Kentucky Equine Research has been looking at the growing rate of obesity in horses, and have a couple of articles that address this problem.
Overweight Broodmares
One of the recent findings is that overweight in mares in late gestation is linked to several major issues – for the mare, the foal, and the breeding program. For example, the foal is predisposed to developing metabolic diseases later in life. More research is being done, but
“The data already available to us show alterations in development of foals born to overweight broodmares.”
Kathleen Crandell, Ph.D., researcher
Read the full article here.
Body Weight Perceptions Among Hunter Judges
A second recent article addressing obesity is “Body Weight Perceptions of Horses by Show Judges,” that looked at Hunter judges and how the body weight of a horse being judged affected their scoring decisions. They surveyed 211 show hunter judges to find out if they could identify different weight categories from thin to obese.
“The data show that not only are judges less able to identify average—and therefore healthy—horses, but average horses incorrectly viewed as thin receive harsher penalties than overweight and obese horses.”
The perception of weight in Hunter Breeding classes was not specifically addressed, but has certainly been a cause for concern.
Read the full article here.
Photo: Guilhermegarcia90 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
