Analysis of the population of the Old Kladruby horse in point of the body conformation

Abstract

The objective of the present study was a detailed analysis of the body conformation of the Old Kladruby horse in the Stud Farm Kladruby. We applied 26 body dimensions, 9 angles of extremity joints and 12 hippo-metrical indices of 167 breeding horses to analyse the population according to the colouration (grey, black), lines (9 lines), sex (stallions and mares) and age categories (4 classes). The resulting measures were analysed statistically by means of a linear model with fixed effects (GLM). Most of the statistical highly significant differences were differences detected between stallions and mares and between the Old Kladruby grey and black horses. The stallions have a significantly longer profile of the head (by more than 1 cm) and width of the cheeks. The mares have a highly significantly larger chest (longer by 2.9 cm, more deeply by 3.3 cm), width of coxae and angles of the shoulder and knee joints. The black horses have highly significantly longer profile of the head (by more than 2.5 cm) and width of cheeks, longer the blade-bone and significantly longer the pelvis (by 2.3 cm). The grey horses have highly significantly shorter arm and forearm, longer metacarpus, pastern and shinbone. The differences between age categories are highly significant by heights of body, girth and by hippo-metrical indices. The differences among the lines of the same colouration are minimal. Only white line Rudolfo is significantly small sized and the least compact.

Keywords

• horse
• Old Kladruby horse
• body conformation
• body dimensions