Horse (Equus caballus) and other equines — ownership profile: legal duty of care, herd-animal nature, lifetime commitment (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.
This topic profiles what keeping a horse legally and practically entails under UK law: the Animal Welfare Act 2006 duty of care, the horse’s nature as a herd animal with high daily foraging time, and the lifetime commitment involved (including end-of-life planning). In the Code, “horse” covers all Equidae — domestic horses and ponies, donkeys, and hybrids such as mules.
Claims
Owning and caring for a horse can be a source of great enjoyment but it is also a big responsibility with a long-term caring and financial commitment.Under the Act animal owners and keepers are under a legal duty of care for the animals for which they are responsible on a permanent or temporary basis.A parent or guardian of a child under 16 years old is responsible for any animal that is owned or cared for by the child.Horses are herd animals and in the wild would live in relatively stable social groups.in a natural state they would spend 16-20 hours a day grazing and browsing for forageResearch suggests that only 9% of horses die of natural causes, so planning for the timely euthanasia of your horse is a key responsibility of ownership.