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Posted by Donna S
on February 5, 2008, 6:11 pm
216.111.195.18
Oh my, I almost forgot to make my daily post.......I saw other activitiy when I came today so I forgot that was mostly from yesterday...........so here I am!
Let's see what can we talk about today? I just happened to see on another message board that they were talking about an article on The Horse.com that indicated that they had information from a study done in France that it appears that foals that do better with human interactions are those who are not desensitized at birth, but are the foals where positive human interaction is made with the mare.
Here is a quote from the article:
"Our most recent study has focused entirely on imprinting techniques, and what we found was that it really wasn't very effective," Henry said.
The results, parts of which were published in Developmental Psychobiology and the Journal of Comparative Psychology, reveal that foals handled by humans during the first hours following birth remained closer to their dams and appeared to be more cautious about approaching humans at several weeks and months of age than foals in a control group that had not been handled.
Human-handled foals were also less social with other foals and less likely to explore their surroundings or separate from their mothers, even at six months of age, Henry said.
By contrast, foals that had not been handled directly, but had witnessed gentle human handling of their dams, were more likely to trust humans, the studies showed."
What is your reaction to these findings? Do you "imprint" your foals when they are born?
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