Ready to roll

A lot goes into ensuring safe road travel for horses, be it training, vehicle safety or on-the-day measures. Kieran O’Brien MRCVS explains

- Kieran O'Brien 

MOST horses will be transported by road at least once in their lives, and competition horses may experience many journeys throughout their career.

We are fortunate that with a bit of preparation and sympathetic habituation, most horses tolerate transport relatively well – although tests have shown that even seasoned travellers experience some physiological stress.

Such stress is evidenced by dehydration, an elevated heart rate, and raised blood cortisol (the stress hormone) levels for the duration of the journey. In addition, as little as one hour’s travelling can alter a horse’s faecal microbiome.

There is, however, a sizeable minority of horses who adapt poorly and become significantly stressed each time. Injuries during transport are relatively common, the majority occurring in horses that are reluctant loaders, unhappy travellers or are transported by unsympathetic drivers.

Prolonged transport of all horses can itself be associated with weight loss (principally caused by dehydration), gastric ulceration and respiratory disease. Time spent patiently training horses to load, and gradually habituating them to being transported, has been shown to reduce the adverse effects of transport significantly – both injury and the consequences of transport stress. In addition, monitoring using a camera in the vehicle may allow remedial measures to be put in place after the journey has started.

THE "HEAD-UP" POSITION