Consumer demand theory
of equine environmental preferences
K.A. Houpt, J. Lee and T.R.
Houpt
Cornell University, Ithaca,
USA
There has been considerable public concern about the welfare of horses used in the Pregnant Mare Urine (PMU) industry. One area of concern is the lack of exercise of mares confined for long periods in straight stalls in which they can not turn around. We used operant conditioning to measure the strength of a horse's motivation for each of three commodities: food (50 gm of molasses grain mixture following a 12 hr fast), exercise (release into a paddock for 3 min) or companionship (access to another mare for 3 min). Food is an inelastic demand, whereas exercise and companionship are considered elastic demands. Seven mares were confined in straight stalls. The horses had to press a panel switch to release themselves from the stall for each reward. The number of pushes was raised after each at which she would no longer press the panel. The commodities were tested in counterbalanced order. The order of demand was food, companionship and then exercise. The median number of panel presses for food was 56, for companionship 16, and for release 16. The range of responses was from 0 to 904.
A two-choice preference test was used to measure preference for exercise. Nine athletically-conditioned horses were trained in a Y-maze that turning right signaled a return to the home stall whereas turning left meant exercise on a treadmill. Ten training trials (one trial per day) were given in which the horse was forced to make five right and five left choices. The training was followed by three test days on which the horse was free to go in either direction. Eight of the nine horses chose to return to the home stall on each of the three two-choice preferences tests. The ninth horse chose the treadmill twice and the home stall once. The results of both the operant conditioning experiment and the two-choice preference indicate that exercise is not an important aspect of the optimum equine environment.