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Environments - HORSE MANAGER
Managing a mare’s reproductive cycle. Innovative technology - wearable technology - can help this process but is it worth it? Middle Secondary Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking Australian Curriculum General Capability: Numeracy Australian Curriculum General Capability: ICT Capability
1. Being a Horse Manager requires that you are "up" on the latest technology in breeding. In an industry that is very conservative this can sometimes be difficult to achieve. You need to assess or evaluate any new technology to see if it would work for you and your horses. You are to read about a mare's reproductive cycle, the effects of light on this cycle, and, an innovative way to modify the cycle with a light mask "Equilume" in the following articles:
2. Write down all the facts about
3. Even though Dr Barbara Murphy studied Chronobiology - investigating how daily and seasonal changes in the light/dark cycle influence a horse’s physiology - at university and developed the wearable technology Equilume, there were and are difficulties selling it to the community as shown in the article in ThinkBusiness by Peter Brady, CEO of Equilume: List the challenges faced by Equilume. Have they been overcome? What is the cost of using Equilume? Does it outway the resultant foal cost or the mare remaining in the field (not putting the mare into the stables)? 4. You are to create an information website about Horse Management around Mare Reproductive Cycles and Light using Wix for Australian Horse Managers. Remember that in Australia, horses birthday is 1st August.
How will you encourage other technology advances to be viewed positively by the Australian Horse Managers? 5. Discuss as a class: "Should we have nominated a certain date for all horses to have their birthdays? What are the ramifications for Horse Managers for either the certain date or the date the foals were born on as the registered birthday date?"
The Horse Grimace Scale and Horse Behaviour Primary Middle Secondary Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking
1. As Horse Managers, you need to know alot about horse behaviour. In the The Conversation 13 May 2016, the writers talk about the Horse Grimace Scale [HGS] developed by Costa et al in 2014:
As a result of research, Dr Michela Minero, joined in the study by Emanuela Dalla Costa, Dirk Lebelt, Diana Stucke, Elisabetta Canali, and Matthew Leach, assessed six “facial actions units” as being responses to pain:
Each indicator is scored on a scale of 0-2,
with 0 meaning not present, 1 meaning moderately present, and 2
meaning obviously present, giving any one horse a maximum rating on
the Horse Grimace Scale of 12. For example: Look at the following assessment of these two horses before and after an operation:
(Source: Horse Talk) Previously, Horse Managers were able to see pain in horses through other general non-specific indicators such as decrease in normal activity, lowered head carriage, fixed stare, rigid stance and reluctance to move. 2. Look at the following horses' faces - what HGS number would you give each horse?
3. Go and have a look at the horses you have contact with. Provide each of them with a HGS number. 4. Compare your number with a partner. Are they the same? Why? Why not?
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