Feeding to the Horse’s Body Condition

There are few things we humans are more sensitive about than our body weight. Where the rest of the world sees our gentle curves and happy smiles we see lumps and wobbles and wrinkles. We generally have a far worse opinion of our own body condition than do any of the people around us. I would hazard that this is because our friends and family care about us and see the best in us and recognize that while we may have a few extra curves we are healthy and happy and thats what counts. And if anyone ever said things about our friends that resemble what we have said about ourselves most of us would likely get pretty vocal about defending our friends.
And so it is with our horses. Our emotional connection to our horse often blinds us to his or her extra fluffiness and a plague on anyone who dares suggest our Fluffy needs to shed a few pounds!
The best way to steer clear of family feuds around your horses waistline is to apply a simple set of objective rules when assessing Fluffys body condition. Feeding to body condition is a strategy that celebrates the individuality of our horses. It recognizes that no two horses are the same and the rules for feeding are loose guidelines that undergo fairly rigorous refinement in the feed room
There are two scales commonly used to assess body condition Body Condition Scoring BCS goes from 0 to 5 and the Henneke Scale scoring system ranges from 1 to 9. A key similarity between these scales is that they assess the amount of fat on a horse. This is important because it accounts for the fact that fat is deposited preferentially on different parts of the skeleton. For example a severely malnourished horse will when weaned onto a healthy diet deposit fat first along the lumbar spine. The very last place fat is stored on a horse is over the ribs. So in most cases the ribs are the telltale landmark of how wellconditioned the horse is. For a healthy body condition ribs should not be visible but should be felt when you run your hand along the horses side. There should be some fat around the tail head and the withers should be rounded with the shoulders and neck blending smoothly into the rest of the body. The ideal body condition is somewhere near