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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:

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

Helpful resources



Why Does Your Horses Weight Matter?




                                                                     Recognising The Early Signs Of Laminitis