How To Get A Horse To Sleep

Sleep patterns of sleep and sleep behavior are in general not major areas of concern for equine veterinarians.

How to get a horse to sleep. Horses can get a lot of sleep while standing up but they lie down when they require rem sleep. The period of each sleep phase is very brief lasting only a few minutes at a time. Typically the amount of rem sleep they require is very small so they don t need to lie down often. Adult horses sleep for about three hours each 24 hour period.

However not all this time is the horse asleep. Most of this sleep occurs in many short intervals of about 15 minutes each. This system lets him lock his legs in position so unlike you he can relax his muscles and doze off without keeling over. Little is known about equine sleep patterns but they appear to take several forms.

A few minutes kip is all that a horse needs at various points of the day but over the course of 24 hours these minutes should add up to a total of three hours sleep. Horses require approximately two and a half hours of sleep on average in a 24 hour period. The horse will again enter deep restfulness and then slow wave sleep and then if comfortable in the environment go into paradoxical sleep either lying on its side or tucking its head to the side in the paradoxical phase of sleep rapid eye movements loss of reflexes and muscle function and increased brain activity occur. The length and type of sleep are affected by diet temperature workload gestation and gender.

However a horse can only enter rem sleep when it sleeps lying down. However many horses lie down just because they feel comfortable or want to do so. Young horses tend to sleep more than mature horses. Horses certainly can and do sleep standing up but at some point all horses must lie down to achieve a full sleep cycle and avoid sleep deprivation in horses managed in herd situations a variety of factors impact which horses lie down and for how long potentially limiting the availability of the much needed shut eye.

Although sleep requirements in horses remain largely unknown some facts. Senior horses may doze more frequently. To sleep perchance to flee not every horse falls asleep waiting around at a show but all horses can sleep standing up. This is because as we mentioned before this phase is characterized by rem atonia from the neck down.

They only sleep for around three hours within a 24 hour period but never rest for large periods of time but younger foals may sleep more than adult horses. A horse can sleep standing up or a horse can sleep lying down.