Newly weaned horses in Finland are often moved to unheated loose housing systems in which the weanlings have free access to a paddock and a shelter. This practice is considered to be good for the...
Husbandry procedures are necessary for different purposes in horse breeding. The aim of the present study was to assess the aversiveness and effects on the horse-human relationship of a range of common husbandry procedures, in...
The primary purpose of this study was to characterize operant learning performance of young foals. For each of 26 foals, aged 6–20 weeks, learning performance was quantitatively evaluated in a single brief training trial using...
Many domestic horses are weaned through abrupt physical separation of the foal and mare. Deviations from normal behaviours testify that this abrupt method has an adverse effect on the well-being of both mares and foals...
The scientific study of animal emotion has recently become an important focus for animal behaviour and welfare researchers. For horses used by humans for work, recreation or sport, the question of the significance of their...
Recent interest has focused on the advantage of intensely handling young horses, as a good tool for improving emotional reactivity and thence trainability. Its effectiveness remains controversial, suggesting it might depend on the right timeframe...
Concentrate feeding stations are used to meet the different feeding requirements of group-housed horses. In practice, blocking times caused by horses remaining in the feeding station without concentrate allowance constrain the feeding process considerably. To...
There is increasing interest in keeping horses in groups, but progress is hampered by a lack of knowledge about which horses can and should be kept together. Therefore, our objective was to investigate the effect...
While it has been established that nutrients and flavours (odour, taste) play an important role in diet selection by horses, previous studies have not always clarified what type of flavouring (e.g. non-nutritive or nutritive) was...
Compared to ruminants little is known about how horses modulate food intake and learn about flavour-to-post-ingestive consequences. While it has been suggested that due to hindgut fermentation horses' foraging preferences may be largely influenced by...