Social facilitation has been observed in the stabled horse with access to forage (Sweeting et al. 1985). Socially facilitated feeding behaviour has not been investigated through the provision of concentrates. It is likely that the motivation to ingest a concentrate feed is different to that of forage. In a variety of species social facilitation will only occur when presented with a novel food. Therefore it has been proposed that a function of social facilitation is to increase the acceptance of novel feeds. The first objective of this study therefore, was to investigate if social facilitation occurs with the horse’s standard concentrate feed and or a standard concentrate feed plus a novel flavour.

Visual contact has been found to be a necessary component in the facilitation of forage ingestion. Increasing visual contact between stables improves awareness of conspecifics, which has been linked to a decrease in abnormal behaviour. There has, however, been limited investigation into the relationship between neighbouring stabled horses especially during potentially stressful periods such as meal times. The second objective of this study was to investigate the effects on behaviour of the presence or absence of a familiar horse during meal times.