15 Jan 2020
Pending the success of the six-month “traffic light” scheme, the initiative will be rolled out across the UK in the summer.
Vet Times
Job Title
Image © BEVA
BEVA has launched a pilot project to tackle equine obesity.
The scheme uses a traffic light colour system of vaccination reminder stickers that vets can place on the front of passports at each vaccination appointment.
Pending the success of the six-month pilot, the initiative will be rolled out across the UK in the summer.
Obesity is one of the biggest problems facing equine welfare in the UK, but despite the best efforts of numerous equine welfare charities to address the issue, a significant proportion of owners are either not recognising obesity in their horses, or not being motivated to subsequently take action.
BEVA decided to confront the problem in a different way, using knowledge gained from the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – a Government think tank specialising in behavioural economics and psychology.
Lucy Grieve, president-elect of BEVA and part of the association’s obesity campaign working group, said: “Determined to look at new ways to positively engage with horse owners, we harnessed the BIT’s experience of what methods work most effectively and came up with a simple, practical scheme revolving around vaccination visits, which could be affected by vets themselves.”
The idea is to use the routine annual or six-monthly vaccination visit as a time to assess a horse’s body condition.
A traffic light colour system of vaccination reminder stickers can be stuck to the front of the passport to remind the owner of when the next vaccination is due, but with additional information, too.
The traffic light system is as follows:
