How Tall Is A Horse?

Horses are impressively large animals, and even after all these years working with them, I’m still often really amazed by just how large they are.

While out with friends the other night, we were talking about this very topic, and comparing the biggest horse we’d ever seen.

Then we got talking about how big horses are in general, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t really sure what the average was, despite my experience, so I decided to look into it the next day.

So, how tall is a horse?

At the withers, an adult horse, on average, is between 1.4 and 1.8 meters tall. In horseracing, a horses height is measured in a special unit called hands, and the average racehorse is 15-16 hands tall, which is about 1.5 meters. Horses are really tall animals!

So, while horses are certainly bulkier than they are very tall, they are still impressively tall for the most part.

But this wasn’t always the case—horses have actually been selectively bred by people over the millennia to get to the heights they reach now.

So, let’s look at the question in more detail, and how horse height is measured.

Is 16 hands tall for a horse?

Before we answer this question, let’s quickly look at what hands are when it comes to measuring horses.

In the English-speaking world, horses are measure in hands, and all this essentially means is four-inch increments.

The method actually originated as far back as ancient Egypt, where the measurement was first used.

So, for example, a horse which stands 56 inches from the ground to the top of the withers is 14 hands tall.

16 hands is about average for most horses.

A 16-hand horse is somewhere from 1.5-1.6 metres, which falls right in the middle of the average height we mentioned earlier.

So, 16 hands isn’t especially tall for an ordinary horse; this is about the average height.

But now that we know how hands work and the average hand height of a horse, what other increments are possible by these measurements?

Can a horse be 15.5 hands tall?

This is a bit more complicated.

You certainly can have a horse whose measurements would equal 15 and a half hands, but you would never write the measurement as 15.5.

Since a whole hand is 4 inches, you would instead write 15.2, to indicate that the horse has an additional two inches on top of its 15 hands.

Because a hand is four inches, the only correct decimals to place are 1, 2, or 3.

It is only about indicating the additional inches, not about representing a fraction of a hand.

So, to make it as simple as possible, horses cannot be 15.5 hands tall.

How tall is a pony?

The average pony, as you might expect, is a lot shorter.

In fact, the official definition of a pony is whether its 14.2 hands or below. Anything taller than that just isn’t a pony.

Some of the smallest ponies, like the Argentinian Falabella, are among the smallest of all horse breeds and usually stand 0.6-0.8 meters tall.

One famous pony was a dwarf miniature called Thumbelina, who stood only 43 centimeters tall and is the shortest horse ever recorded.

The tallest ponies are, by their nature, no bigger than 14.2 hands.

Anything bigger than that is an ordinary horse.

Who was the tallest horse ever?

The tallest horse today is Big Jake, a Belgian Draft horse that held the Guinness World Record for being the tallest horse.

Jake is a staggering 20 hands tall, or over two meters at the withers.

Big Jake recently passed away, sadly, but secured his record nonetheless.

Jake held the record for tallest horse of his time, but he was not the tallest horse to ever live.

In fact, there was an even taller horse sired in England in the 19^th Century called Sampson.

Sampson stood an incredible 21.2 hands tall, or over 7 feet.

Sampson was not just the tallest horse ever but also the heaviest, weighing 3,300 lbs at his peak.

Horses are always big animals, but Sampson was a truly legendary horse.

No horse since has been taller or heavier as this big shire gelding.

That doesn’t stop me being impressed at how tall the average horse is, though!

So, while it might be easier for most of us to understand horse height in simple meters, the horse industry does have a specific way to measure it.

Hands are a useful, particularized way to measure horses, since it can be a bit difficult to say with a quadruped how ‘tall’ it is, since we walk upright whereas they walk on all fours.

Hands are the way to measure it, and the average horse is 15 to 16 hands tall.