Horses are social herd animals. In a perfect world your horse would have a lifelong group of equine buddies and never have to be by himself. In the real world, horses are sometimes alone. A horse may live alone or may travel off by himself to events and competitions, but research confirms the value of keeping horses in groups.
Enjoying horse companionship
When given a choice, horses are motivated to achieve social contact and they chose to remain longer in a paddock with other horses rather than being alone.
In an article, Dominance and Leadership: Useful Concepts in Human-Horse Interactions?, author Elke Hartman cites the work of Janne W. Christensen and Paul D. McGreevy in a discussion of why social contact in important in the lives of horses.
There is abundant evidence for the benefits of keeping horses in groups. Keeping horses in groups best fulfills their need for social contact with conspecifics, benefits the development of social skills in young horses, especially if they are kept together with experienced adult horses, and encourages movement that is linked to enhanced gastrointestinal health and musculoskeletal development.
Moreover, group-kept horses are generally easier and safer to handle than singly kept horses. For example, there is evidence that adult group-kept horses are more compliant during halter fitting and routine examination and that young horses show less unwanted behavior toward the trainer during foundation training.
Likewise, it has been suggested that lower reactivity levels in group-kept adult horses can promote human safety in a training context.
When given a choice, horses are highly motivated to achieve social contact as revealed in operant conditioning tasks, and they chose to remain longer in the paddock with other horses present than being alone in it.
It is widely recognized that social isolation, both short term and long term, that often coincides with confinement is aversive for horses.
For example, there is sufficient empirical evidence showing that the development of stereotypic behaviors correlates with the transition from group housing to isolation, that stress responses to isolation are reflected in higher fecal cortisol concentrations, and that, after being deprived of social contact, horses are aggressive when reunited with conspecifics.
Horse owners often express concerns about the risk of injuries occurring in group-kept horses, but these concerns have not been substantiated by empirical investigations. What has not yet been sufficiently addressed are human safety aspects related to approaching and handling group-kept horses.
The overall benefits of keeping horses in groups should outweigh some of the concerns associated with group housing as the risk factors are clearly attributable to inappropriate management.
Note - Article is an update of an EquiMed article first posted 08/29/2017