Specialized vocabulary

Parts of a horse

Morphology and Locomotive System of a Horse

Because horses and humans have lived and worked together for thousands of years, an extensive specialized vocabulary has arisen to describe virtually every horse behavioral and anatomical characteristic with a high degree of precision.

The anatomy of the horse comes with a large number of horse specific terms.

Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings, and a specialized vocabulary has evolved to describe them. Often, one will refer to a horse in the field by its coat color rather than by breed or by sex. The genetics of the coat colors has largely been resolved, although discussion continues about some of the details.

The English-speaking world measures the height of horses in hands, abbreviated "h" or "hh," and is measured at the highest point of an animal's withers. One hand is 4 Imperial inches, or, as defined in British law, 101.6 mm. Intermediate heights are defined by hands and inches, rounding to the lower measurement in hands, followed by a decimal point and the number of additional inches between 1 and 3. Thus a horse described as 15.2 hh tall, means it is 15 hands, 2 inches, or 62 inches/1.57 m in height.

Age

The most commonly used nomenclature describing horses by age is as follows:

• Foal: a horse of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal that has been weaned is called a weanling. Most foals are weaned at 4-6 months of age.
• Yearling: a horse of either sex that is between one and two years old.
• Colt: a male horse under the age of four.
• Filly: a female horse under the age of four.
• Mare: a female horse four years old and older.
• Stallion: a non-castrated male horse four years old and older. Some people, particularly in the UK, refer to a stallion as a "horse."
• Gelding: A castrated male horse of any age, though for convenience sake, many people also refer to a young gelding under the age of four as a "colt."

In horse racing the definitions of colt, filly, mare, and stallion or horse may differ from those given above. In the United Kingdom, Thoroughbred horse racing defines a colt as a male horse less than five years old and a filly as a female horse less than five years old.^{[citation needed}] In the USA, both Thoroughbred racing and harness racing defines colts and fillies as four years old and younger.^[10]

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Horse&action=history

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html