Equine Welfare Program by Brooke Hospital for Animals -India
Our countries India have a population of approximately 500,000 working horses, donkeys and mules. Each of these is a working equine which supports livelihood of 5-7 individuals, with this comes the families who daily bread and butter depends on the work load given to this animal are facing real issues in the rearing of theses equines. The animals frequently attached by various diseases because of lack basic requirement of food and clean drinking water. The challenging work terrain and climatic conditions are severely too harsh hash with no working hours or capacity. The program on equine welfare, addresses the livelihood issue of the equine owners’, by directly working on issues related to the welfare of the equines. The program talks of five freedoms (freedom from pain &and suffering, freedom to eat, freedom from wounds, freedom from fear, freedom to move freely in group), and collective action promoted by equine welfare groups formed at the community level. An important aspect of the program is easy access to quality service delivery related to equine welfare. So, we work with government vets, Farriers, hair clippers, local health providers and paravets, so that welfare of the equines becomes a responsibility of all rather than just the equine owners. Working with this community for the past eight years, PASS has tried to establish the sense of pain for the animal in the mind of the owner. As a result, participation of equine owners’ increased in the program. We worked in Bageshwar districts within all three blocks. In Bageshwar there were 5500 equines with 1350 owners, with 67 equine owning groups. There are 7 associations of equine owners with 890 equine owners as members. Linkage with other government schemes and NRLM has been our forte. From time to the equine owners are capacitated on different acts like RTI, DV act, PCPNDT act etc. 25 Community resource persons have been identified in different blocks who are supporting the program in the field for its sustainability.
Equine Welfare Program’s Vision
To eradicate the pain of these working equine animals
Equine Welfare Program’s main objectives
Following are the 5 main objectives of the program
- Relieving equine animals from hunger and thirst
- Releasing equine animals from uncomfortable circumstances
- Relieving equine animals from pain, wound and disease
- To provide equine animals freedom to exhibit their normal behavior
- To help equine animals get rid of fear and stress
Activities conducted under the Equine Welfare Program by the organization
- Collecting baseline data from animals and their owners.
- Collecting information relating to the village through PRA and other activities
- Identifying equine friends and L.H.P
- Informing equine animal owners about the diseases, their symptoms and prevention
- Providing first aid and emergency treatment to the animals
- Proving the owners with first aid kits and train them in providing proper first aid
- Creating Equine Welfare Groups (EWG) and to inspire them towards activities done for equine animal’s welfare
- Motivate EWG to work in coordination for the welfare of equine animals
- Training equine animal owner’s on proper and quality shoeing of equine animals