It’s Conference Season!
Well June and July are best described as ‘conference season’ which kicked off with the BETA annual Feed Industry conference. Sustainability and equine welfare have been key topics discussed at all the conferences but it was really interesting to see how the relationship between them was brought into focus at the Thoroughbred Breeders Association conference. Studies funded by Dengie, amongst others, have demonstrated the relationship between diet and behaviour in recent times and it was brilliant to at last hear this being discussed.
Respected vet and behaviour expert Dr Gemma Pearson detailed how what is fed right from conception, through development and then on the track, impacts on the behaviour and welfare of the racehorse. The public perception of racehorse welfare is key to the sport’s future and the horse’s diet is fundamental to their health and behaviour. The studies from Lab to Field that we have been sharing in our webinars and on the Horse & Hound podcast demonstrate that feeding fibre is not a barrier to performance either! Let’s hope the TBA conference is the start of some really big shifts in attitudes to feeding racehorses.
The last of the recent conferences was the International Colic Conference which was held in Edinburgh. The conference is only held every three years and only comes to the UK every so often – I can (just about) remember attending the last time it was held on these shores in 2002! I was really excited to hear more about the INCISE project which is the initiative to gather data about colic surgery and report on the most common issues, levels of successful outcomes etc. As this was a key part of my own PhD, it was brilliant to see so much data being presented and shared. Without being able to compare and benchmark outcomes, there is little chance of standards being raised across hospitals.
A particularly interesting paper explored the number of horses returning to work after colic surgery. This was carried out in the USA and showed that the more serious the colic (volvulus or the intestine twisting and strangulating itself for example) the less likely the horse was to return to the same level of work. However, this wasn’t just because surgery was less likely to be successful, it also came down to what were defined as non-biological factors. These included the fact that if owners had perceived their horse to have had a tougher time, they were less likely to push them as hard if they returned to work. This is both interesting in terms of the importance of clarity when reporting successful outcomes – the success of the surgery wasn’t the determining factor in these cases – but also reaffirms that, as horse owners, in most cases we just want a happy healthy horse after surgery!
And finally, something that became very apparent throughout the conference and became a bit of a running joke, was the level of funding that those based in the USA and to some extent Europe, have in contrast to those based in the UK. As presenter after presenter from the UK made their ‘no declaration of funding’ statements, a ripple of giggles went through the audience. Definitely a case of ‘funny, not funny!’
