Does your horse become stressed if their feed is late?

A recent study by a team of researchers in Slovenia has looked at the behaviour of eight horses when fed breakfast at regular or irregular feeding times and found they do become stressed if their meal arrives late.

The horses were housed in individual stables and were fed with ad-lib hay and a barley and oat mixture hard feed. For five days each week their morning feed arrived at their normal feed time of 6am, on Thursdays it arrived an hour earlier at 5am and on Saturdays it arrived an hour later at 7am. After their morning meal the horses were then turned out to pasture for the rest of the day. 

The horses’ behaviour was observed and recorded for 2 hours around their breakfast time starting an hour before their feed arrived. The study took place over a 10 week period. 

The horses that were fed early were described as not being ready for their meal. Lead researcher Manja Zupan said the horses “weren’t really awake yet”. As a result they spent less of their pre-breakfast time eating hay than when fed on time or late, and so they ended up consuming less in total before they were turned out. 

Unsurprisingly, the horses who were fed late displayed a number of stress behaviours. They kicked the stable door, whinnied, looked towards the food source and pawed at the ground while waiting for their feed to arrive. While some horse owners find this behaviour irritating or even funny, it is vital to remember each of these behaviours are caused by frustration and stress and could be considered a measure of poor welfare. Zupan reported “A horse that cannot predict when he will get fed will have compromised performance and health”.

This study will likely not surprise many horse owners but is nonetheless important. It shows that horses are great timekeepers and they can recognise what time of day it is. We already know they are capable of predicting their daily activities on learned cues, like the sound of specific equipment or their owner or caretaker’s voice. 

It can be difficult to stick to a consistent feeding schedule – life often gets in the way and we may be late for our horse’s mealtimes. However we must remember that change to routine like this can affect horses adversely.

At the moment I know many horse owners have been given specific allocated times to visit the yard and as a result some horses may be being fed out of their normal time schedule (and perhaps watching other horses being fed first) which could be extremely stressful for them. 

If you can keep feeding routines consistent and organise for one owner to feed all horses on the yard it will help reduce everyone’s stress levels in these difficult and unpredictable times. If they have to be fed at a different time to normal, then being fed early is preferable to being fed late. Ensuring your horse has access to ad lib forage so they don't run out of food will also go a long way to keeping them healthy and happy if you can’t get to the yard. Of course being turned out with friends is the ideal!

'The Effect of an Irregular Feeding Schedule on Equine Behavior'
Manja Zupan, Ivan Štuhec & Dušanka Jordan. 
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, Volume 23, 2020 - Issue 2

You can read the study in full here: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/full/10…/10888705.2019.1663734