Greetings to all our regular visitors and any of our first time readers – I hope you’re all well and for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere fitting in lots of riding before the winter nights start drawing in soon.

This week on Equine Science Blog I’ll be taking a look at equine obesity, horse feed packaging, how microchips may soon be replaced with iris readings and finally the science behind mucking out a stable!

With many of us now experiencing autumn weather (except you lucky people in the South of the World!) we’re beginning to think about rugging up our horses. Now though it has been reported by David Watson that the animal charity The Blue Cross are challenging our preconceptions amid concerns that rugging up may be leading to overweight equines.

Rosie Mogford, the equine welfare education officer for The Blue Cross, is concerned that sometimes us humans may be molly-coddling our animals: “Wild horses naturally lose weight in the winter but domesticated horses can do the opposite, often through the overuse of rugs, stabling and hard feed”.

When winter comes, it's all too easy to think your horse is feeling the cold and forget about their natural coat. Think twice before over-rugging them and giving them extra feed when living out

In 2008, 40% of all the horse taken in by the charity were classed as overweight – a startling figure given the problems that excessive fat can cause. They’ve therefore launched their “Fat Horse Slim” campaign reminding owners that horses were once wild animals and that many equines who are not in work can happily live out 24hours a day without rugs provided they have shelter. They also want to remind us that it’s far more dangerous to a horse’s health for our friends to be over-rugged and too hot than a little bit chilly.

Whilst saying this though, it is important to remember that in very cold weather (along with very dry weather in the summer), grass can stop growing and older or underweight horses may require extra forage or feed to maintain a healthy weight.

For any owners interested in reading more about equine obesity and how you can help your horse maintain a healthy weight over the winter, make sure you check out the Fat Horse Slim website.

Sticking with the theme of nutrition, a new EU labelling legislation will be coming into force on 25th September according to an article on Horse & Hound Online.

Horse feed manufactors have welcomed the laws which require them to justify any claims they make on their packaging labels since all additives must now be listed. However, percentages of ingredients are no longer required since the industry were concerned this revealed companies’ recipes.

Katie Williams of Dengie Horse Feeds spoke to Horse & Hound online and is quoted as saying “It's the less well-informed manufacturers who get away with outrageous claims such as 'treats', 'prevents' and 'cures' — you can't say a feed will do this. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is supposed to stop false claims. But their actions are always retrospective, so the damage is done.”

At present many owners chose to have some kind of identification on their horse – whether this is because of passport regulations, or just for their own piece of mind. Microchipping and freezemarking are the more common, although branding and lip tattoos are also used. But now a US company is developing a portable system capable of scanning the iris in equine eyes.

Reported on Horsetalk.co.nz, this ‘iris capture’ machine may be the future of equine identification. The American company Sarnoff Coroporation is able to capture the horse’s iris image using a low visibility infrared light source capable of photographing the eye even from a distance whilst the animal is moving. This allows the iris’ image to be captured without inducing stress or disturbing the animal, unlike many of the more traditional identification methods.

Their portable system will especially prove useful in identifying racehorses at competitions and the company’s technologies are already used in several secure US government facilities.

And finally, there may be more science to mucking out than meets the eye…or maybe that should be nose?

German researchers have found that stables mucked out daily generate more ammonia – the chemical responsible for the wet smell.

The scientists, whose study has been published in the Journal of Animal Science, believe that mucking out should not be carried on a daily basis and also found that wheat straw is a better bedding to straw pellets or shavings.

By comparing different bedding and mucking out systems, they studied the production of gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and ammonia. The researchers set out to compare different types of bedding and mucking out regimes used in horse stables on the production of particle matter and biogenic gases - carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and especially ammonia.

They found that stables which were not mucked out daily had 15% lower ammonia levels than stalls mucked out completely on a daily basis, meaning that there was less of an unpleasant smell. Further, they evaluated the gas production over a total six-week period without mucking out and found that during this time the “ammonia values were found not to constantly increase” according to Horsetalk.co.nz.

Now it’s time for this week’s trivia question – to check if you have the right answer look on my profile page by clicking here.

How much saliva does the average horse produce each day?
1. 2 gallons
2. 5 gallons
3. 10 gallons
4. 15 gallons