Campaign «Horses Out!»
If horses were given a choice, they would opt for group housing with free exercise and pasture access. In Switzerland, however, the majority of horses often spend 23 hours a day in cramped individual stalls. This is particularly true of valuable sport horses and so-called «school horses» in riding schools. With the nationwide campaign «Horses Out!»
If horses were given a choice, they would opt for group housing with free exercise and pasture access. In Switzerland, however, the majority of horses often spend 23 hours a day in cramped individual stalls. This is particularly true of valuable sport horses and so-called «school horses» in riding schools. With the nationwide campaign «Horses Out!», the Swiss Animal Protection STS aims to ensure that every horse in Switzerland has regular exercise and access to pasture. Over the past few months, Swiss Animal Protection STS has been researching the keeping conditions at Swiss horse establishments. The conclusion: it is often valuable sport horses and many riding school horses that have drawn the short straw — they frequently spend between 20 and 23 hours a day alone in the stable in a cramped stall.
Promoting Horse Welfare
Horses are herd animals that need to move. Swiss Animal Protection STS has therefore been advocating for and promoting regular exercise, pasture access, and social contact for all horses for many years. The STS horse label, which has been in existence since 2011 and is monitored by the STS inspection service, recognises establishments that keep their horses in groups day and night and grant them free exercise and pasture access — with professional management and an understanding of horses.
Nationwide Campaign for Exercise and Pasture Access
However, not every facility can or wants to implement group housing in the stable for all horses. In order to give all horses in Switzerland as much free movement as possible with outdoor access and pasture time — regardless of the stable system (group or individual housing) — the STS is now launching the nationwide campaign «Pferde raus!» ("Horses Out!"). Farms that keep their horses in individual stalls can also participate. The prerequisite, however, is daily outdoor access in a group, wherever possible on a pasture, otherwise on an all-weather exercise area. Anyone who makes this commitment to their horses becomes an "ambassador" for species-appropriate horse keeping, receives a certificate from the Swiss Animal Protection STS, and is recognised and listed as "horse-friendly".
Texts, presentations and flyers:
- Let the horses out! Sandra Schaefler, qualified zoologist, specialist unit for companion animals | horses, Swiss Animal Protection STS
- «Le Refuge de Darwyn» Anouk Thibaud
- Pasture time for horses – a must! Fredy Knie jun.
- Statistics on horse keeping in Switzerland
- Horses Out! Flyer
More on animal rights and the animal welfare problem.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
