Abstract: Behaviour is an important factor to be taken into account in the various uses of horses. Today horses are mainly used for sport and leisure activities. They should therefore be easy to manage, calm and not fearful. Early handling is known to improve manageability and learning ability and to reduce fearfulness in various species. It has become fashionable in the horse industry to use an early training procedure, referred to as “imprint training”, which is said to produce durable if not permanent effects. However, no studies concerning the long-term effects of such neonatal handling have been carried out in horses. The present study examines the short- and long-term effects of neonatal handling on manageability, general reactivity and learning ability of foals. Twenty-six Welsh foals were studied: 13 were handled daily for 14 days from birth and 13 were non-handled controls. The handling procedure consisted of fitting a halter, gently patting all parts of each foal's body, picking up feet and leading over 40 m. Two days, 3 months, 6 months and 1 year after the end of the handling period, foals underwent behavioural tests to measure their manageability and various aspects of their reactivity. The results showed that neonatal handling has only short-term effects on manageability: 2 days after the handling period, handled animals were significantly easier to handle than controls for the four parameters measured during this test (time to fit a halter, time to pick up feet, walk ratio that is time during which foal walks under constraint/total time measured during leading and number of defensive reactions). Two parameters (time to fit a halter and walk ratio) were still lower in handled foals than in non-handled foals 3 months later and only one 6 months later (walk ratio). One year later there was no difference between groups. In addition, there was no effect of handling on reactivity at any time of testing or in any of the tests (reaction to isolation from conspecifics, presence of a human, presence of a novel object and to a surprise effect). Finally, neonatal handling did not improve the spatial or discriminative learning abilities measured at 14 months of age. To conclude, the effects of neonatal handling are only temporary.

Abstract: Repeated encounters with unfamiliar conspecifics in large groups of domestic birds create a potentially stressful social environment which can affect the birds' emotional reactivity and consequently their welfare. As social relationships between young quail are particularly influenced by their social motivation (i.e., the motivation to seek close proximity with conspecifics), it is likely that the reaction of quail to repeated encounters with strangers depends on their social motivation. The aim of this study was to assess the emotional reactivity of quail chicks with high (HSR) or low (LSR) social motivation housed under stable and unstable social conditions. Quail chicks were housed either in stable pairs, i.e. remaining with the same cagemate until testing (NHSR = 19 and NLSR = 18 pairs), or in unstable pairs, i.e. changing cagemate daily from 6 to 13 days of age (NHSR = 20 and NLSR = 19 pairs). Emotional reactivity was measured using a novel object test on day 14, and an emergence test and a tonic immobility test on day 15. The social condition affected the number of induction attempts of quail chicks in the tonic immobility test but only in the LSR ones. This number of inductions was lower under the stable than under the unstable social condition in this line. Moreover, the HSR chicks showed greater disturbance than the LSR ones in the three behavioural tests. In conclusion, social instability did not affect the emotional reactivity of HSR quail chicks, which was high, regardless of social condition. In contrast, repeated cagemate changes seemed to decrease the emotional reactivity of LSR quail chicks. These results suggest that low social motivation makes easier the adaptation to the potential social instability encountered in large flocks.

Abstract: Learning and memory abilities of 1-3 year old horses were assessed using instrumental and spatial tasks. No important differences were observed in the success of learning of the instrumental task (chest opening) according to sex or age. Younger females, however, seemed to learn more quickly. The offspring of a particular stallion were slower to learn than other horses. All horses memorised this task and opened the chest in a very short time in the second session. The animals that learned the task easily were not necessarily faster in the memorisation test. In the spatial task, learning ability did not seem to be related to age but more females than males were successful. The offspring of one stallion were more successful than other horses. Only 76% of the horses succeeded in the memorisation test, independently of age or sex. No correlation was found between the tasks in the latencies of either the learning or the memorisation tests for the same horses. The instrumental and spatial tasks may involve different processes.

Abstract: Horses frequently react nervously when passing animal production farms and other places with distinctive smells, leading riders to believe that horses are innately frightened by certain odours. In three experiments, we investigated how horses respond to (1) urine from wolves and lions, (2) blood from slaughtered conspecifics and fur-derived wolf odour, and (3) a sudden auditory stimulus in either presence or absence of fur-derived wolf odour. The experiments were carried out under standardised conditions using a total of 45 naive, 2-year-old horses. In the first two experiments we found that horses showed significant changes in behaviour (Experiments 1 and 2: increased sniffing; Experiment 2 only: increased vigilance, decreased eating, and more behavioural shifts), but no increase in heart rate compared to controls when exposed to predator odours and conspecific blood in a known test environment. However, the third experiment showed that exposure to a combination of wolf odour and a sudden stimulus (sound of a moving plastic bag) caused significantly increased heart rate responses and a tendency to a longer latency to resume feeding, compared to control horses exposed to the sudden stimulus without the wolf odour. The results indicate that predator odour per se does not frighten horses but it may cause an increased level of vigilance. The presence of predator odour may, however, cause an increased heart rate response if horses are presented to an additional fear-eliciting stimulus. This strategy may be adaptive in the wild where equids share habitats with their predators, and have to trade-off time and energy spent on anti-predation responses against time allocated to essential non-defensive activities.

Abstract: Abstract
In response to a request published in Equus, a magazine for those interested in horses, 85 owners of older geldings exhibiting sexual behavior completed history forms. The mean age of geldings was 16 f 5 years. Only 39 of the owners had had the gelding for at least a year before the behavior was noted. These cases could be used to determine the true age of onset of the problem. When log survivorship was used to determine whether there were one or two different populations, a break or change in the slope at age 16 indicated that there are two populations. One population shows the behavior from the time of castration and the other first exhibits the behavior in old age, possibly in response to an ACTH secreting pituitary adenoma. A total of 40% of the horses were Quarterhorses, the most numerous breed in the US; 78% of the horses were purebreds. Fewer than half the owners knew the age at which their horse had been castrated because they did not own the horse at the time.
The mean age at castration, when known, was 3.3 f 2.5 years. The reason for contacting us was sexual behavior (70%), aggression (24%). or some other problem ( 1 o/o). Whether or not aggression was the presenting problem, most of the horses showed aggression (95%), particularly towards other geldings (88%)) but also towards people (3 1%). Copulatory behavior (mounting) was shown by 69% of the geldings and half of those were able to intromit. These findings indicate that the sexual behavior of geldings is a problem for owners and that aggression usually accompanies sexual behavior.
The owners were encouraged to send serum samples taken before and after human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) administration for testosterone and estrone sulfate analysis to determine whether residual testicular tissue was responsible for the horse’s behavior. Of the 14 horses tested, only one had elevated levels of testosterone indicating that there was residual testicular tissue. A total of six of the owners agreed to treat their horses with cyproheptadine at a dose of 8 mg day- ’ gradually increased to 88 mg day- ’ per horse. A total of three of the horses showed a decline in sexual and aggressive behavior, one got worse and two had side effects and treatment was withdrawn.