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Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare?
SIMPLE SUMMARY: Horses’ behavior is a good indicator of their welfare status. However, its complexity requires objective, quantifiable, and unambiguous evidence-based assessment criteria. As healthy, stress-free horses exhibit a highly repetitive daily routine, horses’ time budget (amount of time in...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002676/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33802908 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030850 |
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author | Auer, Ulrike Kelemen, Zsofia Engl, Veronika Jenner, Florien |
author_facet | Auer, Ulrike Kelemen, Zsofia Engl, Veronika Jenner, Florien |
author_sort | Auer, Ulrike |
collection | PubMed |
description | SIMPLE SUMMARY: Horses’ behavior is a good indicator of their welfare status. However, its complexity requires objective, quantifiable, and unambiguous evidence-based assessment criteria. As healthy, stress-free horses exhibit a highly repetitive daily routine, horses’ time budget (amount of time in a 24 h period spent on specific activities) can assist in equine welfare assessment. A systematic review of the literature yielded 12 papers that assessed equine time budgets for eating, resting and movement for a minimum of 24 continuous hours. A total of 144 horses (1–27 years old), 59 semi-feral and 85 domesticated horses, are included in this review. The reported 24 h time budgets for eating ranged from 10% to 66.6%, for resting from 8.1% to 66%, for lying from 2.7% to 27.3%, and for movement from 0.015% to 19.1%. The large variance in time budgets between studies can largely be attributed to differences in age and environmental conditions. Management interventions (free access to food, increased space, decreased population density) in domesticated horses yielded time budgets similar to semi-feral horses. The data support the importance of environmental conditions for horses’ well-being and the ability of time budgets to assist in monitoring horses’ welfare. ABSTRACT: Horses’ behavior can provide valuable insight into their subjective state and is thus a good indicator of welfare. However, its complexity requires objective, quantifiable, and unambiguous evidence-based assessment criteria. As healthy, stress-free horses exhibit a highly repetitive daily routine, temporal quantification of their behavioral activities (time budget analysis) can assist in equine welfare assessment. Therefore, the present systematic review aimed to provide an up-to-date analysis of equine time budget studies. A review of the literature yielded 12 papers that fulfilled the inclusion criteria: assessment of equine time budgets for eating, resting and movement for a minimum of 24 continuous hours. A total of 144 horses (1–27 years old), 59 semi-feral and 85 domesticated horses, are included in this review. The 24 h time budgets for foraging or eating (10–6.6%), resting (8.1–66%), lying (2.7–27.3%), and locomotion (0.015–19.1%) showed large variance between studies, which can largely be attributed to differences in age and environmental conditions. Management interventions in domesticated horses (ad libitum access to food, increased space, decreased population density) resulted in time budgets similar to their (semi-)feral conspecifics, emphasizing the importance of environmental conditions and the ability of time budgets to assist in monitoring horses’ welfare. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8002676 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80026762021-03-28 Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? Auer, Ulrike Kelemen, Zsofia Engl, Veronika Jenner, Florien Animals (Basel) Review SIMPLE SUMMARY: Horses’ behavior is a good indicator of their welfare status. However, its complexity requires objective, quantifiable, and unambiguous evidence-based assessment criteria. As healthy, stress-free horses exhibit a highly repetitive daily routine, horses’ time budget (amount of time in a 24 h period spent on specific activities) can assist in equine welfare assessment. A systematic review of the literature yielded 12 papers that assessed equine time budgets for eating, resting and movement for a minimum of 24 continuous hours. A total of 144 horses (1–27 years old), 59 semi-feral and 85 domesticated horses, are included in this review. The reported 24 h time budgets for eating ranged from 10% to 66.6%, for resting from 8.1% to 66%, for lying from 2.7% to 27.3%, and for movement from 0.015% to 19.1%. The large variance in time budgets between studies can largely be attributed to differences in age and environmental conditions. Management interventions (free access to food, increased space, decreased population density) in domesticated horses yielded time budgets similar to semi-feral horses. The data support the importance of environmental conditions for horses’ well-being and the ability of time budgets to assist in monitoring horses’ welfare. ABSTRACT: Horses’ behavior can provide valuable insight into their subjective state and is thus a good indicator of welfare. However, its complexity requires objective, quantifiable, and unambiguous evidence-based assessment criteria. As healthy, stress-free horses exhibit a highly repetitive daily routine, temporal quantification of their behavioral activities (time budget analysis) can assist in equine welfare assessment. Therefore, the present systematic review aimed to provide an up-to-date analysis of equine time budget studies. A review of the literature yielded 12 papers that fulfilled the inclusion criteria: assessment of equine time budgets for eating, resting and movement for a minimum of 24 continuous hours. A total of 144 horses (1–27 years old), 59 semi-feral and 85 domesticated horses, are included in this review. The 24 h time budgets for foraging or eating (10–6.6%), resting (8.1–66%), lying (2.7–27.3%), and locomotion (0.015–19.1%) showed large variance between studies, which can largely be attributed to differences in age and environmental conditions. Management interventions in domesticated horses (ad libitum access to food, increased space, decreased population density) resulted in time budgets similar to their (semi-)feral conspecifics, emphasizing the importance of environmental conditions and the ability of time budgets to assist in monitoring horses’ welfare. MDPI 2021-03-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8002676/ /pubmed/33802908 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030850 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ). |
spellingShingle | Review Auer, Ulrike Kelemen, Zsofia Engl, Veronika Jenner, Florien Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title | Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title_full | Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title_fullStr | Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title_full_unstemmed | Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title_short | Activity Time Budgets—A Potential Tool to Monitor Equine Welfare? |
title_sort | activity time budgets—a potential tool to monitor equine welfare? |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8002676/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33802908 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani11030850 |
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