Do horse owners know how to care for their horses?

Horse owners have a duty of care to safeguard the wellbeing of horses in their care. However, within recreational equine populations, a substantial proportion of welfare problems reported are linked to unintentional neglect due to owner ignorance. This study assessed the equine knowledge base in a preliminary sample of UK horse-owners (n=128) with variable educational achievements (low, no degree: n=74, medium: undergraduate degree, n=27, high: postgraduate qualification, n=27). Respondents (horse owners/riders, >18 years) completed 40 voluntary equine-related questions in an online multiple-choice survey, distributed via equine-related FacebookTM sites, covering topics related to equine management, health, behaviour and welfare, categorised as easy (n=14), medium (n=14) and hard (n=12). The majority of respondents answered ‘easy’ questions correctly (78.71%), with 18.36% selecting incorrect answers and 2.93% stating they didn’t know the correct answer. Less than half of the participants answered ‘medium’ questions correctly (47.29%), with 31.51% selecting the incorrect answer and 21.21% not knowing the correct answer. Even fewer respondents attained the correct answer for the ‘hard’ questions (21.51%), with the majority either selecting the incorrect response (46.17%) or not knowing the correct answer (32.32%). Differences in correct responses between the question categories were significant (ANOVA: P=0.0001, f=25.18, df=2), with post-hoc analyses revealing participants selected more correct ‘easy’ answers compared to ‘medium’ (LSD: p=0.001; means: 78.71% vs 47.29%), and ‘hard’ answers (LSD: p=0.001; means: 78.71% vs. 21.51%), and more ‘medium’ than ‘hard’ (LSD: p=0.003; means: 47.29% vs 21.51%) answers. Interestingly, it appears participants increased their selection of ‘don’t know’ as their preferred response as question difficulty increased; ‘don’t know’ responses increased between the ‘easy’ and ‘medium’ questions (LSD: p=0.004; means: 2.91% vs 21.21%) and ‘easy’ to ‘hard’ questions (LSD: p=0.0001; means: 2.91% vs. 32.32%). Respondents selected more incorrect responses between the ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ question categories (LSD: P=0.001; means: 18.36% vs. 46.17%) but the number of incorrect answers did not differ between the ‘easy’ and ‘medium’ categories (P>0.05). Key areas where participant knowledge was poor included recommended forage to concentrate ratio (52.71% incorrect), identification of the signs of colic (41.09%) and recommended shoeing interval (49.46% incorrect). These results suggest a lack of fundamental knowledge exists in these horse owners, which has the potential to negatively impact equine health and welfare. Further research is needed to identify if this is a universal phenomenon in the equine industry and to explore strategies to educate horse owners and by association improve equine wellbeing