Chances are if you read ads selling horses, or someone is telling you about the height of their horse , they will use the word "hands" to express the measurement. For example, a very tall horse might be 17 HH. A pony is an equine under A hand is a measuring unit for an equine's height that has been used for several centuries. The measurement may, in fact, trace back to the ancient Egyptians. However, horses are not exclusively measured in hands. In some countries and for FEI competition, horses are measured in centimeters.
Ponies, miniature horses , and other diminutive equines may also be measured in centimeters or in inches rather than hands. Because one hand is equal to four inches, partial hands are expressed as decimals. A horse that is A horse could never be said to be If a horse is Horses are measured from the ground, just beside and behind a foreleg to the top of the withers shoulders.
This is the standard location to measure the height of a horse, regardless of what increments either hands or centimeters you use, what country you are in, what discipline your ride, or what breed of horse or pony. The most accurate and easiest method is to use an equine height measuring stick. This is a tall stick marked with inch measurements, with a horizontal bar that slides up and down the stick.
Some sticks have a leveling bubble, so you can be sure you are holding the stick level. Height tapes can be purchased inexpensively at feed or tack stores. The problem with tapes is that they are light and floppy, and are hard to hold taut enough to get an accurate measure. It must stay perfectly perpendicular to the ground.
Often height tapes are printed with a weight tape on the opposite side. A regular tape measure can also be used to measure height but comes with the same problems as the height tape. Additionally, metal tape measures make rattling noises horses sometimes object to, making it difficult to get the horse to stand still for a measurement. Probably the easiest homemade measuring device is a piece of binder twine tied to a large metal nut or washer.
The weight of the metal will hold the string steady, while the handler eyes up the withers and marks the twine—a magic marker will do the trick here. Then the length from the bottom of the washer to the mark on the twine is measured.
Another trick is to use a yardstick, piece of lath, or even a whip to make it easier to get a line from the twine to the withers. Humans and horses have been partnered for millennia, before rulers and measuring tapes were available or even standardized, there was a need to be able to describe the size of a horse.
Handlers, knowing that most human hands were size roughly the same: about 4 inches, begin using the width of the hand is an easy, portable, and somewhat universal way to measure horse height. To measure a horse for sale or for auction they would simply stack hands one on top of another and count how many hands it took to measure the horse from hoof to shoulders. Photo by carterse. Generally, the height of a horse is not rounded up or down to the nearest hand. Instead, measurements between are represented with decimal points ranging from.
This is somewhat unusual, and not how decimal points are typically calculated. Typically, half of a unit of measurement would be represented as. Thus, horse heights might be represented as Measuring horse height, and especially doing so with an actual hand, is notoriously unreliable. You can see an example of this special horse measuring stick below.
Be sure your horse is standing on level ground, and position or give your horse the command to stand square , then measure from the ground to the withers. Simply mark the height of your horse with a pen, then use a standard tape measure to measure from the ground to that mark. Horses smaller than Horses over about
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