Cinema portrays wild horses to be “running free,” but the truth is that wild horses spend hours and hours a day “walking free,” moving slow and steady as they graze, browse and forage.
Step, bite, chew, repeat. Horses were designed to move and it keeps them physically healthy and mentally content.
The No. 1 function of the horse’s body is movement. In fact, every body system, whether respiratory, digestive, neurological or reproductive, is in greatest health when the body has abundant movement. Somehow, though, the value of movement to the body in current society has been seconded to forced, regimented exercise and thus the slow steady movement of day-to-day activity has fallen in value. However, the difference between exercise and movement varies greatly to overall health and well-being.
Read Also
Shifting standards on cattle parasite control
Parasite product resistance has more farmers and veterinarians thinking differently about how to control issues like lice or worms.
Exercise, physical activity and movement are all different ways to use the body. While words have different associations for people, exercise generally implies a structured regime of repetitive physical activities with a training focus, whereas movement is physical activity that occurs while living day-to-day life, like going to the gym for the human and longeing for the horse versus gardening or walking the dog for the human and grazing for the horse.
Movement can be seen as activities that move the horse through its daily life. Due to the nature of a fibrous diet, this must include a great many foot falls and chewing cycles to ingest a sufficient volume. Ironically, research has found that horses do not require daily regimented exercise to remain fit but they do require an environment that provides lots of opportunities for movement to retain a natural level of fitness.
The field of exercise was born to answer the harmful sedentary effects of a contemporary, modern life on the body. As such, many a human has come to prioritize exercise over movement due to a fast paced, time-limited lifestyle.
This philosophy has broadly spilled into the equine world, where many horses also live a sedentary existence with brief bouts of intense exercise.
As a result, many horse owners focus on their horse’s exercise program while overlooking the value of general movement to its biology. Contemporary human cultures and suburban equine cultures, while convenient, frequently result in monotonous and repetitive activity that lacks variety. This becomes a biological tax to both the human and the equine body to such an extent that it dramatically diminishes quality and length of life and leads to an array of health issues.
Modern day horses are suffering from many of the same health problems as modern day humans and pets.
As a horse’s opportunity for full expression of movement is constrained, all body systems are affected to varying degrees. Obesity is the most obvious outcome, but so are metabolic followers such as insulin resistance, equine metabolic syndrome and laminitis.
Other consequences include poor hoof quality, skin conditions, digestive disorders like ulcerations, colic and impaction, natural behaviour losses, loss of muscle tone and weak top lines, reproductive failures, stereotypical behaviour developments and a general decline of fitness and well-being.
What were once thought to be age-related conditions in horses, such as degenerative arthritis, Cushings disease and immune weakness, are now found in horses at younger ages.
Exercise programs generally target the larger musculoskeletal groups but the highly refined connective and neurological tissues fundamental to respiration, fluid circulation (blood and lymph), digestion and reproductive systems, and hoof and dental health are highly invested in the outcomes of daily movement to remain healthy.
In addition, the immunological duties of the lymphatic system are intricately connected to daily movements of the body.
Movement is so crucial to the horse’s biology that when insufficient, it leads to problematic behaviours —cribbing, weaving, pacing and stall walking— as the animal attempts to satisfy the requirement for moving even when prevented.
In 2020, Dr. Robert Bowker of Michigan State published the first account measuring the 24-hour step activity of domestic horses on two- to five-acre pastures and in stalls.
The pastured horses took seven or eight times more steps at +/- 11,000 and travelled an average of 16 kilometres in 24 hours, while the stalled counter group took +/- 1,400 steps within the same time.
As health costs rise for horse owners, the pressures on horse-keeping practises will evolve to embody “home ranges” out of necessity to improve equine movement and thus equine health and welfare.
