When Is A Horse Too Old To Ride? (Answered!)

One of my horses has been getting a bit old recently, and it’s sad because he is one of my oldest horse friends.

I’ve been riding him for two decades, so it’s been really hard to see him slow down a little bit.

Nonetheless, his health and welfare are the most important thing to me, so I didn’t want to push him and cause him to injure himself.

I wasn’t exactly sure what age you should stop riding a horse, so I decided to look into it.

So, when is a horse too old to ride?

It will all depend on the individual horse, but on average it is usually between the ages of 20 and 25. At this point, they shouldn’t be bearing a person’s weight anymore. Some horses will have to retire much earlier, if they show signs of physical conditions or illnesses.

So, you should never use your horse’s age as the only metric to make your decision.

You have to consider the individual factors affecting your horse in particular.

If you’re unsure, consult a vet.

Never ride a horse if you aren’t sure if it can carry you.

Let’s look further into this.

What age should a horse stop being ridden?

The important thing to know is that there is no hard and fast rule.

You have to consider all of your horse’s medical history, and some with certain conditions will be able to ride longer into their lives, others less time.

As a good rule of thumb, a 20-year-old horse is getting quite old.

Horses on average live somewhere from 20-30 years, so once they are 20, they are usually getting to be quite old.

A perfectly healthy, 20-year-old horse is probably totally safe to ride—it’s not as if a switch is flicked once it reaches age 20.

However, as I said, you need to take your horse’s individual case into account.

If it has any history of disease, illness or condition affecting it physically, then it will decline faster than other horses.

It will therefore have a higher chance of suffering an injury as a result of being ridden.

The only hard and fast rule I would suggest is that once any horse reaches 25, you should not ride it anymore.

It’s definitely too old at that point, however long it might live.

It can’t support you like it used to anymore.

Can you ride a 30-year-old horse?

Certainly not, is the simple answer!

Obviously, there probably is a 30-year-old horse out there that is being ridden, and safely so.

However, these cases are fringe, and in almost every case, a 30-year-old horse is way too old to ride.

As I said, once any horse is 25, you really shouldn’t be riding it at all anymore.

A 30-year-old horse is in its twilight years, and should be retired from whatever it was doing.

It can be hard for us to say goodbye to an old friend in this way, but it’s really important for their health that you don’t ride a horse this old.

The oldest horse ever recorded, Old Billy, died at the ripe old age of 62—so, yes, some horses do break these boundaries to extreme degrees.

Again, though, you always stand a much higher chance of injuring your horse if you ride it at such an advanced age.

Recovering from an injury at this time in their life is going to be much, much harder.

Is a 20-year-old horse too old to buy?

It depends on what you want it for.

If you want it as a riding horse, then yes, it is far too old.

As I said, most horses are retired from riding around this age, or at most 25.

Even if you bought the healthiest 20-year-old horse in the world, you’re only going to get 5 years of riding out of it at absolute maximum.

In fact, if you want to use the horse for any kind of activity, then 20 is probably too old.

Most people would buy a horse that old simply as a companion, or to give the animal somewhere to retire.

To give you an idea, most race horses are retired from racing by age 5.

Some race for longer than this, but not most.

So, for almost any kind of activity, 20 is too old to buy a horse.

Is it OK to ride a 2-year-old horse?

There is some debate around this question, but many believe that 2 is too young to begin riding a horse.

It will vary case to case, but it isn’t even just a question of weight.

At this point, the horse will probably be more than able to support your weight.

Temperament is the big question, and the lack of maturity might make the horse very difficult to control properly.

Most tend to wait until a horse is 4 or 5 to ride recreationally.

However, as I said, many racehorses are already retired by this age—if you’re at all unsure, you should probably wait.

Otherwise, speak to your vet about whether it’s safe to ride your horse.

So, ultimately, don’t just use purely your horse’s age to make the decision about whether it should be ridden.

You’ll have to take its whole health into account.

That said, on average, most horses shouldn’t be ridden anymore by the time they turn 20.

Obviously, some will be able to stand being ridden for longer than this, but the upper ceiling is 25—beyond that, you really should never ride the horse.