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Abnormal Equine Behaviors
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The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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Equine Behavior and Training
The topics this week will focus on equid behavior and movement. Understanding how equids relate to their environment and communicate is critical to training and management. We will start this week by examining the basic equine senses and communication. Then we will discuss normal and abnormal behaviors and the basic psychology used in training. We will finish the week discussing the basic gaits and how these animals move.
Conoce a los instructores
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
Alright, welcome back.
And in this lecture we're going to focus more on the abnormal behaviors.
[COUGH] Now, if you just look at the strict definition
of what an abnormal behavior is, you can see it there.
It's this behavior that, that they repeat often and it
really doesn't have a function, doesn't have a specific purpose.
So like when a horse, you know, reaches down and eats.
You know, obviously, it's doing that for, for
nutrients, and, and to keep their bodies going.
If, during social behavior, they nip at somebody, or, or
turn to kick, that's normal, because that's, that's their threat response.
You know, they're responding to some sort of stimulus that they don't like.
So these abnormal behaviors are what we call stereotypic behaviors,
and they're, they're, they're a result of a lot of stress.
And I know I've said this in, in the previous lectures.
You know, that's where, this is where they start to manifest.
It's either a an, a bored animal or an animal that's under a lot of stress.
And we see this quite a bit with our zoo animals.
Because these are captive wild animals and they are kept
in small spaces so they, they start to manifest these
stereotypic behaviors and the zoo industry really studies these really
hard, to see how they can alleviate that stress and boredom.
So this elephant's doing what's called weaving,
and we'll see this again in this lecture.
Now it's always good to make sure you
have a good foundation in what normal behavior is.
And, you know, even looking at these time budgets.
You know, some of these abnormal behaviors will actually fall
into some of these categories so, you know the we being
you can, its not quite locomote, and but its not
quite inactive so, you know, what kind of behavior is that?
I don't know.
But some of these other behaviors we'll talk about in just
the behaviors will obviously fall, into the feed, forage, normal time budgets.
Now where time budgets do come into play is if an animal spends an,
you know, a really long time if you saw this inactivity go way up.
And that to me would indicate a health problem or something like that.
So, so it's good to, to, to have a review of what's normal.
And [COUGH] again, these animals learn a lot.
Or, or they display a lot of their
behaviors that are very similar to their wild counterparts.
So out in the wild, you know, their innate natural behaviors is something that
we can always reference back to our
captive population to, to kind of measure what's normal.
Now, do we see abnormal behavior in wild equids?
And, and, in nature, most, most often not, because it would result in predation.
If, if they're abnormal from the herd.
You know, that's what predators are looking for.
They're looking for abnormalities.
And those are the animals that they try to pick off.
You know, as, as nature runs it's course.
So we don't really see these, these exotics or free ranging horses.
So horses that are released you know, in the wild or kept on
large pastures, we tend not to see these abnormal behaviors manifest in themselves.
But I will say when you do put them in captive situations.
So, like especially during these, you know, this
is a wild horse roundup, we, we tend to
see these abnormal behaviors at a greater frequency than
we do in our domestic horses and, and donkeys.
So, you know, what's the incidence of that and it, it runs
anywhere from five to 25%, depending on the studies you, you look at.
So, you know, that's pretty low at 5%, that's pretty high at 25%,
so it's probably somewhere in the middle, you know, across horses around the world.
And again, it's just a response to this stress, this boredom.
And these start to manifest themselves, these abnormal behaviors.
Now the most common type of abnormal behavior is actually locomotion.
And, again these are things you can, if you, if you go to the zoo and you, and you
kind of pay attention to see if you're looking for
it, you'll probably notice some of these animals doing that.
And the first one we talk about is walking the perimeter.
And this is generally in, in a, in a paddock type situation, where a horse
just keeps walking the perimeter, you know,
in that square, almost like in a circle.
And just keeps walking and walking, and
repeats the pattern over and over and over.
And again, that's, it's an abnormal, you know, boredom, trying to alleviate boredom
not knowing what to do and they walk in, in, in a pattern.
Now there's we being is what we have
already seen with the elephants and, and you see
these in horses and I have seen this actually
on the race track when I was working there.
And you would notice these race horses you know, and the stalls and they
would just go back and forth, back and forth and that's weaving, you know.
They just, they have so much energy and, and
then they're in these confined spaces that it's, it's
just they don't know what to do with it
so they start to manifest some of these things.
Now, pacing, almost like walking the perimeter, so,
you know, you'll see, you know, an animal to
up and down the fence, and up and down the fence, and up and down the fence.
And they just keep doing this pattern over and over and over.
Again, re, repetition is, is where we see this.
So, you know, after the locomotion ones the, the next ones that's probably
the most, I guess popular or, or most well-known is what's called cribbing.
And this is where horses will actually rest their, their front incisors on
something hard, in general it's a fence post, or a fence, something hard.
And then they arch their neck.
They gulp in air, and then they expel it.
Okay, and they keep repeating this behavior.
And they'll go and put their feet, you
know, excuse me their teeth on those fence posts.
And we think this manifests itself because, they get
a little bit of a natural high with this.
The brain releases some Endo, Endorphins So
some naturals you know, feel good hormones.
And the horse will, will feel good about it.
And so they actually, it's believed they, they
really become, start to become addicted to this.
And they get some of this, kind of an addiction to cribbing.
And so they'll repeat this behavior over and over
and over and it's really, really harmful to their health.
And the first major problem is it starts to wear down
their incisors and if anybody has ever had a cribbing horse.
You know, I've seen this personally with a cribbing
horse, they, they wear down those, those front teeth.
And the problem is, is if they're out on pasture somewhere,
they're going to have a hard, hard time nibbling grass, you know.
The, the forage they're, they're trying to get at and so they'll
have a really, really difficult time trying to get mouthfuls of, of forage.
So, again, that's very, very detrimental to their health, and
then things like, that start to pop up like ulcers.
Now, you know, ulcers come with stress.
So this animal obviously if, if, if they develop
this cribbing they're, they're under some sort of stress.
Then you have them cribbing and this unnatural, you
know, ingestion again leads to problems in the stomach.
And you can you see in those images, you know,
what a healthy stomach lining of a horse looks like.
And the ulcers, which again is a, a painful condition for them.
And then the other thing is it can lead
to colic, which next week we'll, we'll call we'll
talk more about colic, and, you know, really it's
a, it's a major, major problem in confined equids.
And can often lead to death, so it, it's something
that we'll definitely address next week when we talk about nutrition.
So again, another, you know, problem with cribbing horses.
Now the next type of you know,
abnormal behavior is, is self-mutilation or over grooming.
And, and we see this with all different types
of species that you know, they'll, they'll just pick an
area and then just bite and nibble and groom themselves
until they get down to the, all the hair's gone.
And then they'll start rubbing away the skin, and then they'll get
some sores there, and it just gets worse and worse and worse.
We see this with dogs, too.
So, or a horse that, that, you know, that kicks quite a bit in
their stalls, or, or paddocks because that boredom and, and that can injure them.
So that's a, a, again, something to be aware of that, that can result from this.
And then there's just some others that, we're
not going to have time to go into each one.
But pawing you know, you typically see that a lot with horses that are tied up.
Especially if they're tied up for too long.
Things like wood chewing.
Chewing on the fences which can be really destructive.
And again, those wood, that wood isn't very nutritious for them.
So, again can, can cause some digestive problems.
Tail rubbing which you see in this image here.
You know they'll rub away some of those hairs on the top of
the tail and, that would be kind of important when we get to parasites.
Because pinworms can actually cause and
irritated hiney and so they'll, they'll rub
their, their rears quite a bit and rub off some of that hair.
And then head nodding so some of these other
can be an, an indicative of health problems as
you know, we'll see with, especially with the ingestive
problems and, and jump right into the over drinking.
You know, you want to monitor your animal's water intake.
And again next week we'll, we'll jump into more nutrition and water intake.
But you want to know how much they're drinking per day.
Because when they start to over drink that
can really be indications of some serious health problems.
One is Cushing's disease.
And others like renal failure.
So if, if a horse, you know, really starts going from the average 10 to 15 gallons of
water per day up to 25, 30, you know,
then that could be indicative of a health problem.
And then windsucking, you will hear this terms used too.
It is like cribbing, but they are not resting their incisors in something,
they just sit there and stand and do the inhaling and exhaling on there.
So that is again a learned behavior.
Things like eating feces for adult horses is, is abnormal and typically it's
because there's something lacking in their
diet or nutritional deficiency or they're starving.
You know, you'll notice they start to eat their feces.
Now I will in foals, it is normal for them to, to, eat some feces.
Because we believe it helps them establish their good gut bacteria.
That they're going to need to digest, forage in their
lifetime, so, that's kind of a normal behavior for youngsters.
It's the adults, when they do this, that, that is definitely abnormal.
And then, eating dirt, you know, again, not
something, normally, you want your equids to do.
It, it could be indicative of a mineral deficiency in their diet.
So you want to make sure you do monitor their diet.
And again, that can lead to colic.
Especially here in Florida.
And some of these other, other places on the globe that have really sandy soils.
And if these horses are getting quite a bit of sand in their gut.
And a thing called sand colic, so that's a,
that's a danger when you have horses doing this.
Now, okay, so those aren't fun.
Those aren't great things you want to see with your animals but there are ways that
you can try to either limit or abolish or, you know, get rid of these bad behaviors.
And the first thing is, is you gotta find out what's stressing them out and
you know, typically these are animals that
are confined in stalls, or confined in paddocks.
And that's why you're going to hear me, and I, I, I think I'm going to say it
every week almost in every, in, in every other
lecture, these horses need to be turned out daily.
They need exercise.
They need fresh air.
They need to act like a horse.
They need to, to roll in the grass.
And they need that for at least one hour per
day if not more if you can provide it for them.
You know, that is going to go a long way in, in helping
their mental health so you don't start to see some of these abnormal behaviors.
[COUGH] Now other things that, that are kind of
catching on the horse industry, at least here in
the United States, is, is trying to introduce novel
objects to horses and, and they, they call this enrichment.
And again zoos have been kind of the leaders in this field.
In trying to you know, eliminate some of
these abnormal behaviors in this captive wild population.
So enrichment is a big part of that where daily they are introducing
new things to keep the animals engaged, and not bored or stressed out.
So that's starting to carry over in the horse industry.
And things like, you know, putting novel objects in their pens that they kind of,
whoa, and then they kind of explore and play with it and, and have fun with it.
That's always a good way to do it.
Another thing that I'm seeing some research now
on, is, is putting hay in hay bags.
And, depending on the diameter of the wire,
or, or, you know, how tight that wire is.
You know, it takes a while for that horse to, to
get at that forage and pull it out and eat it.
And it's keeping them engaged and it's going to slow 'em down at mealtime.
So, you know I've already said it in a
previous couple lectures on the, on the typical normal behaviors.
But, we'll get to it especially with the nutrition behaviors.
You know, small meals all day so if you do something like this you know, it's
going to drag out that forage time to where they are not getting it all at once.
So that's another great idea that, that's starting to catch, catch on.
With horse owners.
Now the other thing you have to do is evaluate their social environment.
And it's been said a, a solitary horse is, is in poor company.
Because these are very social animals and, and they're
you know, their desire is to be around other types.
Other types of equids I guess.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a horse with a horse.
Or a donkey with a donkey.
A lot of time we see horses and mini's and donkeys together.
You can even put zebra's in with horses.
And they become buddies.
And you can even put goats in with horses and they become buddies.
So they're social animals, and, and they tend
to want to be other, around other animals.
Now I will say this, with intact males, so
stallions and jacks, generally it's okay that they're by themselves.
Because they, in the wild they lead
solitary existence, generally lead a solitary existence.
And so they're out and about by
themselves, and, and they generally are okay.
The other thing that I would say with
social environment is, look at the herd structure.
A lot of times these, you know, lower, less dominant
animals get picked on quite a bit, which leads to stress.
And then some of these may, may start to manifest themselves.
So, you may have to look at separating animals
sometimes, if you have more than two or three horses.
And, you know, look at, look at the, the social structure
make up of that herd, and see if that's contributing the stress.
Now, what we're going to definitely you know, jump into this next week.
Especially you know, how much energy should be
in the diet, but diets high in energy.
So if you're feeding a lot of protein and a lot of concentrate and a lot of grain.
This horse gets real, it's almost like a, a three-year-old with a sugar high.
And they get kind of crazy.
And, and, and they have nowhere to go in stalls and small paddocks.
So high energy diets start to have
these animals tend to manifest these abnormal behaviors.
So if you do, you know, you want to make
sure you're feeding the, the proper plain and nutrition.
Which next week we'll go into with that.
And then [COUGH] kind of your final strategy would be, you know,
restraining the animal in some way or you know, limiting their environment.
And this horse has what's called a cribbing collar.
Which makes it when they do crib extremely uncomfortable for them.
So try to, you know, reduce or eliminate that behavior.
Now, I will say, I've seen a
terrible cribber wearing a crib collar, still cribbing.
So it's not always 100%, but it is one of those strategies
that has proven effective in some animals that will reduce that cribbing behavior.
Okay.
So in, in our next lecture, we're going to start going into some
of the basic learning, basic psychology in
training, you know, how these animals learn.
So, I'll see you then.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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