The fact that horses can suffer from stress is a fairly new discovery. While it used to be assumed that this was a “sport horse problem”, it is becoming increasingly clear that horses can also become affected from “standing around”: Stress can also occur when “doing nothing”, for example due to errors in stable or feed management.
Lack of engagement is also a factor. Studies on humans show that “bore-out” leads to the same physical reactions as “burn-out”. And this also applies to horses.
Most behavioural abnormalities, from cribbing to weaving to box walking, are related to stress caused by boredom and lack of food.
If you take a closer look at the individual cases, you will see time and again that the conditions under which horses are kept and fed are usually responsible for their stress. Especially at the end of the grazing season, the stress level of many horses rises again.
The top stress factors in horses include:
Not enough roughage
Eating means being busy, hunger puts you in a bad mood. Horses are permanent feeders by nature and must therefore have a constant supply of roughage. The risk of stomach ulcers increases disproportionately even without eating for 4 hours.
Stomach pain causes stress and can lead to further stomach ulcers. If too little roughage is given, there is a risk of stomach ulcers, stress-related behavioural problems such as cribbing, weaving and windsucking, and the level of aggression in the group increases.
This depends not only on the amount of hay offered, but also on the number and arrangement of feeding places. It is said that there should be 10% more feeding places available than horses. However, if you have a very incompatible group or one in which there is a lot of change, then you can expect to have twice as many feeding areas as horses.
It takes a lot of stress out of the group if several hay stations are offered, e.g. individual hay nets are hung in different places in addition to the hay rack or hay toys (hay balls, hay boxes, hay crates…) are offered. The horses move more frequently between the feeding stations, which ensures more movement and incompatible horses can leave a large distance between each other.
Not enough bedding means stress
In many stables, it is still common for horses to have a shelter that is not bedded.
The horses are offered everything from wooden flooring to gravel and rubber mats as “resting areas”. A study in Switzerland has revealed a direct correlation between bedded area and stress behaviour: the less bedded lying area (not covered or lined with rubber mats! but actually padded and insulated with straw or shavings), the higher the level of aggression in a group.
If more bedding is provided, the level of aggression decreases, even if nothing else is changed. Aggression in the group causes stress, which ensures that low-ranking animals lie down even less and are even more stressed due to lack of sleep. It is not without reason that we have more and more horses with “narcolepsy” in the stables, i.e. horses that collapse when dozing and sometimes fall over, therefore. These cases occur particularly frequently in open stables and are often associated with a lack of or too small a bedded lying area, a restless and/or unsocial group and the increasing age of the affected horses (the older the horses are, the lower their rank and the more stressed they are, especially if there are too many horses or frequent changes in the group).
A good night’s sleep is therefore not only important for humans to regenerate! If the problem cannot be solved in an open stable, then consideration should be given to placing affected horses in a bedded box at least overnight so that they can sleep and thus reduce stress.
Too many horses in too small a space
Especially in open housing the motto often is “one more doesn’t make any difference”.
However, horses have a far greater individual distance if they are not close friends with the other horse. Horses normally keep a distance of around 6-8 meters to the next horse if they have the opportunity to do so. In most cases this is no problem when out grazing, but no longer achievable in winter paddocks.
If the group is not very harmonious or if there are disturbances such as the arrival or departure of horses, a non-sovereign (insecure or fighting) herd leader or a lot of hierarchical wrangling, then the stress quickly builds up and often doesn’t stop until the start of the grazing season.
Studies have shown that stress increases dramatically the less space is available to the horses. This should also be taken into account when designing “structured” open yards with tree trunks, partitions, hay racks, etc. Such elements may lengthen walking distances, but they also reduce the space. It is better to create paddock tracks as the track does not take up as much space but gives the horses the opportunity to keep sufficient distance. Of course, only if there are also feeding stations along the track (see above).
Not enough free movement
Studies on stress in various animal species have repeatedly come to the conclusion that flight animals in particular reduce stress best by moving freely and quickly.
As a steppe animal, the horse is optimised for movement: wild horses walk up to 50-60 km a day in search of food. This usually involves calm movement at a walk, but there is also a playful canter, bucking or wrestling with other horses in between. .
Stallions and geldings spend considerably more time playing, running and wrestling than mares. This is why groups separated by gender are usually much more harmonious than mixed groups. The stallions and geldings can play undisturbed, and the mares can maintain their social contacts. Both reduce stress and are often not possible in mixed groups.
Horses kept in boxes or on winter paddocks that are too small can be observed time and again that their stress levels increase, and they become more susceptible to overreacting in stressful situations. If you give them the opportunity to “have a good buck” regularly, they are happier, more productive and have far less stress.
Free running is important in this context: neither under the rider nor on the lunge can the horse reduce stress in the same way as it does when running and bucking freely. For this reason, when the snow cover is closed or the ground is frozen, let the horses have a run in the pasture, or alternatively set up the riding arena or indoor arena in such a way that the horse can run freely.
Pain
In the wild, horses are potential prey for predators. Consequently, they often show little or no pain, as a horse that shows weakness becomes prey. The closer the horse is to the “wild horse” genetically, the more they hide their problems. Where some Warmbloods appear to be dying, the Icelandic horse still acts as if nothing is wrong.
Therefore, pain conditions are often only recognized too late, especially if they occur gradually or affect internal organs. However, as soon as pain occurs in the body, they trigger a stress reaction so that the pain is at least partially suppressed.
There can be many causes for such pain: Stomach ulcers, intestinal problems such as incorrect fermentation and gas build up, undetected liver or kidney problems, back pain, headaches, trigeminal neuralgia, an unsuitable saddle, underlying laminitis or navicular, unsuitable shoeing, digging spurs, incorrectly positioned bits, a hard rider’s hand, riding in a roll cure and so on.
We are only slowly beginning to understand how much pain the horses actually “put up with” before we recognise it. Stress has often been present for a long time but is only recognised when it leads to advanced metabolic disorders. Therefore: be attentive when dealing with a horse. They usually show you what is troubling them, but all too often we don’t listen.
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