Is music played in your barn? Ever wonder if the horses like it? A study by researchers at Hartpury College in England found horses liked classical and country sounds more than they did rock and jazz. To test the effects of different kinds of music on stabled horses, Clare Carter, a Bachelor of Science student,…
A survey of elementary schoolchildren in a semi-rural district of the North Canterbury area in New Zealand has provided a snapshot of horse use among youngsters in the region. The survey by the local council was sent to all primary schoolchildren (5 to 13-year-olds) in the district. There were 5400 children at the schools and…
Obesity is likely to be just as common in horses as it is in the human population. A University of Nottingham study found that at least one in five leisure horses was overweight or obese. Owners were likely to underestimate their horse’s body condition score. Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is a system of evaluating a…
A genetic study of horses across Eastern Europe and Central Asia has traced the domestication of horses to wide-open grasslands shared by Ukraine, southwest Russia and Kazakhstan. Horse genetics is the science of heredity as applied to horses. Heredity is the reason for the similarity between parents and their offspring. Researchers generally date the domestication…
Did you know you can use math to estimate the mature height of a foal? Use a string or tape measure and measure the distance from the fetlock to the elbow. Using that same measurement, place one end of the string or tape measure at the elbow and hold it straight up to where her…
Shackleford Island is a part of North Carolina’s Cape Lookout National Seashore, and home to 118 wild horses. These horses are likely descendants of those that escaped shipwrecks in the 1500s. In 1974, Dan Rubenstein, then a Duke Ph.D. student of zoology, began a study of their social lives. 1. This is 2019. How long…