Conducting Fear Tests on Foals May Improve Safety

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Updated:

March 16, 2024

International Society for Equitation Science

Using an objective fear assessment, fearful horses can be identified early on in their lives, before they are weaned from their dams, reports a recent study. This early identification presents an opportunity to place these more fearful horses in the care of experienced handlers from the beginning, which could help reduce the risk of accidents and enhance the overall well-being of the horse.

Being fearful plays a key role in a horse's temperament, affecting its suitability for various tasks and, crucially, its safety and well-being, both for the rider and the horse itself. Fearful horses can be challenging to manage and, at times, dangerous. In fact, one of the leading causes of riding accidents is fear-based behaviour. According to the Danish Accident Analysis Group at Odense University Hospital, riding is the most hazardous sport when it comes to the severity of personal injuries, with children and teenagers being the most frequent victims.

While certain accidents, like a horse stumbling or falling, are simply unpredictable, a significant amount of riding accidents stem from horses reacting out of fear. By early identification of horses most prone to fear responses, we can ensure they receive proper training from skilled professionals right from the start. This proactive approach could greatly reduce the occurrence of serious accidents and improve the safety of both riders and horses.

In principle, all horses can be trained not to take flight when frightened, but it takes a lot of training, time, and knowledge about learning theory and appropriate habituation methods. Therefore, it often ends badly if the very fearful horse finds itself in unexperienced hands and thus is not met with the correct understanding and training.

A Rare Long-Term Study

The study was conducted over three years during which a group of stallions was studied from foal to adult. The aim was to study whether the behavioural and physiological fear reactions that foals show during fear tests when they are around five months old are similar to their reactions in fear tests during their adult life.

The study included 25 Danish Warmblood stallions from a private stud. The foals were kept with their dams on large pastures until weaning and remained relatively unhandled until training for the first test at five months of age. All foals were weaned together at the age of seven to nine months and were kept in groups in a loose housing system with stallions and mares together. At one-and-a-half years of age, the stallions were moved to another stable and were housed in littered boxes with five stallions in each box. The horses were still handled only for veterinary or farrier treatment.

The study is the first of its kind to examine fearfulness in horses over such a long period of time, and from such an early age. The researchers were fortunate to be able to study this relatively large group of horses housed together from foal to adult. When these kinds of studies are done, it is crucial that the horses are kept under the same rearing conditions throughout. Otherwise, changes in housing, management, and training could affect the horses’ reactions and thus, the results.

Test Design

In the study, all stallions were introduced to a fear test — a “novel object test” (NOT1) — three times at different ages: five months, one year, and three years.

Before the first test, each foal was trained to enter a test arena on their own and walk to their dam who was placed at the other end of the arena. In the NOT1 test, a white plastic cover with boxes of different colours was placed in the middle of the test arena. During the test, the foal should pass the test object on its way to the dam (in the five-month test) or to a feed container (in the one- and three-year tests).

Two additional types of novel object tests were conducted at one and three years of age in which novel objects different from those in the NOT1 test were used.

Video was recorded of all tests, and equipment for measuring the heart rate was mounted on a girth. The following recordings were made:

Heart rate
Latency to reach the dam/feed container
Alertness (vigilant position with elevated head/neck focusing on the object)
Sniffing at the test object
Touching the test object

The study tested the associations between the various types of behaviour and the heart rate as well as the association of the test results between the various ages. The researchers found that behavioural reactions and heart rate correlated within tests and there was coherence between the tests at the various ages. The tests also showed that foals’ behavioural reactions towards novel objects were the best predictor of their fearfulness later in life. Thus, fearfulness in horses appears to be a relatively stable trait, which is testable from a young age and remains a characteristic of the horse’s temperament in adulthood.

Below is an illustrated overview of the Novel Object Tests (NOT) conducted at the different ages. The set-up was the same at all ages, except in the foal test (NOT1, five months of age) where the mare was placed by the feed containers, and in the three-year-old tests which were conducted indoors. The horses were carefully habituated to the test procedure prior to testing and walked calmly to the feed containers when no objects were present in the arena. Careful habituation is the only way to ensure that fear reactions towards novel objects are separated from other reactions.

(a) Objects used in NOT1 (one year of age, or five months with dam):