Abstract: Summary Domestic horses are equid members of the class Mammalia, order Perissodactyla, and family Equidae. Horses are obligate herbivores, with nutritional requirements as listed in a table. Adequate space is necessary for exercise, exploration, flight, sharing resources, play, and rolling. Company is essential for all horses, including stallions. Company provides opportunities for mutual grooming and play and allows horses to stand head-to-tail to remove flies. Unhandled horses may respond to humans as they would to predators, whereas handled horses' responses depend on their previous interactions with humans. Horses can suffer from several diseases as listed in another table. The best method of euthanasia of horses is usually sedation followed by either cranial shooting or the injection of an overdose of pentobarbitone into the jugular vein. Behavioural signs of distress can include increased locomotory activity, vigilance behaviours, neighing, snorting, pawing, nibbling walls and buckets, defaecation, rearing, kicking stable walls or doors, and high-stepping 'prancing'.

Abstract: Naturally, horses live in groups in which all individuals are long-term acquainted with each other and a stable hierarchical system is established. In conservation management, introduction of horses into foreign groups is often required but will lead to fights, stress and increased health risks for the animals. We investigated the integration process of four Przewalski mares from the Zoo Leipzig into the herd of five Przewalski horses of the semireserve Liebenthal (Brandenburg, Germany). We observed changes in social hierarchy as well as a higher stress level (expressed by disturbed activity pattern and lower synchronization with environmental conditions) especially in the introduced horses (from Zoo Leipzig). We investigated the animals continuously over two years to detect what time is needed for a successful integration. Finally, we give some advice for the integration of Przewalski horses into a new herd to reduce the stress of the animals substantially.

Abstract: We collected data from 248 horses of different breeds, age, sex and use, forming four groups: 74 trotters, 70 gallop horses, 60 horseback archery horses and 44 police horses. All horses were trained and ridden/driven in a regular base. Caretakers or owners who were familiar with the target animals were asked to assess their horses’ temperament. The temperament scores were obtained with the 7-point scale questionnaire according to the Horse Personality Questionnaire which has 25 items and has previously been shown to be reliable for the assessment of personality in horses. It measures six personality components in horses: Dominance, Anxiousness, Excitability, Protection, Sociability and Inquisitiveness.
Component scores were calculated according to Lloyd, A.S., Martin, J.E., Bornett-Gauci, H.L.I., Wilkinson, R.G. (2008) Horse personality: Variation between breeds. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 112. 369–383. The component scores were compared across the four examined groups using the Kruskal–Wallis test. Post hoc multiple comparisons tests were then carried out to explore specific breed differences on each component. The value of alpha was set at 0.05 for all statistical tests.
Groups differed significantly regarding Anxiousness and Excitability, but no significant differences were found regarding Dominance, Protection, Sociability or Inquisitiveness among groups. This finding is in line with the findings of Lloyd et al. (2008) who showed that Anxiousness and Excitability components have the highest level of variation between breeds.In our study, gallop horses had the highest rank regarding Excitability and they differed significantly from police horses which had the lowest rank for this personality component. Interestingly gallop horses had the lowest rank regarding Anxiousness, and trotters got the highest rank in in this component.
According to our results gallop horses are the most extreme in their personality. It is conceivable that being excitable is a more favourable trait for a race horse than for a working police horse. However, it is interesting that trotters are more anxious than gallop horses since they also have a high thoroughbred ancestry. The effect of work and training on these horses needs further surveys.

Abstract: The relationship between facial hair whorl position and reactivity, as assessed by behavioural measures (handling score = HS; startle reaction to a suddenly appearing novel object = SR; latency to touch a novel object = LNO) and heart rate measures (mean HR; increase in heart rate = IHR) were studied using 55 Konik horses reared either under conventional stable conditions or in the forest reserve. Horses were classified into four groups according to the whorl position and/or shape: (1) high, single whorl above the top eye line, n = 9; (2) medium, single whorl between the top and the bottom eye line, n = 30; (3) low, single whorl below the bottom eye line, n = 10; and (4) elongated or double whorl, n = 6. Horses with a high whorl position demonstrated a lesser degree of manageability as expressed by a lower HS compared to individuals with medium (P = 0.002) or low whorl positions (P = 0.016). Horses with different whorl positions did not differ significantly in their startle response to a suddenly appearing novel object (P = 0.685). The horses with an elongated or double whorl, which appeared only in the forest group, took significantly longer to approach the novel object than horses with medium (P = 0.006) or low (P = 0.005) whorl positions. No significant differences in mean HR and IHR between groups (HR: P = 0.629 and IHR: P = 0.214) were found. In conclusion, this study supports the relationship between the position of the hair whorl on the horses' head and their manageability during handling, as well as the latency to approach an unknown object.

Abstract: The role of the Flehmen response in equine behavior was investigated under field and laboratory conditions. In Experiment 1, a field study made of five stallions on pasture with between three and eighteen mares each during the season indicated the following: 1) The Flehmen response was most frequently preceded by nasal, rather than oral, investigation of substances; 2) The stallions' rate of Flehmen varied with the estrous cycles of the mares; 3) The rate of Flehmen response did not show a variation with time of day; and 4) The Flehmen response was most frequently followed by marking behaviors rather than courtship behaviors. The results suggest that the Flehmen response is not an immediate component of sexual behavior, e.g., courtship of the stallion but may be involved in the overall monitoring of the mare's estrous cycle. Therefore the Flehmen response may contribute to the chemosensory priming of the stallion for reproduction. In Experiment 2 stallions were presented with urine or feces of mares in various stages of the reproductive cycle as well as with their own or other males' urine or feces. The occurrence of sniffing and Flehmen was used to determine the discriminatory ability of the stallions. Stallions can differentiate the sex of a horse on the basis of its feces alone, but cannot differentiate on the basis of urine. This ability may explain the function of fecal marking behavior of stallions.