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| Whenever we measure a horse it is important that we don't try to measure the distance between its head and the ground. Why? Well, depending on how it is standing that head will always be at a different height! Instead we measure from the ground to the withers. The withers is the bump where the back joins the neck, for those who don't know their anatomy too well. Horses are measured in a unit called 'hands'. we use the hand measurement because no matter where you are you can get an estimate of height by using nothing but your own hands. Very trusty if you live in a place or time without rulers, no? Hold you hand out like your going to shake hands with somebody. The now vertical width of your palm (forget the thumb) is your very own built measuring instrument. The problem is... there are a lot of different hand sizes out there! To standardize the hand unit we say that each hand is made up of 4 inches! so if you have a horse that is 13 hands tall she is actually 52" tall! We usually say that the horse is such-and-such 'hands high'. This is abbreviated to 'hh' The hands unit also includes its own decimal system. this confuses many beginners but it is actually very simple, so don't worry! The decimal does not represent the usual 1/10 of a unit. With hands it stands for each inch above a full hand. Since there are only 4 inches in a hand, the highest decimal we can have is .3 Any higher and it rolls over into the next full hand. See? each number after the decimal point is actually a quarter of a hand! Easy as horse pies! For example: 14.3 hh = 14 hands, and 3 inches! still stuck thinking in inches? No problem! You can grab a calculator and convert inches to hands, and back again! Height in Inches / 4 = height in hands Height in hands x 4 =height in inches When converting to hands if it gives you a decimal just remember that for hands every 1/4 of the unit is an inch. If it says 10.25 it would actually be 10.1 hh . If it says 13.75 it would actually be 13.3hh and so on.... So there you have it! Not so scary, eh? |