How to guestimate a foal's eventual height

[Jane&Ziggy]

I'm off to the Blue Cross tomorrow to meet some foalies.

Can some remind me of that thing you do with a piece of string and the baby's elbow to get a guess of how tall they might be? Is it ground to elbow, and then the same height up again is the projected future height? I have a feeling that the little boy I am going to see may end up BIG and that is not what I want at all....

 

[Trewsers]

No idea but hopefully someone on here will know. Good luck - hope it's a good visit. How is Mattie doing? And you of course?

 

[Huggy]

I have no clue either, but am dying to hear all the details when you've been!

 

[domane]

Foalies legs only grow for the first 12 months of life. Once they reach a year they actually only grow upwards in the body (the girth deepens), so trying to ascertain eventual height from anything under 12m is unreliable.

After 12m you can do the string test. If you can get near enough (haha!!) you take a piece of string and put the end of it in the middle of a foreleg fetlock and hold it taut to their elbow. Then you hold the string at the elbow and swivel the string 180° upwards so that the end that was on the fetlock is now vertical above their withers. Then all you need to do is measure the excess string above the wither and add it on to their current height. This has proved to be a fairly reliable guesstimation.

And OBVIOUSLY we want pics.... to help you decide of course!!!

 

[Jessey]

Yep what @domane said good luck

 

[Mary Poppins]

Don't discount a gentle giant though. Ben is far too big for me really, he is built like a tank and sometimes when I see pictures of me on him it looks like I am perched on top with my legs only just coming past the saddle. But he is completely perfect for me and it doesn't cause any problems other than the need for a very tall mounting block.