BEVA have committed to supporting the efforts to tackle equine obesity and as part of this work BEVA Council Member Nicky Jarvis on behalf of the Ethics and Welfare Committee has conducted a survey on BEVA members to understand the current opinions of our members regarding equine obesity. The full results can be viewed here.
HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
A study of 792 veterinary registered equines across England, Scotland and Wales where owners assessed their horse’s body condition score (BCS) suggested 31% of horses were overweight (Robin 2015). Many previous studies have shown that owners frequently underscore their horses so the number of overweight equines is likely to be much higher which was reflected by your responses.
48.5% of vets felt 25-50% of the horses they saw were overweight but alarmingly 35.8% of vets felt 50-75% of their patients were overweight with 3% of you reporting this figure to be 75% or more. These levels are higher than those reported for the general population and perhaps indicate a greater requirement for veterinary intervention in the overweight horse as well as owners failing to recognise/address obesity.
Perhaps not surprisingly these heavyweights were most likely to be found in the leisure riding and retired/companion sectors followed by the competition horse. Overweight horses were least likely to be found in the racing sector.
BROACHING THE ISSUES AND TERMINOLOGY
Referring to the Carroll and Huntington BCS system, vets were ‘very likely’ to address the issue of weight when presented with a horse of BCS 1 or 5. With body condition scores of 2 or 4, respondents were fairly likely (7 out of 10 where 10 is very likely to address) to bring up the subject of weight with a client showing we are not afraid to raise the issues we see.
Interestingly 60.6% of you felt long standing clients took your observations on their horse’s weight better, 6.6% felt it was easier with a new client and the remainder felt it made no difference at all.
Interestingly you felt that using the term ‘Good Doer’, whilst least likely to cause offence, would only result in 5.7% of owners taking any action. Many of you commented that using softer terms could result in the owner not taking the problem seriously enough and that ‘Good Doer’ could even imply the horse was healthy.
Certainly, it would appear from the survey, the words most likely to get owners engaged whilst minimising offence seem to be ‘High Body Condition Score’ and ‘Overweight’.
Other suggested ways of introducing the subject of obesity was to concentrate on showing owners what a ‘cresty’ neck was and the ability/inability to palpate ribs. Some vets commented the best way to get owners to take action when their horses were overweight was not to use the terms above but to describe the horse as ‘high risk for laminitis’ or ‘high risk for health problems’. Sadly, some vets commented they felt many horse owners were in denial and nothing seemed to help get their message across until the horse actually succumbed to laminitis.
And finally whilst 17.2% of you felt your advice on weight management was well received regardless of the reason for your call-out, 53.3% felt their advice was only well received if the horse’s bodyweight was relevant to the visit (e.g. laminitis) and 29.5% gave advice but felt it was unlikely to be acted on.
SO WHY ARE HORSES OVERWEIGHT?
In addition, you provided information on the problems of over-rugging, over feeding in cold weather, lack of awareness of how serious the health issues can be for an overweight horse, peer pressure both from within yards and perhaps judges’ perceptions. You commented on the difficulty of keeping two horses together where each has different nutritional requirements and also an owner managing a horse at risk of sand colic or gastric ulceration.
The role of feed companies and advertising was also raised and finally comments indicated you believed some owners were completely unaware that their horse was overweight (rather than ‘disagreeing’ it was overweight) and that education was essential.
An alarming 86.3% of you reported that in your opinion <25% of owners weigh their horse’s feed or forage, most owners using scoops or measuring by eye. This would certainly make calculations for weight loss or maintenance (in terms of feeding as a percentage of the horse’s bodyweight) a challenge and encourage over-feeding.
TACKLING THE ISSUES
Over 56% of respondents said they have weighbridge facilities and 26.9% of you currently offer weight clinics for horses. These existing clinics offer a wide variety of help and support for clients and over the coming weeks we will share your top suggestions along with blogs on setting up a new clinic.
Over 78% of respondents said they would consider offering a free weighing clinic (weight tape or mobile weigh bridge) on livery yards in conjunction with routine visits.
The majority of you were confident with body condition scoring (graded >4 out of 5, where 0 = not at all confident and 5 = very confident) with 62% of vets preferring the Carroll and Huntington scale (which uses 0-5 scoring) as opposed to the Henneke scale (1-9). Seven percent of vets did not use a BCS system.
Additional comments were made to say you tailored your advice to suit the case and situation. Many of you said you would review use of rugs and perhaps clip out the horse to aid weight loss as well as soaking hay and provide smaller holed hay nets so the horse took longer to eat out.
When asked where you would direct interested owners for further sources of information on weight loss and feeding, 44.3% of vets would advise commercial feed company websites and information lines, 28.7% of us use equine charity websites such as Blue Cross and World Horse Welfare for their weight loss leaflets and DVD’s and 25.4% of vets have information on their own practice website or leaflets. Twenty nine percent of vets did not tend to use other resources.
Other popular resources mentioned in comments were the Talk About Laminitis website (www.talkaboutlaminitis.co.uk) and the videos available from the Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF).
HOW BEVA CAN HELP
The most popular requests were for a single list of all of the resources available with quick and easy links to information such as the Fat Horse Slim campaign (Blue Cross), Right Weight (WHW) and use of a grazing muzzle (NEWC) as well as a downloadable Body Condition Score leaflet (Redwings). You asked for extra links to CPD for weight loss strategies and how to increase owner motivation and compliance. Vets wanted BEVA to produce accessible webinars to focus on dietary advice and human behaviour change and very importantly you wanted us to help increase awareness in the popular press, social media sites, share success stories, involve feed companies and help owners to appreciate the consequences of an overweight equine.
We’ve got our homework and we’re on it! The BEVA Tackling Obesity In Equine Practice noticeboard will open shortly for business.
Nicky Jarvis, Ethics and Welfare Committee BEVA
References: Robin, C.A., Ireland, J.L., Wylie, C.E. et al. (2015) Prevalence of and risk factors for equine obesity in Great Britain based on owner-reported body condition scores. Equine Vet. J. 47(2), 196-201.