According to a study, the colour of the water bucket influences the drinking behaviour of horses. The following are the results of this interesting study.
Do horses have a favourite colour when it comes to choosing the water buckets they drink from? This is exactly what Turkish researchers Fatih Yildirim and Ahmet Yildiz from the Department of Animal Science, part of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Atatürk University, investigated. They wanted to know if the colour of the bucket influences the drinking behaviour of the horses. In their study, they investigated the preferences of horses for six bucket colours. They chose between red, light green, yellow, green, light blue and turquoise.
The amount of water consumed was the yardstick. Three thoroughbreds and three Haflingers served as test horses. For them, a row of coloured buckets was set up at the edge of a paddock. Then these buckets were monitored daily from 9 am to 4 pm. The experiment was conducted for 18 days. two horses were tested each day.
In addition, the buckets were always repositioned after each round of testing. This way, the researchers ensured that the position had no influence on the result. What’s more, the observation of each horse of each breed ran for six consecutive days so that the horses could see all possible rearranged rows of buckets.
Results of the study
The average daily water consumption of each horse was calculated to be 4.29 litres per bucket, which equates to a total of 25.74 litres over the six buckets. Researchers previously assumed that horses have dichromatic colour vision. This can be compared to red-green colour blindness in humans. Now, however, it turns out that the horses had a clear preference in their choice of bucket colour.
The most popular is the turquoise bucket. Here the horses drank an average of 6.81 litres per day. On the other hand, the red bucket had the lowest water consumption with an average of 2.81 litres per day. This was followed by the colours light blue, light green, green and yellow.
When investigating colour vision in horses, the researchers found that so far only basic tones such as red, blue, yellow and a mixed colour, namely green, had been studied. In contrast, other mixed tones such as turquoise have not been considered so far. “In this study, different shades, for example light green, light blue and turquoise, were used. They could affect the horse’s vision – and indeed different results were obtained,” the researchers said.
Now the researchers recommend turquoise or light blue water buckets to encourage the horses to drink. However, “Further research on the relationship between water consumption, colour and tone of buckets is needed to better understand the relationship between colour perception, preference and water consumption,” the researchers say.
Source: Study
