Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group

Horses are often kept in individual stables, rather than in outdoor groups, despite such housing system fulfilling many of their welfare needs, such as the access to social partners. Keeping domestic stallions in outdoor groups would mimic bachelor bands that are found in the wild. Unfortunately, th...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Briefer Freymond, Sabrina, Briefer, Elodie F., Niederhäusern, Rudolf Von, Bachmann, Iris
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559779/

id	pubmed-3559779
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-35597792013-02-04 Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group Briefer Freymond, Sabrina Briefer, Elodie F. Niederhäusern, Rudolf Von Bachmann, Iris Research Article Horses are often kept in individual stables, rather than in outdoor groups, despite such housing system fulfilling many of their welfare needs, such as the access to social partners. Keeping domestic stallions in outdoor groups would mimic bachelor bands that are found in the wild. Unfortunately, the high level of aggression that unfamiliar stallions display when they first encounter each other discourages owners from keeping them in groups. However, this level of aggression is likely to be particularly important only during group integration, when the dominance hierarchy is being established, whereas relatively low aggression rates have been observed among stable feral bachelor bands. We investigated the possibility of housing breeding stallions owned by the Swiss National Stud in groups on a large pasture (5 stallions in 2009 and 8 stallions in 2010). We studied the pattern of agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions after group integration (17–23 days), and the factors influencing these interactions (time after group integration, dominance rank, age or experience of group housing). We found that stallions displayed generally more ritual than agonistic and than affiliative interactions. The frequency of agonistic and ritual interactions decreased quickly within the first three to four days. The frequency of affiliative interactions increased slowly with time before decreasing after 9–14 days. A stable hierarchy could be measured after 2–3 months. The highest-ranking males had less ritual interactions than the lowest-ranking. Males had also less agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions if they had already been housed in a group the previous year. Therefore, we found that breeding stallions could be housed together on a large pasture, because the frequency of agonistic interactions decreased quickly and remained at a minimal level from the fourth day following group integration. This housing system could potentially increase horse welfare and reduce labour associated with horse management. Public Library of Science 2013-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3559779/ /pubmed/23382940 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054688 Text en © 2013 Briefer Freymond et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Briefer Freymond, Sabrina Briefer, Elodie F. Niederhäusern, Rudolf Von Bachmann, Iris
spellingShingle	Briefer Freymond, Sabrina Briefer, Elodie F. Niederhäusern, Rudolf Von Bachmann, Iris Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
author_facet	Briefer Freymond, Sabrina Briefer, Elodie F. Niederhäusern, Rudolf Von Bachmann, Iris
author_sort	Briefer Freymond, Sabrina
title	Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
title_short	Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
title_full	Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
title_fullStr	Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
title_full_unstemmed	Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group
title_sort	pattern of social interactions after group integration: a possibility to keep stallions in group
description	Horses are often kept in individual stables, rather than in outdoor groups, despite such housing system fulfilling many of their welfare needs, such as the access to social partners. Keeping domestic stallions in outdoor groups would mimic bachelor bands that are found in the wild. Unfortunately, the high level of aggression that unfamiliar stallions display when they first encounter each other discourages owners from keeping them in groups. However, this level of aggression is likely to be particularly important only during group integration, when the dominance hierarchy is being established, whereas relatively low aggression rates have been observed among stable feral bachelor bands. We investigated the possibility of housing breeding stallions owned by the Swiss National Stud in groups on a large pasture (5 stallions in 2009 and 8 stallions in 2010). We studied the pattern of agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions after group integration (17–23 days), and the factors influencing these interactions (time after group integration, dominance rank, age or experience of group housing). We found that stallions displayed generally more ritual than agonistic and than affiliative interactions. The frequency of agonistic and ritual interactions decreased quickly within the first three to four days. The frequency of affiliative interactions increased slowly with time before decreasing after 9–14 days. A stable hierarchy could be measured after 2–3 months. The highest-ranking males had less ritual interactions than the lowest-ranking. Males had also less agonistic, ritual and affiliative interactions if they had already been housed in a group the previous year. Therefore, we found that breeding stallions could be housed together on a large pasture, because the frequency of agonistic interactions decreased quickly and remained at a minimal level from the fourth day following group integration. This housing system could potentially increase horse welfare and reduce labour associated with horse management.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3559779/
_version_	1611951105812463616

Pattern of Social Interactions after Group Integration: A Possibility to Keep Stallions in Group

Similar Items