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Body scoring your horse

Accurately body scoring your horse is a skill you need as a responsible horse owner.

It involves assessing the overall condition of your horse.

It is important to understand a horse’s body condition score (BCS) is not just about how much the horse weighs but also how fat is distributed. Horses with fat deposited on their rump, back, withers and neck are vulnerable to diseases such as laminitis and equine metabolic syndrome

Laminitis is an extremely painful inflammation of a horses hooves, and causes the anmial to struglle with movement and it may also lie down a lot to try to ease the pain. Equine metabolic syndrome can be likened to diabetes in humans.

Horses with prominent withers, ribs and hip bones are underwieght/mal nourished which is of course equally poor for a horses health and wellbeing,

Used with permission and modified from Fat Horse Slim PDF - www.bluecross.org

Body Score

Accurate body scoring takes training and practice. The following link provides information about t.he BCS process or you can contact us to get help with learning how to body score. You can even send a photo of your horse to our trained horse assessors for an opinion of your horse’s BCS. You will need to take a photo from each side, the front and the back. Learn more at the Agriculture Victoria website

How to reduce your horses weight

Horses, just like humans, have trouble controlling how many calories they take in each day.

If your pony or horse has a body score above 3/5. You need to act now in order to prevent your horse developing a disease associated with being overweight.

The first thing you must do is keep feeding your horse. Starving a fat horse can kill it. You need to keep feeding your horse but will need to change what and how you feed it.

Follow these steps:

Take the horse off all pasture, green grass is full of sugar. It would be like standing on a pile of fairy floss and eating your way through it.
Put your horse in a bare yard.
Invest in a hanging weight scale to measure your feed.
Supply low energy forage feed like low energy/long fibre hay or oaten chaff.
You need to supply 1.5% of your horse’s ideal body weight in this low energy forage. If your horse weighs 400kg, he needs 6 kgs of forage per day. Read more..
This forage needs to be provided over the entire day – preferably in a feeding hay net or slow feeder. These innovations slow the horse’s consumption down and keep your horse occupied while they are confined.
Feed as often as possible with the largest amount provided before the longest stretch of time without feed (usually night feed).
Also provide a daily low calorie vitamin and mineral balancer in a little chaff. A salt lick will not provide sufficient nutrients but you can include one in the yard to keep your horse occupied.
Start an exercise program. Exercise is the best way to keep your horse at a healthy weight.
Once he has reached less than 3/5 BCS you can start to let your horse out to graze –only at night. The grasses have less sugar in them at night.
Some horses might still need to wear a grazing muzzle to control their intake, but only if the grass is long.

Contact us if yor're unsure about what to do, we're here to help you.

Helpful resources

View the full PDF document here.

What is laminitis

and how can it be prevented or treated?

Why Does Your Horses Weight Matter?

Recognising The Early Signs Of Laminitis