3. Skeletal system - structure

Last time I focused on emphasizing the importance of maintaining health of our horse’s bones even though they’re not so visible like let’s say muscles or coat. They create a strong framework of a horse’s body and actually knowing how they are ‘set up’ within body can help to understand our horses good sides, limits and potential problems. As I said before it’s impossible to move certain bones excessively to get in a result a horse with a perfect conformation, proportions and extraordinary movement. We can shape muscles but we need to stick to “a set of bones” we are given.

It’s really interesting knowing where bones are positioned within a body. I did lots of stable management lectures for children, teenagers and adults. Sometimes we went into bigger details. It was really surprising for me to find out that people believed horse’s cervical (neck) vertebraes are on top of a neck (just where crest is). Usually people also thought scapula (shoulder blade) was much smaller and when pointing it they usually stayed very careful with showing boundaries of that big, powerful bone.

By knowing how the skeletal system is built and where bones are positioned and possibly how big (or small) they really are, we can save ourselves problems with just to mention fitting saddles, bandaging (unbelievably lots of people believe all lower leg is built up with bones and they don’t care about the way of applying the bandage either stable or exercise one), grooming and talking to a vet.

I don’t push anyone to know the names and location of all of the 205 bones within horses body (unless you really want to!) but some basic knowledge may always turn up to be extremely helpful. There’s 37 bones in a scull, 54 vertabreas, 1 sternum, 36 ribs, 40 bones in a forelimb and 40 bones in a hindlimb including pelvis. We can divide skeleton into 2 parts: axial skeleton includes skull, vertabreas, ribs and sternum. Appendicular skeleton includes bones of forelimbs and hindlimbs.

Next time you go riding, check if you can locate these on a real horse easily (and remember them too):

Maxilla – upper jaw
Mandible – lower jaw
Scapula – shoulder blade
Humerus – arm bone
Radius – forearm bone
Cannon bone (metacarpus)
Cervical vertabrea – neck bones (7)
Thoracic vertabrea (18)
Lumbar vertabrea (6)
Sacral vertabrea (5)
Coccygeal vertabrea – tail bone (15-20)
Sternum – breast bone
Ribs – 10 true (attached to sternum) and 8 false (not attached)
Femur – thigh bone (the largest bone within horse’s body)
Tibia – leg bone

Facts to remember:

axial and appendicular skeleton
femur the biggest bone

Extremely useful bookhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Horse-Anatomy-Pictorial-Approach-Structure/dp/0851317693