Hästars behov av socialt umgänge- En studie om hur hästhållare i Laholms kommun uppfyller hästars behov av social kontakt
The problem with keeping horses with to little social contact has come to attention in a new regulation that comes into effect august 1st 2009. It states that horses? need of social contact has to be accommodated. That?s why it feels important to try to survey the horse owners? awareness about the regulation and its present fulfillment. To be able to carry out the survey we designed questionnaires that were sent out to chosen horse owners in Laholm municipality. The answers were analyzed with the regulation in mind. With our conclusions we hope to provide useful material that could be helpful in the future work with the regulation. We received 128 questionnaire answers of 302 that were sent out, which corresponds to approximately 42%. We were able to deduce that the majority of the horse owners had given their horses company of other horses on the same property (circa 93%), and most of them had company more than twelve ours per day. The remaining 7% constituted partly of two owners whose horses? social contact only consisted of the horses on the neighboring farm, and partly of seven owners who kept their horses with other animal species. Five of theses seven owners had animal species that were acceptable according to the regulation (cows and sheep), whilst the remaining two owners had unapproved animals (cats, dogs and chickens). We could conclude that the horse owners in Laholm are well aware about how the horses? social needs should be accommodated. We based this on that most horse owners keep their horses with other horses and/or with other acceptable animals, at least twelve ours per day. The comments of the horse owners also confirmed their awerness. The two owners who kept their horses with unapproved animal species were the only ones who we certainly know don?t fulfill the regulation, and they correspond to 1,5%. This means that we could draw the conclusion that the regulation fulfillment in Laholm is very good right now and hence it?s likely that there will not be any major problems with the fulfillment of the regulation. But this depends on the questionnaires being representative of the general horse keeping in Laholm, and that the answers are truthful.