Habitat preferences and shelter seeking behaviour of extensively kept Gotland Ponies

Sammanfattning: The constant decline of permanent pastures in Sweden has a negative impact on biodiversity. A multidisciplinary project is investigating if the endangered native Gotland pony could be used to keep and restore the biodiversity of permanent pastures and forests, on a minimal labour input, without compromising the ponies’ welfare. This thesis is a part of that project, focusing on the ponies’ resource utilisation. In May 2014 twelve one year old Gotland pony stallions were released into three enclosures of approximately 10 ha each, consisting of about 3 ha of lay and 7 ha of forest respectively. These enclosures were provided with man-made shelters and water troughs, but there were no supplementary feed given inside the enclosures during the year of the trial. To evaluate the ponies’ preferences for different vegetation types the ponies were equipped with a GPS-collars. The shelters were equipped with movement sensitive cameras to monitor how and when the ponies utilized them. The results showed that the ponies favoured lay at almost all weather conditions, except when snow was covering the ground. Forest usage increased during the winter as feed got less available on the lay, and through out the year it was used more during the night than during the day. The shelters were used about 48 minutes a day throughout the year. They were used mostly during daytime in the non-vegetative season, but during the vegetative season there were no differences in shelter use between night and day. Most previous studies of shelter seeking behaviour were preformed in small paddocks with ad libitum feed for the horses, and resulted in a significantly higher shelter usage than seen in the present study. Presumably, the ponies spent a lot of time foraging, fulfilling their nutritional needs. Ad libitum fed horses have no need, and sometimes no possibility, to preform the same behaviours. This could be one of the reasons for the difference in shelter seeking behaviour in this study compared to the literature.