Equine Welfare Assessment and Management

Equine welfare assessment and management encompasses the systematic evaluation of physical, behavioural and physiological indicators to ensure horses experience a life free from undue pain, fear and distress. Welfare assessment integrates animal-based measures—such as body condition, gait quality and behavioural time budgets—with resource-based factors including housing, nutrition and handling practices. Advances in technology have enabled non-invasive monitoring of heart rate variability, surface temperature and movement patterns, facilitating continuous welfare surveillance. Concurrently, structured protocols and scoring systems provide standardized frameworks for evaluating riding tack fit, social interaction opportunities and environmental enrichment. Effective management translates assessment findings into tailored interventions, from modifying resting periods in athletic horses to adapting stabling arrangements to promote exercise and social contact. Globally, collaborative efforts among veterinarians, ethologists and welfare organisations drive the refinement of assessment tools and the adoption of evidence-based guidelines, underscoring the pivotal role of robust welfare science in safeguarding both working and leisure equids.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have identified facial expression analysis coupled with hormonal profiling as sensitive markers of equine emotional states. In one investigation, gentle grooming was shown to elicit contact-seeking behaviours and enduring facial expression changes indicative of positive affect, whereas standard procedures provoked avoidance responses. Researchers measured basal oxytocin concentrations alongside detailed video-based scoring of ear position, eye shape and lip movement to distinguish subtle emotional valences. This work demonstrates the value of integrating automated facial coding with endocrinological data to quantify welfare and guide the development of handling techniques that prioritise positive experiences.

Equine Welfare Assessment and Management publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in equine welfare assessment and management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Behavioural time budget: Proportion of observation time allocated to key activities such as feeding, resting, locomotion and social interaction, used as an indicator of welfare balance.

Heart rate variability (HRV): Measurement of fluctuation in intervals between consecutive heartbeats, reflecting autonomic nervous system regulation and stress levels.

Oxytocin: Neuropeptide hormone involved in social bonding and stress modulation, whose basal and post-stimulus levels can signal emotional well-being.

Transformer model: Deep learning architecture designed for sequential data that employs self-attention mechanisms, used here for accurate classification of equine behaviours.

SEBWAT: Standardised Equine-Based Welfare Assessment Tool, a structured protocol for assessing the welfare of working equids in low-resource environments.

References

1. Facial expression and oxytocin as possible markers of positive emotions in horses. Scientific Reports (2018).
2. Analysis of Stress Predictors in Vaquejada Horses Running with Different Interval Rest Periods. Stresses (2023).
3. Comparison of Transformers with LSTM for classification of the behavioural time budget in horses based on video data. Biosystems Engineering (2024).
4. A standardised equine-based welfare assessment tool used for six years in low and middle income countries. PLOS ONE (2018).