as they move and graze, right? Move to little spots or move to different parts of the pasture.

[14:51]

So overall, what a horse is meant to do is feed — forage all day. And that makes absolute 100% sense. The way their physiology is created is to eat small meals all day. Horses have a really small stomach. They go and nibble grass all day long, it goes through their digestive system — that’s the way the digestive system is set up, that’s how they’ve evolved over the last 50–60 million years — and they’re just meant to eat these small meals all day long.

[15:23]

That is why a lot of this behavior research has driven changes in how we manage them. Now, you may ask yourself: “Okay, what about wild horses?” That’s a wild zebra and a wild ass — what about a wild horse?

[15:35]

Well, if you go back a few episodes, we talk about Equus ferus — the original wild horse — which is extinct. We’ve domesticated them all. So our next closest caballine horse is the Przewalski’s horse. Now, the Przewalski’s horse was critically endangered — almost went extinct — down to 12 breeding animals in the 1960s and early ’70s.

[16:00]

Thankfully, a group of conservationists, horse enthusiasts, and equid enthusiasts around the world came together and said, “Hey, we’re going to save this species.” So they got them together and started to breed them, to where now we have a couple thousand — over 2,000 — and they’ve been re-released in the wild in Mongolia. And I have a study here in a second that’s going to talk about that.

[16:18]

If we compare the study that we did at the University of Florida — Dr. Atkin and I — and we compare that data to something similar with the Przewalski horse, because you could say, “Okay, that’s a wild horse,” there was a study published in 1988, which was interesting because there were less than 600 Przewalski horses at that time when they did this study.

[16:42]

This was done at Front Royal, Virginia — which is an incredible research center, one of the reasons the Przewalski horse is here today. They do a lot of conservation research in endangered species. So they had a small herd in a large pasture, and they observed their behavior over 24 hours.

[17:02]

Now, they were given some concentrate in the middle of the day, but overall data — if you look at their feed/forage — 46% of their day is foraging or feeding. So less than our domestic horses from the study that we did, but very similar to the other wild equids. Their next biggest part of their day was standing, like the others — 20% of the time standing awake, and then 15% of the time standing resting. But again, most of their day was spent feeding.

[17:36]

And what was really interesting about this — and it made me think about our study design — we should have done it over 24 hours. These Przewalski horses, once they were fed their grain, their feed/forage went down. So maybe they had gut fill, they just didn’t feel like foraging a lot. Could have been a little bit warmer time of day. In the afternoons, their foraging behavior was greatest from 8:00 at night until 4:00 in the morning.

[18:09]

From 8:00 at night to midnight, these Przewalski horses were foraging over 68% of the time. And then in the morning, from midnight to 4:00 in the morning, 60% of the time they were foraging. Then it went down — the lowest was 38% of the time after they’d gotten that concentrated meal, till 4:00 in the afternoon. So that was their low point — a little less than 40% of the time feed/forage — whereas they foraged a lot late at night and early, early morning.

[18:43]

Now, that was in a large pasture-style paddock. If we go and look at what the research data is showing in the wild Przewalski horses — the ones that have been released — this was a study published 20 years ago: “Reintroduction of the Takhi” (that’s the Przewalski horse, Equus ferus przewalskii) to the Hustai National Park of Mongolia.

[19:11]

In this study, they looked at the Przewalski horses pre-release — so they were held on large pastures in Mongolia — then they did post-release, so right after they released them, what was their behavior? Then they came two years later and said, “Okay, what is their behavior?”

[19:29]

When you look at their pre-release data, they’re grazing about 54% of the time, moving 8% of the time, standing/resting close to 35% of the time. So similar statistics to, I would say, the Somali wild ass, Grevy’s zebras. So it seems like these wild equids graze for more than 50% of the day, and they stand or rest other parts of the day.

[19:56]

Post-release, right away, the one thing that stood out is they grazed similarly — 55% of the day was grazing — but they did move more, and they did notice they seemed more stressed.

[20:15]

This was a new environment for them, and it was a large national park — this wasn’t a fenced pasture. So you can infer some things on that, as far as any time a horse is introduced to a new environment, they’re going to be stressed — and they did see that.

[20:28]

Now, when they came two years later, this was really interesting — they dropped to 44% of the day grazing, and they only moved less than 13.3% of the time, rested 32% of the time. So again, the greatest was grazing — close to 45% of the day. Almost half the day they spent grazing, a third of the day they spent resting, and then moving was about 13.3% of the day.

[20:52]

Thinking about wild horses — what they said in this study, they inferred, was they watched them travel to their water source. So they had to travel a couple kilometers to get water, then they would travel a couple kilometers to go find shade or shelter, and then they would travel to go to their favorite grazing sites.

[21:17]

Now, in 1996 they said the pastures — the grasslands — that they were on were very lush and had really great quality forage. So all of these Przewalski horses were in really good body condition score, and they felt that they didn’t graze as much because they were eating such great forage that was really dense and had a lot of nutrients.

[21:40]

It just shows you again — half the day, wild horses — even Przewalski horses, and zebras, and Somali wild ass — they eat. They graze. They graze at least half the day, whereas domestic horses were grazing more than 60% of the day.

[21:58]

Also, to follow up on what they observed at Front Royal in Virginia with their Przewalski horses — these ones, their grazing behavior was greater once it was late at night and then through the early morning hours.

[22:16]

And I’m sitting there thinking — okay, why? Why? Why? Go back to how horses see the world: spectacular night vision, it’s cooler, and they’re able to see predators, probably, and graze undisturbed in the cool of the night. They don’t have that sun beating down on them. It’s very interesting behavior.

[22:39]

And you can take that data and say, “Okay, how do we apply it to domestic horses?” And that’s when you want to turn them out — you want to turn horses out at night, in the mornings — because their natural behavior seems to be to want to graze during those times of the day, rather than the heat of the day.

[23:04]

When a lot of us — I’ve done it in Texas — I used to turn out Tara, I talked about her, in the heat of the day. I got back from school, I’d let her out in the afternoon to get some exercise and stretch, and, you know, get ready to ride or whatever we were going to do for the day before I stalled her in the evening.

[23:16]

So, very interesting to look at this data and see how it affects how we manage these animals. Now, to tie all the large pasture behavior up — there is a study that was done out of France looking at domestic horses and their 24-hour time budgets.

[23:34]

Adult mares — very much similar to what we found in the University of Florida. Their foraging behavior was close to 63% of the day; we reported 67% of the day, they reported 63%. Movement — locomotion — 5.6% of the day; we were very similar at close to 6% of the day. So five-and-a-half to 6% of the day, the horses were moving.

[24:01]

Standing/resting — 20% of the day in this study; we reported 19%. So very, very similar. So if you’re looking at domestic horses, they probably want to graze about 60% of the day, and they’re going to stand or rest about 20% of the day. Then they do all their other behaviors in that remaining 20% of their time budgets.

[24:26]

The next big point about that, though, is you’ve got to have enough pasture, enough forage, for these horses to be able to express those natural behaviors. So it begs the question: what happens if they’re too densely packed? If there’s too many horses in a paddock or on a pasture?

[24:46]

There was a very interesting study done in Tunisia that was published in Applied Animal Behaviour in 2008, and this was a case study at a breeding center that had very densely packed horses. The authors do recognize right off the bat — this is a concern for animal welfare, and they’re studying horses in highly unfavorable conditions to evaluate their time budgets.

[25:24]

This is extreme. This study is looking at an extreme example of too many horses in a small, confined area. They had horses in box stalls in the evening overnight, and then they were released from 9:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon into these densely packed paddocks, where it was roughly 200 horses per hectare. Now, a hectare is 2.47 acres, so this was roughly 100 mares per acre — stuffed in there.

[25:51]

The horses were given some cut grass around noon. So, just — not a great situation for these horses. And so, what did they do? Well, feeding was less than 25% of the time. So whatever little grass they could protect or get, they would spend a quarter of their time eating.

[26:09]

Moving — locomotion — went up to 28%. So comparing that to 5% that we’ve seen in some of these other animals, these horses were moving all the time, probably due to the stress, due to a lot of social aggression. They reported the agonistic behavior — the aggressive behavior — was roughly 2.5 instances per hour. So, constantly agitated, constantly angry at your neighbor, right?

[26:51]

Stand/resting — 24% of the day. So again, a quarter of the day feeding whatever they could, they were moving most of the time at 28% of the day, and then resting for 24%. They were alert close to 15% of the day. If you go back to our other studies — just the one that we did — horses were alert about 4% of the day; the study in France, 5% of the day.

[27:28]

So you’re seeing a lot of abnormal, aggressive, stress-related behaviors when you pack horses in too much. And that is a pasture density, or a paddock density, issue. Horses — it’s probably a topic worthwhile on its own podcast one day, talking about this, looking more into this — what is the stocking rate of a pasture? That is always a big question you get all the time in horse care, because you want to make sure you protect your pastures in pasture management, make sure your grass is growing, you don’t have to replace it all the time, and costs involved — there’s so many factors that go into that.

[28:04]

But in general — and this is very, very broad — one acre per horse in very productive pastures; two acres per horse for most pastures is what I’ve always taught; three or more acres depending on your pasture quality. And if I think to the United States, I think of like New Mexico — desert region — versus Florida, where grass was always growing most of the year and they were pretty productive. But they do have times in the year when they’re not. So that could vary — it’s just not “Hey, I have productive pastures in the spring and fall,” but over summer, you know, in the heat — doesn’t matter where you live on the planet — most pastures are not going to be that productive.

[28:49]

So, it’s a whole different podcast, because that is such an important thing. But it just shows you — if you pack them in too much, even in a dry lot situation, horses are very stressed if they cannot express these natural behaviors.

[29:02]

Okay, the next one — that’s pastures too densely packed — what about stalled horses? And this made me think of turnout time. And like I said, I used to turn out my horses in the late afternoon, evening — because that’s most of us. We work, or we have, you know, we’re doing other things — it’s just going to be difficult for some people to turn out at these optimal times.

[29:28]

Because stalled horses is very common — it’s very common to stall horses around the world, no matter where you are. Horses that are in training, or competing at events, or that’s the only option you have is to have them stalled — all horses need to get out every day.

[29:51]

And there’s a great article on madbarn.com — I’m going to link it in the show notes — and it’s a guide to turnout for horses: benefits, safety, and schedule. And in there, like I said, the data supports it — night turnout is the best for horses, and it’s advised they get at least 12 hours per day. So I will link that article in the show notes so you can go read and look at that more. A very easy read, very well spelled out on why it’s so important to the horse and their health — you know, they need that fresh air, they need that social interaction, they need to stretch their legs.

[30:24]

Here’s a study showing an example of stalled horses, and this was published in 1994. This was looking at the Queen’s horses — this is the Household Cavalry in London. So these are working horses that have a specific job, and this was a thesis by Thomas, Sim, Ogal, and Graham, and they were looking at the time budget of these cavalry horses that are used in parades. Gorgeous — I mean, just gorgeous, gorgeous animals.

[31:02]

And again, talking about — and this is why a lot of things have changed in the last couple decades for horses, so much for the better — because you’re talking about what’s best for the animal. Animal welfare — it’s in our consciousness now.

[31:20]

In this study, when they looked at what these horses did every day, they were only getting exercised — if they weren’t working, if they weren’t out on parade or training — just on a normal day, they would get exercise for one and a half hours, roughly, or 5% of their day. They were out exercising not very much. And then the rest of the day they were stalled.

[31:39]

While they were stalled, they only spent 36% of their time eating. When you compare that to what horses should be doing — that’s what they’re built for, their digestive systems are built for — they should be out foraging. And when you see a stalled horse only eating 36% of the time, what did they do with the rest of the day?

[32:02]

When they looked at alert behavior, it’s not a big difference — up to 7.5%. So, being in stalls, maybe they were a little bit more alert; there was probably a lot going on — again, these are soldiers with their cavalry horses.

[32:14]

Standing was what these horses did all day. Close to 58% of the day they just stood in their stalls. That was it. They weren’t getting out very much, and they were not eating much. They’d eat their meals — I mean, they’re fat, they’re beautiful, well-kept horses — but they just stood there for close to 60% of the day. Out on pasture, they’re foraging for 60% of the day. So this is why we start to see all these abnormal behaviors, and we start seeing all these other issues we see with their health — because we’ve confined them to these box stalls, and they’re not able to exhibit these natural behaviors.

[32:57]

So again, go back to that article about turnout time, because that will help you develop a strategy on what’s best for your horse. Now, if we take it to another study — here was one on ponies published a few years ago. Ponies that were given hay — enough hay to eat all day, so they had ad libitum hay — but they were stalled. When they were stalled and had enough hay to eat all day, they were eating close to 70% of the day. Standing was close to 18% of the day.

[33:30]

What you can draw from that is when you give them enough hay to eat — because that’s what they’re doing, feed/foraging — they will spend time in their stalls eating hay. Yet they can’t go out and express their normal social behaviors, exercise, things like that. So that goes back to turnout time. Much better situation, say, compared to those cavalry horses that are being given big meals probably twice a day — that’s what we used to feed back in the day — versus a stalled horse that has as much hay as they want to eat.

[34:05]

Now, the last study that I wanted to mention — this was just published this month in 2023 — was “Time Budget and Welfare Indicators of Stabled Horses in Three Different Stall Architectures.” They were looking at different stall sizes — so you had like a 10×12, and then a 10×8 stall — and then if they opened to an inner aisle or an outside patio. And then the other one was tactile contact with conspecifics — so were they able to go nose-to-nose contact with other horses? And could they see them? In all the stall designs they could see other horses, but only in one could they touch them.

[35:01]

These horses were being fed hay twice a day, and then a commercial concentrate twice a day. So they’re being fed at four different times — which is good, you know — you always want to feed hay first. And these were all horses that were used to being stalled, and they were show jumping, dressage, and therapy horses — equine-assisted therapy, always love those animals.

[35:14]

Now, the authors state: keeping horses in single stalls can lead to the development of abnormal and stereotypic behaviors. These are the abnormal behaviors due to stress. And they were looking at this in this study to see if these horses exhibited that — things like cribbing, licking, kicking, head shaking, pawing, weaving (I’ve seen this plenty of times in stalled horses — that’s where they just move side to side, and you can just tell that animal is stressed). Abnormal behaviors like eating their bedding, wood chewing, or coprophagy — which is eating their feces.

[36:08]

Overall, when they looked at eating — it was less than 20% of the day, because they were given 2 kilograms of alfalfa hay a day (that’s a little over four pounds of alfalfa hay) — so you’re looking at like one flake of alfalfa twice a day. And then their concentrate, which was 3.5 and 1.2 kilograms (about 7 and 2.6 pounds) twice a day. So no wonder they ate their meal so quick — they could gobble through that very quickly.

[36:42]

So again, when a horse out on pasture or out in the wild is foraging 50–60% of the day, here, for 20% of the day these horses were feeding — didn’t matter what the stall type. Then they also noticed in this study, every single horse had a stereotypic behavior. The one — bed eating — they all did. They all ate their bedding. But then when you looked at the others, it was: wood chewing — 93% of the horses did that; 65% of them were eating their feces; and they all were excessive licking and head shaking. Half of them were head shaking; 25% of them were weaving; 25% of them were box walking.

[37:25]

All of this stereotypic behavior was observed in these horses being stalled 24/7. These horses were only given one hour of exercise a day, and that was it — no turnout time, things like that. So no wonder they would develop a lot of these stereotypic behaviors that they saw.

[37:44]

Now, there’s another article on madbarn.com — “Eight Common Stereotypic Behaviors in Horses and What They Mean.” You can check that out — again, that’s another one I will link in the show notes. And if you work with horses long enough, you’re going to run into stereotypic behavior, and that will give you some insight. And we’re going to talk about it in a future podcast.

[38:02]

But it all leads to the changes in management. So we’re seeing things like hay nets — there’s a ton of research ongoing right now with the use of hay nets. You also see enrichment for stalled horses with stable toys, things like that. But again — exercise, turnout time — all of that. Because it goes back to the wild horse — if you go back to our wild equids, imagine what they do day in, day out, then see how we’ve confined them and how we care for them today — how that has changed. So we need to find that happy balance where we can help them be able to express their behaviors the way they are built to do that.

[38:49]

Because in the end, it’s going to make the world better for them — but it’s also going to make the world better for you. Happy horse, happy owner, right? That’s a tagline of this podcast. And never forget what they do for you — so let’s turn around and do our best for them.

[39:07]

[Music] Hopefully you enjoyed that podcast. Behavior is definitely something we’re going to return to over and over, but it is so important to understand how they spend their day. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t — just click the subscribe button.

[39:26]

And if you’re still listening, if you don’t mind just taking 30 seconds to a minute on your podcasting app — just go to rate, click a five-star, write a few comments — thank you so much. It helps distribute this, it gets seen more, more horse owners can find us and get this information. Because it’s all about the horse — that’s what it’s about — and then making your life better, right? So, free education — that’s what we do. Madbarn.com — check us out, go check the Learn tab. Those articles will be linked in the show notes, but anything else you’re looking for — just published articles on gaits, gait abnormalities, breed guides are coming out left, right, and center. Over 400-something articles now, more on their way.

[40:15]

Also check us out on social media — Madbarn on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And you can always email me — podcast@madbarn.com — any comment, any topics, what’s a hot topic, what’s something that you are dying to learn more about — let us know, and we will write an article on that if we can, and also make it a podcast episode. But thank you so much for learning, and thank you so much for caring about your horses as much as you do — they deserve it, right? Or your donkeys — I always don’t forget the donkeys and the mules and all the others. But thank you so much for listening. Take care.