Large differences in the amount of time a confined animal engages in behavioural activities (time budgets) compared to feral or wild conspecifics has been used as a measure of poor welfare. In the present study, day-time (08.30-05.30 h) time budgets were generated from 55 light and 55 draft late pregnancy mares housed in tie stalls from ten pregnant mares’ urine (PMU) farms using continuous video recording. Equal numbers of light and draft mares were filmed on each farm during the months of February and early March. The actions recorded included eating, drinking, resting (standing and recumbent), standing active, and interactions between horses (aggressive and non-aggressive). In addition to this, the presence and duration of stereotypic behaviours such a cribbing, head bobbing, weaving, and wood\/bar chewing were recorded. Light mares spent significantly more time feeding and significantly less time standing active and standing resting. However, the time budget of both groups fell within the range of previously published activity budgets of feral horses. Therefore, the differences noted may not be clinically relevant. Three light and two draft mares performed repetitive behaviours at a level that is considered stereotypic. However, there was no difference in the number of horses performing stereotypies between light and draft mares. Because of the overall low prevalence of stereotypies and the fact that time budgets were similar to free-range horses, we believe that the management practice of keeping large number of pregnant mares in tie stalls is rational and that the welfare of mares is sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Large differences in the amount of time a confined animal engages in behavioural activities (time budgets) compared to feral or wild conspecifics has been used as a measure of poor welfare. In the present study, day-time (08.30-05.30 h) time budgets were generated from 55 light and 55 draft late pregnancy mares housed in tie stalls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[928],"tags":[8882,640,10033,2854,24643,4564,16842,19644,562,6904,46,108,20007,72,3492,71,5381,48,22808,22477,16113,4599,3283,20911,4874,14923,14909,12776,1213,6053,26232,27281,15479],"class_list":["post-5154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-al","tag-animal","tag-arc","tag-bin","tag-bing","tag-comparison","tag-day-time-budget-of-pregnant-mares-housed-in-tie-stalls-a-comparison-of-draft-versus-light-mares","tag-dd","tag-farms","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feeding","tag-gh","tag-horse","tag-horsehousingstereotypiestime-budgets","tag-horses","tag-light","tag-management","tag-pic","tag-pregnant-mare-time-budget","tag-pregnant-mares-urine-time-budget-study","tag-stall","tag-stalls","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-the-welfare","tag-the-welfare-of","tag-tie-stall","tag-urine","tag-use","tag-video","tag-welfare","tag-wild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}