Body Condition Scoring

Condition Scoring helps to introduce some measure of objectivity into the assessment of a horse or pony's condition. The pictures above help illustrate states of condition and should act as a guide in assessing the condition of your own horse or pony. Remember, a horse's type or conformation as well as how he "does" will all have a bearing on how he looks - a flighty Thoroughbred, for example, is unlikely to ever carry excessive condition. The art is to achieve the correct level of fitness and condition for the type and level of work required, and to the benefit of the horse's overall health. Just because a pony is retired does not mean he should be allowed to get excessively fat!

Evaluate your horse's diet by looking into 3 key areas:

• Topline: muscle development from amino acids and genetics
• Fat thickness: behind their shoulder, over their ribs and around the tailhead from calories.
• Distended belly: larger than normal from -
• a) eating indigestible forage causing hay belly and/or
• b) lack of physical fitness

The first step to deciding what, other than forage, you are going to feed your horse or pony, is to establish his or her overall condition. This can be quite a subjective issue - your idea of "thin" or "fat" may be quite different from somebody else's! For this reason nutritionists have developed a system known as "condition scoring" to describe the various states of condition.

Having established your horse's current condition, the next step is to decide whether that is how you would like them to stay or whether you need to make changes in order to help change their condition. Here you will need to consider the work the horse is expected to undertake and the level of fitness they need to attain. A dressage horse, for example, needs stamina and muscle tone for physical effort but carries more condition than a three day eventer who has to be fit and lean to gallop and jump. Familiarity with your particular horse or pony will also help you decide whether he or she is a good doer and needs relatively few extra calories to maintain or put on condition, or whether they are a poor doer who needs much more.

Body Condition & Top Line scoring is an objective way to assess your horse's condition. Some discrepancies may be present simply due to the horse's conformation or state of training or development, so he may appear to have moderate looking hind quarters with a thin looking neck. Whilst feeding can help to balance these differences by providing the "building blocks", it is correct training and work which will help build the right muscles and give the horse a more pleasing shape.

EVALUATE MUSCLE DEVELOPMENT (Top Line)

This Top Line Assessment has been developed by Baileys, in conjunction with Don Kapper of Progressive Nutrition, Ohio, USA, and is used in the States at Warmblood gradings to assess the overall muscle development of horses of all ages, focussing on the horse's top line (musculature) from the neck, over the withers and back to the hip and stifle area.

As a guide, a Top Line Assessment of Good to Excellent indicates that the horse's diet is supplying sufficient or optimum levels of good quality protein, whilst an assessment of Adequate to Poor indicates that the diet is supplying insufficient levels of quality protein to meet minimum requirements.

A strong healthy musculature and top line are essential if a horse is to perform to the best of his ability and can only be built by correct training if the diet supplies the necessary range of amino acids from good quality protein. Ensuring a horse's dietary protein requirements are met at all times will help maintain top line and muscle tone even during lay-off periods.

BODY CONDITION SCORE

The Body Condition Scoring system used by Baileys is based on the American 1 – 9 system (adapted from Henneke et al 1983) which gives greater flexibility and detail for the score given. This looks at the neck, ribs and rump to assess the horse’s overall condition and level of body fat which provides an indication of the calorie intake of the horse in question.

As a guide, a Body Condition Score of less than 4 would indicate that the horse’s minimum calorie requirements are not being met by its diet, whilst one of more than 6 would indicate that its diet is supplying more calories than the horse requires which could lead to potential problems.