The Pretransport Management of Stress in Performance Horses

The aim of this study was to ascertain whether DeStress nutritional therapy administration to performance horses before transportation would reduce stress expression in these animals. Ten performance horses were used in the present study offered either control (rice hulls) or treated (DeStress crumbles) diets before transportation. A cross-over design whereby all animals were tested both under control and treatment conditions was used. Orbital eye temperatures determined noninvasively before and after transportation using infrared thermography were used to monitor the efficacy of this nutritional therapy. Baseline eye temperatures before transportation were 34.1 ± 1.1°C for the control group and 34.3 ± 1.2°C for the treatment group (P > .05). After the horses had been transported, the eye temperatures were 35.3 ± 0.32°C for the control group and 34.7 ± 0.8°C for the treatment group (P < .05). These results suggest that providing a nutritional supplement (DeStress) to horses before transportation can reduce the physiological activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis due to that stress.