How horses are measured.

If you read one of my first posts, I mentioned that horses are measured not in cm, not in inches, but in hands. But how big is a hand? A hand is not the length of your own hand- a hand is 4 inches, or approx. ten centimetres. 
A horse is measured from the ground up to its withers, which is the tallest point of a horse's back. They are not measured to their head, like humans, because their head is constantly moving up and down, so if they were measured from their head their height would always be changing.

The circled area is the horse's withers

So if you look at this picture:

Then the green line is the length that is measured to see how tall the horse is.
So let's say that you have a horse that is measured to be 15hh (hands high). That means that the space from the ground to the horse's withers is 60inches long, or 150cm.
If the horse is 16.2hh, then it means that it is 16hands and 2 inches tall, or 66inches tall. This means that if a horse is 65 inches tall, they would be 16.1hh, or if they were 66 inches tall, they would be 16.3hh. When horses are 68 inches tall (or any other number divisible by four), then they go on to a new hand, so they would be 17hh. That's why there is no such thing as a 16.5hh horse. They would be called a 17.1hh horse instead.
A horse that is less than 14.2hh is classified as a pony. If they are taller than 14.2hh then they are classified as a horse.

To find out the exact height of your horse, you can use a tape measure, or if you are experienced you can usually make rough estimations on the horse's height by looking at them.

How horses are measured can be a bit confusing at first, so hopefully this post made sense! 

Rachel.