Prevention of equine gastric ulcers through management rather than medication offers sustained welfare improvement for the large proportion of horses at high risk in conventional management.
Gastric ulcer prevention is fundamentally an environmental welfare intervention: changing the management conditions that cause ulcers produces sustained welfare improvement that medication management without environment change cannot achieve. The treatment-relapse cycle — medicating ulcers without addressing causative management factors — maintains horses in a state of recurrent ulcer development that requires continuous medication. Environmental prevention — continuous forage access, reduced starch feeding, turnout, social contact, and pre-exercise alfalfa — addresses the root causes rather than the symptom. For competition horses where ulcer risk from training and transport stress is elevated, management modifications that reduce this risk are the primary welfare intervention, with medication as an appropriate adjunct during high-stress periods rather than the chronic solution.