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The GREEN HORSE - sustainable horsekeeping

Vol 27-6

In the April/May 2006 Issue of The Green Horse you will find the following articles:

Talking Point and Information Exchange
Horses, Trails and Weeds
Nullarbor Pony Rescue
Grazing Management Systems - Part 3 by Jane Myers
Weed Watch - Crofton Weed by Nicola Field
Basic Fencing by Pam Brookman
Growing Your Own Equine Herbs - Ginkgo by Fiona Adams
Deeds, Steeds and Weeds
Natural Sequence Farming
Dams - Part Two by Chris Ferreira and Tracey Bell

GRAZING MANAGEMENT by Jane Myers

The words ‘time budget’ are usually associated with an office environment rather than an equine one, however, in relation to horses it is the amount of time an animal spends doing the things it has to do throughout the day. Feral or wild animals, including equines, have been studied in order to discover what the ‘time-budget’ is for that particular species. Not surprisingly, animals that are predators and animals that are prey differ in the amount of time they spend carrying out daily maintenance ativities.

The time budget of most predators involves short periods of high activity (to catch and eat prey) and long periods of inactivity i.e. sleeping, to digest the prey they have eaten.
Herbivores are different to carnivores because they have to be alert most of the time (watching and listening for predators) and they have to eat for a much larger part of the day. Compared to a meat eater, their food is low in calories and takes a long time to chew and digest. Horses have one of the longest grazing periods of grass eating herbivores - such as cows and sheep - because they do not ruminate (regurgitate and re chew their food). Instead, a horse ferments food in the hind gut while grazing. This means that a horse is mainly on its feet, ready to flee and is not weighed down by large quantities of undigested forage.

Studies have shown that the daily time budget of feral or wild horses comprises;
grazing – between 12-20 hours a day,
sleeping - between 2-6 hours a day and
loafing – between 2-6 hours a day.

Time spent grazing
The length of time spent grazing depends on the quality of the grass available. On better quality grass the horse will spend less time grazing and more time sleeping and loafing. When the grass is poor, such as in a drought, the horse will increase the grazing time up to as much as twenty hours. In the natural state, the total time spent grazing is usually spread out throughout the day with bouts of sleeping and loafing being interspersed.

Time spent sleeping
Adult horses usually sleep for approximately four hours per day. Roughly two hours are spent sleeping lying down and two hours sleeping standing up. Due to the large thorax of the horse it actually uses less energy to sleep standing than lying down. Lying down rests the legs but the lungs have to work hard when the horse is stretched out on its side. This is why a horse often makes a groaning noise when prone, as breathing is quite an effort in this position.

Time spent loafing
‘Loafing’ is a term that is used to group all the other things that horses do with their day. It includes such activities as mutual grooming, playing and simply standing around together.

Time budgets?
An understanding of the time budget of the horse is important for its welfare. By looking at the natural time budget we can see that a horse should spend at least 12 hours a day just chewing its food. Modern day horse management has resulted in many horses being confined and fed meals that are high in energy but low in fibre. This results in long periods of time where the horse has nothing to do as these types of feed are eaten much more quickly (due to being more energy dense) that a natural pasture habitat. This can cause problems, either behavioural, physiological or both. Therefore, a confined horse should be fed a diet that is as close to natural as possible. High fibre forage such as grass hay takes a long time to eat and digest and therefore occupies the horse for much longer and keeps the gut functioning as it should, reducing the incidence of problems such as colic and ulcers.

Another factor to bear in mind is that natural living horses live in herds. As well as grazing together they ‘loaf’ and sleep as a group. The horse is never alone by choice. Again, modern management systems do not always take this fact into consideration and the result, coupled with a diet that is too low in fibre, is often stereotypic behaviour such as cribbing and weaving.

Knowledge of time budgets can also help with grazing management. Because we know that horses intersperse grazing bouts with sleeping and loafing bouts we can manipulate this behaviour so the horse grazes when in the paddock and loafs or sleeps when in a yard or stable. Therefore, if grass is limited, allow horses to graze as a herd in bouts of three to four hours at a time, two or three times per day. The rest of the time the horses spend in yards or stables with access to hay, thus conserving the pasture by reducing grazing and hoof pressure.

Herd behaviour
Almost any horse owner will agree that a horse is a herd animal but many do not really understand what this entails. A fuller understanding means that horse management systems can be designed to incorporate, rather than ignore, these basic facts about horse behaviour. In this age of enlightenment more and more people are willing and actually want to improve the ‘lifestyle’ of the horses in their care, both for the welfare benefits and the improvement in performance that results from a healthier horse.

With a little thought and planning it is possible to vastly improve the lifestyle of your horse. If management changes also incorporate feeding horses on a diet that is closer to natural, i.e. more fibre and less concentrates, then this will pay dividends as your horse is less likely to suffer from stress disorders such as colic, ulcers and stereotypic behaviour (wind sucking, weaving, chewing).
Pic caption: Nature dictates that prey or flight animals are alert most of the time, however they do manage to eat for a larger part of the day than predator animals.