| The horse head is elongated, clear-cut, with big bright eyes, wide nostrils and large or medium sized, pointed and highly mobile ears. In the domesticated horse, the ears are of moderate size (much less than half the head), they have a long hanging-down mane, a long muscular neck, round torso, a tail covered with long hair from the base; the color varies: black, brown, chestnut, roan, white, grey, often with white spots on the head and legs; as an exception, stripes are found on the shoulders, back and legs. The legs are long and of moderate thickness and well-proportioned; the 1st and 5th toes are absent, only rudiments exist from the 2nd and 4th toe in the form of rod-shaped metacarpus and metatarsus bones (so-called Slate), adjacent to the large metacarpal or metatarsal bone of strongly developed middle toe; the hoof is at the end of the middle toe (the entire weight of the body rests on it); corneous callous nodes, bumps (corneous places are found even behind the articulation of toes with overlying parts) are found on the inner sides of the wrist and heel. The stomach is simple without a gall bladder and the blindgut is well developed. The testes are enclosed in the scrotum. They have a bicornuate uterus but diffuse afterbirth. The brain is relatively small and the cerebral hemisphere (covered with fissures) does not cover the cerebellum. The intellectual abilities, however, are quite developed.
With respect to the senses, hearing is the best developed, then comes sight and finally the sense of smell. Related wild animals live in herds, usually small, with several females lead by a male, predominantly steppes, characterized by high speed and caution.
The horse has hair of different lengths on its body: short thick – tectorial (wool), long hair of the forelocks, mane and tail - protective and long rare hair around the lips, nostrils and eyes - haptic. The color of the hair determines the skin color. With age, the hair of horses, like in people, become grey. The intensity of the hair color changes even with the seasons: in winter, the hair is light and in summers - dark.
Horses survive up to an average age of 25-30 years and some animals, which live up to 40 yrs, are found amongst pony breeds. A highly reliably known longevity record amongst horses is 62 yrs. Old Billy lived for that long. He was born in 1760 in Lancashire county to a Cleveland bay mare and a stallion of eastern origin. Up to 1819, it towed a barge and later on, it was transferred to a farm in Latchford. It died on November 27, 1822 on the farm. Old Billy's skull is kept in the Manchester Museum.
The growth of a horse depends on the breed, on nourishment and care. The horse grows stronger with better nutrition and care. In general, horses have a height from 150 to 175 cm, a pony from 120 to 150 cm. However, horses with varied height in shoulder are listed among the ponies in different countries. For example, in the U.S, a pony is a horse, whose height at the shoulder, is below 142 cm. In the UK, some breeds of pony have a height at the shoulder of up to 152 cm. English carthorses of the Shire breed are considered to be the heavily built horses. Their height ranges from 175 to 190 cm. The most heavily built was a stallion, a Belgian carthorse Brooklyn Supreme, born in 1928. At a height of 198 cm, it weighed 1440 kg.
The smallest are the Falabella horses, bred in Argentina. Falabella horses have height of up to 70 - 76 cm. Among them, the smallest is stallion called Little Pumpkin. It's height was 35.5 cm weighing 9.07 kg.
The average weight of a pony is 100 - 200 kg. On an average, large riding and carriage horses weigh 400 - 600 kg. The carthorse breed have a weight of around 700 - 900 kg. The heaviest horses are Shires with a weight over 1400 kg.
The weight of the horse can be calculated as per the formula Weight (kg) = chest (cm)× 6 - 620. This formula is more convenient for calculating the weight of half-bred, sports and carriage horses.
Habitat:
Round the year, the horses of steppe breeds graze in steppes and only in rare cases, graze on hay. Harsh winter snowstorms and particularly ice-covered grounds, which are very rare in steppes, pose serious problems to horses in taking forage from beneath the snow. In such cases, by the end of winter, animals become skeletons and many of them, especially the young, die. During summers, the horses once again gain weight and look like well-fed animals (become fat).
Nutrition:
Horses are herbivores. On grasslands, it can eat from 25 to 100 kg of grass in a day. Depending on the age and live weight, the horse, on an average, drinks 30 - 60 litres of water per day in summer and 20 - 25 litres of water in winter. For livelihood, horses require 4 - 5 acres of land or approximately 2 hectares.
Mainly, horse feed consists of oats and hay and sometimes, hay is replaced with thatch. Several times, attempts were made to replace the oats with some sort of grain feed but the attempts were not successful. Only in Italy, Spain and Portugal, especially in the East, barley is almost the exclusive feed like oats for horses. |
This Friday we continue our freaking experiment with provided source images.
