ADVERTISEMENT Are your foals outside full-time with their dams? Or do you keep your breeding stock indoors with occasional pasture access? The answers to these questions might have consequences on your foal’s digestive health, even on a microscopic level. In a new study, young foals raised as members of a free-roaming herd had a vastly more varied hindgut microbiome than those raised in stalls with regular turnout. The results suggest that even in the first six weeks of life, when foals are still mostly nursing, management affects horses’ gut microbiota, said Meredith Tavenner, MSc, of the Department of Animal and Food Sciences at the University of Delaware, in Newark.