How to calculate your horses weight (without a scales)
I recently attended a workshop facilitated by ECHO (equine collaboration for health and outreach)on the subject of equine nutrition. Discussions covered hay making, storage, the horses gut, feeding the foal, body condition scoring and horses weight.
In the section about weight, several methods of calculating a horses weight was demonstrated. We guessed two horses weight by looking at them, used a weight tape and put them on the scales to get the correct number. But there was another way to get quite an accurate number, backed by a scientific paper (Wagner & Tyler, 2011).
The equation is as follows:
(heart girth cm2 X body length cm) / 11800
Use a flexible measuring tape to get the girth measurement (around the horses body at the point of where the girth goes) and get the horses length (the point of the shoulder to the buttock).
For example if we have a horse that has a 202cm heart girth and a length of 156cm
(2022 X 155)/ 11880 = 532 kg
Now you are armed with this calculation next time you go to the yard :)
Reference
Wagner, E.L. and Tyler, P.J. (2011) ‘A comparison of weight estimation methods in adult horses’, Journal of Equine Veterinary Science, 31(12), pp. 706–710. doi:10.1016/j.jevs.2011.05.002.