Most of us realise that keeping horses in individual stables, isolated from other equines, is stressful and can lead to stereotypical behaviour (so-called stable vices) such as weaving, box-walking, crib-biting and wind-sucking. Essentially, this is because horses are herd animals.
French vets have studied whether different stable designs on a yard with a large population of warmbloods had an effect on their behaviour while kept inside. They studied 32 geldings on an elite dressage yard. All of the horses were fed, bedded down and trained in the same way, but there were two types of stable.
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