Utvärdering av Equanimity som lugnande medel

Abstract: Before the horse was domesticated, they survived because they had natural instincts, and many of them are still presents in horse today, in some more than others. In everyday situations we sometime want a horse not to act natural but in a more calm and collective rational way. A horse often reacts with some sort of flight before asking if it really was dangerous. In transport, shoeing the horse, at the vet, riding and grooming we most often want them to react in the opposite way of what comes naturally when they are nervous. What if we can make them more inclined to react as we want in these situations instead of what is natural to them, this is the core of this study I have conducted. These nervous behaviours in stressful situations can potentially be dangerous to horses, riders and grooms around them. Therefore, we want to have a way to calm the horse down before it comes to this dangerous point. A mare is naturally producing a sedative in its milk that is calming for the foal. This agent is a pheromone that company Ceva is producing a chemical copy of and it´s called Equanimity. Ceva want to put this agent in to a gel that riders and grooms can use on the horses before the stressful situation occurs so that the horse is calmer in the situation. Ceva contacted Flyinge and asked them to do a study on the gel Equanimity to see if it had a significant calming effect on horses. Ceva’s goal is to see if there is a decrease in the nervous behaviour in stressed situations when using Equanimity, so that they can market Equanimity as a gel with a calming effect on horse in stressful situations. The course of action is that the gel with the agent Equanimity is applied in the nostrils of the horse before the nervous behaviour in the stressful situation occurs. The fragrance pheromone is absorbed by the underlying blood vessels and effect of the preparation occurs shortly, according to research conducted by Ceva. A crossover-study was performed where the horses got the gel with and without the active agent pheromone. The riders and grooms did not know when the horse got placebo so they evaluated what happened and not what they expected to happen. The null hypothesis was that Equanimity does not give any calming effect. Hypothesis testing was performed with t-test and paired tests where Equanimity was investigated against a placebo preparation. The horses made three paired tests in the cross-over study. In this study, eight horses were used that had shown strong reactions in stressful situations. The horses selected showed stressed behaviour during shoeing, outdoor riding, riding in riding hall, loading or when released in a fenced-in area. The evaluation of stressed behaviours was done by the evaluators with a mark on a Visual Analog Scale. The evaluators experienced a decrease of 22% of stressed behaviours when using Equanimity. To investigate the significance value, a T-test was made. The study showed that the active substance Equanimity had a positive effect on the horse's nervous behaviour. The conclusion was that some horses showed significant less stress when the active gel was applied. The effect of the active gel seems to be stronger in younger horse showed better results than older horse. To study younger and older horses and how they respond to the pheromone will make an interesting study in the future.