Profile of the carters, clinical and welfare evaluation of their cart horses in the region of Pirassununga-SP

Abstract

It was applied a questionnaire to establish the socioeconomic identities of carters that live around the city of Pirassununga, in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in order to associate it to the state of welfare undergone by their cart horses. The evaluation was conducted from August 2012 until July 2013 through questionnaires made during the Carter’s Project, sponsored by the School of Animal Science and Food Engineering (FZEA/USP), and through home visits to the carters previously enrolled in the project, obtaining a sample of 26 individuals. Furthermore, it was made an evaluation of 49 records of horses attended previously (October 2011 to June 2012) in order to analyze their most frequent health problems. The majority of the carters started working before adulthood, supplemented family income with other activities, sustained four or more people and transported various materials and deposited them at the courtyard of the city hall and landfills. The majority of the carters reported to receive less then R$ 1,000.00 per month, having estimated the costs with their animals’ feeding between 10 and 30% of that income. Most of them (8/26) keep their animals attached to the saddlery, but don’t use whip (16/26). Based on the records analyzed, it was observed that the most frequent clinical problems are cutaneous and locomotor disorders. Low quality feeding was also observed.