Figure 5.

(a) Low reproductive success, i.e., an absence of foals, particularly when combined with observing poor forage availability, may be an alerting indicator for chronic malnutrition, since poor nutrition in horses is known to have negative impacts on their fertility [93]; (b) Presence of parasite eggs in the faeces can be used as an indicator of the presence of certain gastrointestinal parasites [118]. However, faecal egg counts (FEC) give no indication of the severity of any associated pathology and cannot be used directly to make inferences about the animals’ mental experience. FECs therefore are welfare alerting indices, with a high FEC raising awareness that gastrointestinal pathology and subsequent clinical signs (e.g., diarrhoea, abdominal pain) may be more likely to arise in the future. Images A.M. Harvey.