Equine Zzz’s: Unveiling the Importance of Beauty Sleep for Your Horse

In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, we prioritize a good night’s sleep for ourselves, recognizing its importance for overall well-being. But have you ever wondered about the sleep patterns of our four-legged companions, specifically horses?

Here at Apple Creek Farm, Beaky Peckham dedicates considerable time to delve into every aspect of a horse’s life, ensuring that each one reaches its full potential. One aspect of equine well-being that deserves attention is their sleep patterns.

A study conducted in the 1980s shed light on the sleep needs of horses, revealing that they require two to three hours of sleep per day. Of this, a minimum of thirty minutes to an hour is dedicated to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a phase achievable only when the horse is lying down.

So, how do horses sleep? Similar to other mammal species, horses’ sleep is divided into three types:

1. A snooze-type sleep.
2. A secondary sleep, characterized as true sleep.
3. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which necessitates the horse lying down for complete relaxation.

Recent research conducted in 2019 by Juan de Benedetti, a data science and analytics student at Brunel University, delved into the sleep behavior of 43 healthy horses, revealing intriguing facts:

• Horses tend to lie down the most between midnight and 3 am (averaging 35 minutes) and between 9 pm and midnight (averaging 25 minutes), with minimal lying down observed between 6 am and 6 pm.
• The duration of time a horse spends lying down varies widely, ranging from 11 minutes to an impressive 5 hours and 23 minutes within a 24-hour period.
• Despite individual differences, each horse, on average, spends an equal amount of time lying down each day.
• Notably, 21% of the horses studied lie down for less than one hour per 24-hour period, while 9% lie down for less than thirty minutes on average.
• Across all 43 horses in the study, the average total time spent lying down per 24 hours was two hours.

At Apple Creek Farm, our commitment to ensuring the best for each horse extends to understanding and addressing their sleep needs. We take pride in offering horses for sale with the assurance that they will be precisely as advertised, always striving for what is in the best interest of the horse. After all, a well-rested horse is a happy and healthy horse.

APPLE CREEK FARM
850 Old Wendell Road
Northfield, MA 01360
​https://www.applecreekfarmhorses.com/