Horse husbandry — pasture area, daily inspection, poisonous plants, tethering limits, turnout (UK DEFRA code)
Source: UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), “Code of practice for the welfare of horses, ponies, donkeys and their hybrids” (December 2017), gov.uk. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0 — verbatim quotation permitted with attribution; C1 substring-verified against pdf-raw/horse-welfare/horses_welfare_code_2018.txt.
Housing and day-to-day management guidance from the DEFRA welfare code: grazing area per horse, minimum inspection frequency, pasture hygiene and poisonous-plant control (ragwort), limits on tethering, and daily turnout or exercise for stabled horses.
Claims
As a general rule, each horse requires approximately 0.5 – 1.0 hectares (or 1.25 to 2.5 acres) of grazing of a suitable quality if no supplementary feeding is being provided.Horses at grass should be inspected at least once a day, preferably more often.Stabled or group-housed horses should be inspected at least twice a day.Fields should be kept clear of dangerous objects and poisonous plants.Ragwort is toxic to horses and ingestion can result in fatal liver damage.Tethered horses should be inspected no less frequently than every six hours during normal waking hoursAll stabled horses, apart from those on box rest for veterinary reasons, will benefit from daily turnout in the field to allow them to graze and socialise with other horses.