Advanced strategies for managing respiratory health in horses through environmental modification — dust reduction, ventilation improvement, and forage management approaches with the strongest evidence base.
Environmental respiratory management represents the most impactful and most often overlooked component of equine respiratory welfare. Stable design, hay management, bedding choice, and ventilation practices that were standard even decades ago create dust environments that cause or exacerbate equine asthma in susceptible horses. The welfare solution requires understanding that many traditional stabling practices — closed stables for warmth, deep litter systems, indoor hay feeding — create conditions that are directly harmful to respiratory health. Modernizing these practices based on current ventilation and dust science can dramatically improve respiratory welfare without requiring expensive medication-based management of conditions that could be prevented.