13/10/2025
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🦄 Want a happier horse? Research shows playtime makes a difference!
A new study by Jodi Anne Howard and Neville Pillay from the University of the Witwatersrand examined whether play behaviour could help horses cope with acute stress and improve their decision making abilities.
The research involved horses managed under two very different systems: intensively managed riding-school horses and pasture kept horses.
Each horse was exposed to a short but intense noise stressor, then given the opportunity to interact with a large ball (object play), and was subsequently tested in a decision-making maze to see how well they could choose a food reward.
The findings showed that exposure to stress increased negative emotional behaviours and made decision making less accurate, particularly in intensively managed horses.
However, after just a brief period of object play, horses showed more positive emotional states and their ability to make correct decisions improved dramatically compared to both their baseline performance and the stress-only condition.
Notably, while both management style and s*x influenced some behavioural responses, play consistently returned horses’ behaviour and emotional state closer to normal.
The study concluded that allowing horses regular access to playful enrichment activities can help mitigate the effects of acute stress, especially in environments prone to sudden noise or restriction, such as riding schools.
These results prove that incorporating play and cognitive enrichment into your horses management is a simple, practical strategy for supporting better welfare and resilience.
📖 Hold your horses: The effect of play behaviour in horses (Equus caballus) under imposed stress. Jodi Anne Howard & Neville Pillay.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159125002503
