How to Tell the Conformation of a Horse

Video Transcript

"This is Randall Powell with Expert Village, and today we're going to talk about conformation of a horse. When deciding what kind of horse you want, to determine if he has good conformation or not, you'd start at the nose or the muzzle of the horse. Look at the overall head shape of the horse. You want a horse with a really short head and clean around the neck and throat latch area. The throatlatch is where the neck and the head combine underneath the horse's throat there. No loose skin there. You want a really tight horse with a small head, really clean around his ears and neck. Then you move down to the shoulders. The width of the horse's shoulders determine a lot of how much weight he's going to be able to carry over long periods of time. You want a horse with really thick shoulders, that's really square in his shoulder and carries quite a bit of muscle throughout there to the middle of his chest area. Then you move up to the withers. You want a short backed horse. You'd measure a horse's back from the withers to right in front of his hips is where you measure his back. It's always important to find a horse that has a shorter back than his underline. The underline is right behind the front legs to right in front of the back legs. That's the underline of the horse. When choosing a horse, makes sure that the back is shorter than the underline. Then the hip should be approximately put together well with the rest of the horse. You want a big hipped horse that's carrying some weight back there so he can get down and hold cattle if he needs to or maneuver pretty tight spaces off his hips there off his back end. You also want the horse to be very straight on all 4 legs. If you look at the horse from the rear view or the front view, all 4 legs should be symmetrical and in line where they look like the same leg. Those may be some things that help you look for conformation in horses."