Five Domains vs. Five Freedoms of Welfare

Overview:

In order to assess welfare, we need some kind of framework to organize the different aspects that play into welfare. Below is an explanation of the two main welfare assessment tools and how they differ. This is an essential step to helping your horse because we cannot fix a problem that has not been identified!

A Brief History of Animal Welfare

Animals have played a massive role in human development throughout history. From companionship from dogs to nutrition from chickens to medical advancements from rats, society as we know it would not exist. Horses are no exception to this. Horse-drawn carts helped with daily tasks, transportation, settlers, construction, and more. Horses were instrumental in developing modern agriculture by pulling machinery to plow land for cultivation. Horse meat and milk have been staples in some cultures diets and prevented deaths during brutal winters.

Humans fascination with horses pre-dates written history with the oldest known painting in the world being a cave painting of a horse. Humans carried this fascination of horses for millennia before finally domesticating them roughly 10,000 years later, the exact dates are still in dispute (1). Since then, humans have worked to manage and train horses.

The earliest stables date back to ancient Egypt under Pharaoh Ramses II's rule (1304-1237 BCE). Led by German scientist Dr. Edgar Pusch, a research team uncovered a large stable that could house up to 460 horses, with a slant in the stall floors for manure and urine management (2)! The oldest saddle has been found in China and radiocarbon dated back to 727-396 BCE (3).

Cave drawing of a horse, found in the Lascaux Caves in France (c. 15,000-10,000 BCE)

Oldest known saddle found in Yanghai, China (727-396 BCE) (3)

In the following millennia, humans developed new ways of managing and training horses. Production of grain increased for meal feedings for human convenience. Stalls were built to individually house horses and prevent escape. Training tools, like bits and spurs, were designed to more easily control the horse under saddle. The demand for horses to ride into battle, plow fields, and travel went down as our technology improved. Equestrian sports saw a big boom as horses became less of a necessity for human society. Dressage has roots in war training, while Reining, Cutting, and Roping are showing classes connected to cattle ranching. At the same time, horses began to see the transition of humans perception shifting from viewing them as tools to viewing them as family (4, 5).

Since this perception shift, studying horses and their behavior has blossomed into established fields of study. Following in the footsteps of Veterinarians, Animal Researchers, Shelter Professionals, and Zoo Animal Scientists, Equine Scientists and Professional Organizations have started to develop a horse-specific code of ethics, as shown on the Homepage. In addition to a code of ethics, animal scientists have developed a couple of methods to assess an animal's welfare: the Five Freedoms and the Five Domains.

Five Freedoms

Freedom from hunger and thirst
Freedom from discomfort
Freedom from pain, injury, disease
Freedom to express natural behavior
Freedom from fear or distress

Five Domains

Nutrition
Environment
Health
Behavior
Mental State

The push for better welfare standards has been around since the beginning of domestication, but the research on their welfare did not pick up until the 1970s/1980s (7, 8). Around this time, activists groups were shedding light on the theft and inhumane treatment of animals used for research(8, 9). The scientific community took the opportunity to develop welfare assessments that spread beyond research animals as we expanded our understanding of Stress and how it affects research results and meat quality (10-13). The Five Freedoms was formulated in the 1990s as a way to evaluate an animal's welfare and meet it's needs (14). The Freedoms describe negative states that an animal should not experience in order to maintain its welfare. The Five Domains, also developed in the 1990s, describes categories to evaluate for assessing welfare (15). In either case, it sets up animal caretakers to form species-appropriate management plans that maximize the horses welfare. In horses, current research supports the "3 F's" policy: Forage, Friends, and Freedom. Following these principles will meet a horse's basic needs to aid in preventing abnormal behaviors like severe Aggression and Abnormal Oral and Locomotory behaviors, including self-harming behaviors.

Above is a video of horses out in a pasture together with lots of forage to graze, an example of meeting the 3 F's.

Sources:

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Hawley, C. (1999). Middle East Egypt unearths world’s oldest stables. BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/475347.stm
Wertmann, P., Yibulayinmu, M., Wagner, M., Taylor, C., Müller, S., Xu, D., Elkina, I., Leipe, C., Deng, Y., & Tarasov, P. E. (2023). The earliest directly dated saddle for horse-riding from a mid-1st millennium BCE female burial in Northwest China. Archaeological Research in Asia, 35, 100451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2023.100451
DuBois, C., Nakonechny, L., Derisoud, E., & Merkies, K. (2018). Examining Canadian equine industry participants’ perceptions of horses and their welfare. Animals, 8(11), 201. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8110201
Wallace, S., Melvin, K., Schneider, L. G., & Ivey, J. L. (2019). Psi-21 public perception of equine and livestock management varies by classification of horses, industry experience, and animal welfare definitions. Journal of Animal Science, 97(Supplement_3), 247–248. https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skz258.503
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Carlson, P. (1991, February 23). The Great Silver Spring monkey debate - the washington post. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1991/02/24/the-great-silver-spring-monkey-debate/25d3cc06-49ab-4a3c-afd9-d9eb35a862c3/
Moberg, G., & Mench, J. (2000). Biology of animal stress : Basic principles and implications for animal welfare. CABI.
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Mellor, D. (2016). Updating animal welfare thinking: Moving beyond the “five freedoms” towards “A life worth living.” Animals, 6(3), 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani6030021
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