|  | ANATOMY | | EVOLUTION | | HISTORY | | REPRODUCTION | | BREEDS | | BONES | | MUSCLES | | METABOLISM | | RESPIRATION | | SENSES | | NUTRITION | | AILMENTS | | BEHAVIOURS | | GAITS | | TACK | | | | I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary.
Mark Twain
| Welcome to the Hippofiles. The Hippofiles are a sort of scrapbook of stuff that relates to horses that you wouldn't normally find on a horseracing site. It's a bit of anatomy, a bit of history, a little bit of everything so long as it is related to horses..... | Colours Horses of various breeds come in many colours, but all equine colours are derivative of two base colours - black and red - which are subject to genetic modifiers. For a full account of the genetics of horse colours click here. The standard colours of the thoroughbred are as follows - |  |  |  |  | | Black: The entire coat of the horse is black, including the muzzle, the flanks, the mane, tail and legs, unless white markings are present. | Bay: The entire coat of the horse may vary from a yellow-tan to a bright auburn. The mane, tail and lower portion of the legs are always black, unless white markings are present. | Gray: The majority of the coat of the horse is a mixture of black and white hairs. The mane, tail and legs may be either black or gray, unless white markings are present. | Chestnut: The entire coat of the horse may vary from a red-yellow to a golden-yellow. The mane, tail and legs are usually variations of the coat color, unless white markings are present. | Brown: The entire coat of the horse will vary from a brown, with areas of tan on the shoulders, head and flanks, to a dark brown, with tan areas seen only in the flanks and/or muzzle. The mane, tail and lower portion of the legs are always black, unless white markings are present. | Age & Gender Horses generally live to between 20 and 30 years. A very rough estimate of a horse's age can be made from looking at its teeth. The oldest horse on record was Old Billy, a Cleveland Bay pony who lived to Xx years in the England in the mid 19th century.
For the purposes of the Stud Book all horses are deemed to have their birthday on 1 January in the northern hemisphere and 1 August in the southern hemisphere. The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages: | |  | | The ill fated unnamed filly above is by Lonhro from Bonanova pictured with her dam as a weanling left and as a yearling right. She is reported to have died following a paddock accident in 2007. | Size | The English-speaking world measures the height of horses in hands, abbreviated "h" or "hh," and is measured at the highest point of an animal's withers. One hand is 4 inches, or 10.16 cm.
Intermediate heights are defined by hands and inches, rounding to the lower measurement in hands, followed by a decimal point and the number of additional inches between 1 and 3. Thus a horse described as 15.2 hh tall, means it is 15 hands, 2 inches, or 62 inches/1.57 m in height.
The size of horses varies by breed, but can also be influenced by nutrition. - Light riding horses such as Arabians, Morgans, or Quarter Horses usually range in height from 14.0 (142 cm) to 16.0 hands (163 cm) and can weigh from 386 kilograms to about 540 kg (850 to 1200 lb).
- Larger riding horses such as Thoroughbreds, American Saddlebreds or Warmbloods usually start at about 15.2 hands (157 cm) and often are as tall as 17 hands (172 cm), weighing from 500 kg to 680 kg (1100 lb to 1500 lb).
- Heavy or draft horses such as the Clydesdale, Belgian, Percheron, and Shire are usually at least 16.0 (163 cm) to 18.0 hands (183 cm) high and can weigh from about 680 kg up to about 900 kg (1500 lb to 2000 lb).
The general rule for cutoff in height between what is considered a horse and a pony at maturity is 14.2 hands (147 cm, 58 inches) as measured at the withers. They may be much smaller, down to the Shetland pony at around 10 hands (102 cm). | The largest horse in history was a Shire horse named Sampson, later renamed Mammoth, foaled in 1846 in Bedfordshire, England. He stood 21.2½ hands high (i.e. 7 ft 2½ in or 2.20 m ), and his peak weight was estimated at over 3,300 lb (approx 1.5 tonnes). The current record holder for the world's smallest horse is Thumbelina (pictured left with a Shire), a fully mature miniature horse affected by dwarfism. She is 17 inches tall and weighs 60 pounds. NEXT |