Here I am, writing about sleep again. What a cool topic.

You know what’s really cool about writing about sleep? It’s that we’re actually to the point now of *caring* about horses’ sleep. How much sleep they need, how to help them get it, what stops them from getting it, and what happens when they don’t get enough. That means we’ve come a long way in equine welfare awareness, baby.

If you can understand French, have a look at this awesome video, though, from 1971. Already back then, Professor Yves Ruckebusch at the Toulouse Veterinary School was looking into sleep patterns in cows and horses. (Skip to the halfway mark to see the part about horses.) Okay, so I think if this study occurred in 2015, the study horse probably wouldn’t be chained up in a standing stall. Poor guy pulling on his halter during his REM sleep…. But anyway, kudos to Prof. Ruckebusch for this great start looking into equine sleep.

When I was a young horse owner in Texas, people told me horses can’t lie down for long because they need the blood to “bounce” back up from their frogs in the feet. Researchers have now told me that’s probably not true. I’ve also heard–actually in the last year–that only sick horses will lie down. Well, that isn’t true either. Healthy horses will lie down, and they need to lie down, to get their full rest to keep them healthy and ready to perform.

Since looking into horse sleep studies, I’ve been even more careful about bedding in my horses’ shared stall. My two horses are 17 hands each, so according to the welfare laws in Switzerland (the only country I know of that actually specifies legal requirements for horse bedding), I should be giving them 7.5 square meters of bedded lying area each, or 15 square meters for both of them. But since the mare’s very dominant over the gelding, I want to make sure there’s plenty of room, since a new study has shown that lower-ranking horses get more rest if they’re more bedding space. I’ve got 21 square meters of open bedding space in my barn. And when I find wood shavings in my horses’ manes when I wake up in the morning, it makes me a happy horse owner.

How’s your horse’s sleep?