Welfare assessment of racehorses provides a baseline for continued monitoring

Background:
Racehorse welfare continues to be a focus of stakeholders both within and outside of the industry, and there is a need for evidence-based animal welfare data.

Objectives:
To gather data on racehorse welfare through a combination of animal-based observations and information about management practices, and to ascertain the feasibility of trained industry assessors carrying out a racehorse welfare assessment.

Study Design:
Cross-sectional.

Methods:
Sixteen trained industry assessors conducted individual observations of 737 racehorses in 21 Flat racing (F), 27 National Hunt (NH) and 26 Dual-purpose (D) training yards in Great Britain (GB). The welfare assessment protocol, including management and animal-based welfare measures, was carried out on up to 10 horses in each yard.

Results:
Horses were generally in good physical health, although external mouth corner lesions were reported in 18% of horses, with significant variation between yards (p ≤ 0.001). Forage was present in the stable of 86% of horses during the assessment. Daily turnout was available to 27% of all horses, and 55% of horses were reported to be turned out at least weekly. Of the horses that were turned out, 36% were done so in pairs or groups, and 75% were turned out on grass. In total, 47% of all horses had physical social contact when stabled, with 1% being housed in pairs, but 7% of horses had no visual or physical contact when stabled. In total, 7% of horses performed stereotypic behaviour during the individual welfare assessment. The majority of horses (69%–76%) reacted positively to three human reactivity tests.

Main Limitations:
Welfare measures used were constrained by the assessment being carried out on racehorses in an active training and racing schedule. Time available to the assessors was also a limiting factor.

Conclusions:
This welfare assessment of racehorses in training in GB proved feasible to conduct and provided large-scale data to monitor welfare and highlight areas for targeted welfare improvement strategies. Depending on the ultimate objectives, various implementation options for continued welfare assessments of racehorses are available, working in partnership with trainers and other industry stakeholders.