"Fecal Cortisol Metabolites Indicate Increased Stress Levels in Horses During Breaking-In: A Pilot Study" — direct, recent, applied.
Horses are instinctively flight-oriented animals and thus highly sensitive to external influences. Sport horses have to deal with a lot of different and potentially stressful situations and the criticism from animal welfare organizations against equestrian sport is rising. This pilot study aimed to investigate how much stress young horses experience during initial training, when the transition from an unridden horse to a riding horse takes place. To determine the stress level, we measured fecal cortisol metabolites (FCMs) of young and unridden horses and of horses in various training states between less than one year to over three years in training.