Is Your Horse the Right Weight?

Do you know if your horse is a healthy weight? Are you struggling with a good doer? Learn how to assess your horse’s condition and find practical tips for weight management.

Maintaining your horse at a healthy weight can be difficult, especially with some native breeds who seem to look at grass and gain weight! One of the most common health issues seen routinely by vets in the UK (ed. note and in North America!) is horses being overweight. Most horse owners understand the dangers of a horse becoming too thin, but being overweight is just as unhealthy and can be much more difficult to manage. Although many owners know that their horse shouldn’t carry excess weight, often the challenge is in recognising what a healthy condition looks like as, unfortunately, it has become normal to see horses carrying more weight than they should.

Being both underweight and overweight comes with their own set of potential causes and further problems, which can compromise your horse’s health and quality of life. As overweight horses are more commonly seen, we will focus here on managing overweight horses.

Scroll to continue with content

How to determine if a horse is overweight

The first thing to understand is the assessment criteria you can compare your horse to. Knowing your horse’s weight is useful for a number of reasons but it won’t tell you if this is appropriate for them.

There are two main fat scoring systems, the 0-5 system (Carroll and Huntingdon) or the 1-9 system (Henneke). Both provide an effective way of assessing condition and use hands-on techniques to feel for fat cover rather than just looking at a horse. If you have limited experience of fat scoring, the 0-5 system can be easier to apply.

A weight tape is a good tool for monitoring weight and identifying changes, but must be used in conjunction with fat scoring to assess condition. The most accurate weight tapes have both a horse and pony side, so you can choose the correct one according to your horse’s height. If you have access to a weighbridge (scale) this gives an accurate measurement so is a good tool for monitoring changes in weight.