08/08/2024
INDUSTRY STANDARD PREMATURE WEANING PRACTICES
Weaning is naturally gradual, whereby the physical and psychological bond between mother and offspring is ended. To date, there are numerous studies, across a wide range of species, showing the physical and mental harm that is done when animals are prematurely and forcibly weaned. The act compromises an animal's welfare and goes against best-practices for raising a physically and behaviourally healthy animal. Therefore, it should be avoided.
Premature weaning of horses (~4-7 months of age) is sadly still a common practice in the horse world. While young horses can physically be kept alive when weaned at this age, the practice is harmful in the short-term. It can also result in the creation of unwanted behaviour problems in the long-term.
While we have selectively bred horses to perform a wide range of activities for us, we have not been able to breed out the basic needs which they still share with their wilder relatives. Studying how horses behave under natural conditions gives us valuable information on how best we can provide for our domestic horses. For example, horses have evolved to need fulltime access to what I call the 3 F's of Friends, Forage, and Freedom: living in direct contact with other horses, having continual access to forage so that they can trickle feed, and having the ability to freely engage in a wide range of normal behaviours in their environment. When horses are denied access to one or more of these three F's, or when we interfere with their ability to engage in normal behaviours it results in stress, decreased welfare, and can result in the creation of unwanted behaviours.
To better understand the effects of weaning practices, researchers in France and Iceland examined how and when foals wean themselves when living under natural conditions. Of the 16 mare-foal pairs they observed, they found that all of the foals spontaneously weaned themselves at around 9-10 months of age. Two weeks prior to self-weaning, the mares and foals remained closer to one another than they did to others in the group, usually within 1-5 horse lengths of one another. Suckling bouts also didn't decrease in the two weeks prior to weaning, and the foals made no attempts to suckle once weaned. This self-directed weaning also caused no signs of stress to either party.
A frequent rationale for premature weaning is to preserve the physical condition of the mare. Interestingly, none of the mares in this study lost physical condition, despite the length of time mares and foals were together.
In summary, to quote the authors:
"Modern breeding practices generally impose strong constraints as compared to the conditions of development of foals in a more natural environment. One major aspect is the early artificial weaning, which is not just a stage of diet transition but also a stage of social separation. There is increasing evidence that such a practice, although carried out on a routine basis by horse breeders, leads to short- and in some cases to long-term severe negative outcomes.
There is therefore a clear need to better understand the factors at stake (e.g., cessation of milk intake, immature digestive system, maternal deprivation, absence of adult models, additional changes in feeding or housing…), to improve the domestic management of weaning and animal welfare."
You can read the full paper, 'Domestic Foal Weaning: Need for Re-Thinking Breeding Practices?' by accessing it at this link: https://tinyurl.com/PrematureWeaningHorses
Image by Hans Benn from Pixabay
