The vet came out to visit my horse a couple of weeks ago.  One of the first things he commented on was that my horse isn’t as big as he probably should be for 3 years old.  It’s true — my horse is only about 14 hands (a little over four and a half feet tall) at the withers, which is the bony rise above a horse’s shoulders, usually right about where their mane ends.

Another owner at the barn also had a small three-year-old, so the vet talked to us about ways to grow taller for our horses.  He said that sometimes improper nutrition will stunt a horse’s growth, but if you give them really good nutrition they could still catch up.  I personally don’t think my horse will get any more height growth, however.

For one, I saw his mom before we rescued him, and she didn’t look that big either.  We don’t know what his sire looked like, so for all we know he was really short too!

But for two, my horse has already been given really good nutrition since we rescued him.  We knew he was really malnourished and probably stunted when we got him, and we had enough sense to try to remedy that then.  All the good feed we gave him then didn’t help him grow taller, though, so I think this may just be how tall he was supposed to be — or maybe he was just so badly stunted that it couldn’t be reversed!

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