Enrichment for every horse every day
Winter is a tough time for all horse owners and it can be tough for our horses too. Many need to be stabled in the evening, long nights can mean long hours stood in. Horses actually spend a small portion of their day sleeping so what do they do all night? What would they be doing if they had a choice?
Anyone who knows me will know how much value I put on environmental enrichment and I wanted to spend some time looking at what enrichment is and why it is so important that we increase the use of it across the board for our horses, donkeys and mules and start to view it as part of everyday management instead of an added extra. Ultimately horses are a captive species that are commonly kept in an environment which restricts and limits their display of natural behaviours, enrichment is not just for zoo animals but for all animals that are kept in a restricted environment.
Environmental enrichment is how we adapt the available environment to optimise an animals sensory stimulation and provide choice. We can positively influence our equids emotional state and therefore their welfare by providing a complex environment for them to occupy.
Enrichment can be seen as an extra to be added to the horses day, a treat ball or a swede on a rope for them to tackle and enjoy. These added items have a very valid place in enrichment of an environment but there is so much more that we can consider about our horses environment that can be enriching and last longer. What are we actually trying to achieve when we add in toys? What is the aim of the enrichment? Young 2003 considers the 5 aims of enrichment to be;
1. Increase (species specific) behavioural diversity
2. Reduce the frequencies of abnormal behaviours
3. Increase the range of wild behaviour patterns
4. Increase positive utilisation of the environment
5. Increase the ability to cope with challenges in a normal way.
But what does that really mean? Well in summary we are aiming, by providing an enriched environment, to allow our horses and other equids to show more equid specific behaviour like mutual grooming, play amongst stallions and youngsters and foraging whilst reducing the motivation for abnormal behaviours to develop or occur. We are aiming to achieve a more wild rhythm to our equids day including an appropriate environment for sleep and natural foraging times. We are aiming to optimise how they use their environment maybe by increasing movement which will in turn give the opportunity to reduce obesity and improve fitness. Finally we are aiming to help our animals cope, cope with the challenges they face in our domestic life, this can be by ethically training them for experiences they will have or it can be by minimising stressors in their environment to reduce chronic stress and ensure they maintain a healthy stress response.
To ensure we are making the right choices for what our horses consider important we can look at how our equids have evolved. They have spent around 55 million years evolving to be a social prey species and are strongly driven to stay safe and stay together. There are 4 things that stand out as being important for them;
The need for social contact and how the quality of their social interactions can affect their levels of stress. Aggression is uncommon in feral or wild populations but more prevalent in domestic horse environments. Social structure, social opportunities and resource availability can influence the rates shown. Increasing social contact especially in stabled horses can reduce stereotypic behaviour.
The need for forage, if forage is restricted there are physical and mental implications including an increased risk of ulcers and increased risk of stereotypic behaviours which indicates how stressful horses find forage restriction.
The need for choice, in a natural environment our equids are making choices with every mouthful of grass, herb, browsing plant that they take. They choose where to go dependent on the weather, shelter available and biting insect occurrence. They choose their social group, young animals choose to leave or stay, stallions interact with youngsters and mares and mares choose who to socialise with within the herd and if they are going to stay when a new stallion comes into the herd.
The amount of movement they experience, constant walking and foraging, bursts of canter, head position variability, play with their social group which varies with age and gender.
In our domestic environment it is nearly impossible to recreate a free living horse existence so we can all consider how we can optimise the space and environment we have to offer to meet these important needs. In a natural environment horses will choose to graze and forage for a high proportion of the day, studies show a range of times from 14 to 20 hours depending on age, nutritional need and quality of the forage on offer. The pattern is for regular eating, so the stomach is rarely empty. During foraging they are moving almost constantly, choosing the best plants around them to eat and then moving on. When they are not foraging their time is taken with rest and social interactions, a horse needs to sleep for around 3 or 4 hours a day. Their sleep is taken in two distinct but equally important ways, standing rest with light drowsing but importantly they need an environment they feel secure and comfortable in to be able to lie flat and experience REM sleep every day.
Common horse management types in the UK generally include some form of stabling mixed up with an arrangement for turnout. Our climate provides challenges for keeping horses out all year round and their are many other pressures including obesity, insulin resistance and laminitis which can influence how much turnout a horse can have. The turnout that is provided for equids can be variable, individual turnout, strip grazing, same sex groups, mixed groups, large herds and increasingly track systems are available. Every horse owner has their own set of challenges and restraints when choosing an environment for their horses to live in and when looking to enrich those environments. Are all these management types made equal in the eye of the horse? Probably not, but there are ways we can add to each and every environment to better meet the horses needs and increase the good parts of their day. There are different categories of enrichment available that we can use as a base when enriching the different areas our horses spend their time.
Social - Social interaction in their day with other horses or people. Do they have access to other horses? Are they stabled for a part of the day? Is that in isolation or can they see, hear, smell or touch other horses? Can the stabling arrangement be rearranged? Group housing? An enclosed yard? Is the turn out in small or large groups? Can they have access to a regular friend to be turned out with? Can that friend be stabled near them? What time do they have with owners and what is that interaction?
Physical Environment- Optimising the environment they live in, make it complex by providing different opportunities including change of track layout, access to hedgerows, spread out resources to encourage movement. Increasing the choices available within the environment, inside or outside, various types of shelter, access to different forage.
Cognitive and play - Puzzle boxes, build up the complexity to avoid frustration. Clicker training to engage the thinking brain. Hacking through different areas. Novel items to explore. Do they have space to display natural horse play if they choose? Is there an opportunity for object play? Are there equid safe toys to play with?
Sensory - Stimulating their senses. Herbs, spices, flavoured teas, new sights and smells of new areas to explore, varied forage including horse safe tree branches and browse to give diverse taste, choice of forage and texture in the mouth. A variety of terrain under foot, hills or different substrates to give proprioceptive feedback. Scent work.
Food - How we present their food. Varied selection of forage, adlib forage, forage at different levels, carrots or apples scattered in the forage, forage soaked in different flavoured teas, natural browse provided, treatballs, slow feeders and free flow forage, resources spread out to encourage movement.
There are countless ways that our equids environment can be subtly altered to meet our horses needs a bit better. The 2020 Five Domains Model for Animal Welfare has recently been released and it makes it very clear that we have moved on from the 5 freedoms where we were focused on reducing suffering and negative experiences. The 2020 model really focuses on giving animals positive experiences which add and give a real quality to a life so that they really have a life worth living. A good understanding of horse behaviour and needs can help us focus on the best way of providing positive experiences through enriching their environment for our equines in different spaces and for their entire day and night.
The Donkey Sanctuary have an online enrichment guide that is packed full of ideas for enrichment which can be found here
