Original ResearchA Comparison of Three Conventional Horse Feeders with the Pre-Vent Feeder
Introduction
As a prey species, horses are very alert and well equipped to detect danger. A prey animal must react instantly to a perceived predator to be able to survive [1]. Being very vigilant and possessive of its feed, a horse will often attempt to ingest as much feed as possible between episodes of head-lifting and turning to observe its surroundings. This behavior can result in significant amounts of feed falling from the horse’s mouth onto the bedding or ground while its head is lifted out of the feeder. Excessive feed waste can occur as a result of eating from traditional horse feeders.
Choke and sand colic are economic and health issues that present concerns for horse owners across the industry. Choke is caused when partially chewed food becomes lodged in the esophagus and is often attributed to a horse bolting its food. Signs of choke are noted immediately or soon after the horse has been fed [2]. Feeding on the ground increases waste, feeding cost, parasitism, and dirt ingestion, the last of which increases the risk of sand colic and intestinal impactions [3]. Often, parasites are regarded as the primary cause of colic in horses, and colic is the single most common cause of death [4].
The cup feeder (Pre-Vent) contains eight cup-like structures, 12.7 cm in diameter and 8.89 cm in depth, molded into the bottom of the feeder. It is 60 cm across the inside top, 46 cm across the interior of the bottom, and 38.7 cm deep to the surface of the cups (Fig. 1). Proponents of the Cups design believe that it may reduce feed waste, choke, and sand colic by reducing the speed at which a horse can eat and the amount of feed that a horse drops and then eats off the ground. The cups are a unique feature that are claimed to make the horse use its lips and tongue to retrieve the feed, and hence reduce the amount of feed that a horse can eat at one time.
Two commonly used feeders, 16-L flat-back buckets (Bucket) and 28.4-L rubber feeder tubs (Tub), were compared with the cup feeder under controlled conditions to determine whether the cup design provided an advantage over the two commonly used conventional horse feeders.
Section snippets
Study Design
Nine Quarter Horse geldings ranging in age from 8 to 22 years from the Texas A&M University Horse Center were used in this 9-day study. Each day, the nine horses were brought from pasture at 07:15 am and again at 16:15 pm. Each horse was placed in a 3-m × 3-m concrete-floored stall made from pipe panels. All nine geldings were fed a 12% crude protein pellet diet at 0.75% body weight from each of the feeders, following a 3 × 3 replicated Latin square design. That is, each horse was randomly
Results
The horses in this study tended to spend more time eating during the morning feeding (24.03 ± 1.06 minutes) than in the afternoon (22.24 ± 0.87 minutes, P = .094). When the horses were fed from the cup feeder (Fig. 2), they spent significantly more time eating (31.15 ± 1.43 minutes) than when fed from the bucket (19.39 ± 0.42 minutes) and the tub (18.87 ± 0.49 minutes, P < .0001). Time spent eating from the bucket and the tub was not significantly different.
The percentage of feed dropped on the
Discussion
When the cup feeder was presented for the first time, each horse spent from 21 minutes 9 seconds to 60 minutes eating from the feeder. They appeared to be very focused on how to retrieve the feed from the cups at the bottom of the feeder. Informal observations found that the cups made the horse slow down and use its lips and tongue to scoop the feed out of the cups. Three of the nine horses pawed at the feeder during the course of eating, perhaps in response to increase difficulty of retrieving
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Pre-Vent for providing the feeders and paying the costs of feeding the horses during the study. They also thank Kelly Winsco, Jessica Lucia, and Ashley Wolford for assisting with feeding the horses.
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