How to Use the Henneke Horse Body Condition Scoring System
By: Dr. Lydia Gray | Updated March 23, 2025 by SmartPak Equine
Being able to follow trends in your horse’s body weight is important in tracking their overall health. One method is to estimate their actual weight by using a commercially available weight tape or by calculating body weight from the heart girth and length formula (click here to have us do the calculation for you!) However, it is just as important to regularly assess your horse’s body condition score, or their amount of fat cover.
An excellent tool for making this assessment is the Henneke Horse Body Condition Scoring System, developed by Don Henneke, PhD. It provides a standard scale for you, your veterinarian, equine nutritionist, and other health care professionals to use and compare.
The scale ranges from a 1, which is the thinnest, to a 9, which is the fattest. A score of 5 is ideal for most breeds and disciplines.
Areas of a Horse’s Body That Are Scored
There are six areas on the horse’s body where the degree of fat in relation to muscle is assessed. These are the:
- Neck
- Area behind the shoulder
- Withers
- Ribs
- Loin
- Tailhead
When evaluating the level of fat in each of these locations it is important to feel its thickness with your hands as well as to visualize it, because looks can be deceiving! Using the descriptive chart above, assign a numerical value to each area then average them to come up with your horse’s Henneke body condition score.
Using the Henneke Horse Body Condition Scoring System 1-9
- Poor: Animal extremely emaciated. Spinous processes, ribs, tailhead, and tuber coxae and ischia projecting prominently. Bone structure of withers, shoulders, and neck easily noticeable. No fatty tissue can be felt.
- Very thin: Animal emaciated. Slight fat covering over base of spinous processes, transverse processes of lumbar spinous processes feel rounded. Spinous processes, ribs, tailhead, tuber coxae and ischii prominent. Withers, shoulders, and neck structures faintly discernible.
- Thin: Fat buildup about halfway on spinous processes, transverse processes cannot be felt. Slight fat cover over ribs. Spinous processes and ribs easily discernible. Tailhead prominent, but individual spinous processes cannot be visually identified. Tuber coxae appear rounded, but easily discernible. Tuber ischii not distinguishable. Withers, shoulders, and neck accentuated.
- Moderately thin: Negative crease along back. Faint outline of ribs discernible. Tailhead prominence depends on conformation, fat can be felt around it. Tuber coxae not discernible. Withers, shoulders, and neck not obviously thin.
- Moderate: Back is level. Ribs cannot be visually distinguished but can be easily felt. Fat around tailhead beginning to feel spongy. Withers appear rounded over spinous processes. Shoulders and neck blend smoothly into body.
- Moderately fleshy: May have slight crease down back. Fat over ribs feels spongy. Fat around tailhead feels soft. Fat beginning to be deposited along the side of the withers, behind the shoulders, and along the sides of the neck.
- Fleshy: May have crease down back. Individual ribs can be felt, but noticeable filling between ribs with fat. Fat around tailhead is soft. Fat deposited along withers, behind shoulders and along the neck.
- Fat: Crease down back. Difficult to feel ribs. Fat around tailhead very soft. Area along withers filled with fat. Area behind shoulder filled with fat. Noticeable thickening of neck. Fat deposited along inner thighs.
- Extremely fat: Obvious crease down back. Patchy fat appearing over ribs. Bulging fat around tailhead, along withers, behind shoulders and along neck. Fat along inner thighs may rub together. Flank filled with fat.
Source: Henneke, D R et al. “Relationship between condition score, physical measurements and body fat percentage in mares.” Equine veterinary journal vol. 15,4 (1983): 371-2. doi:10.1111/j.2042-3306.1983.tb01826.x
Fine-Tuning Your Horse Body Condition Scoring Skills
Improve your ability to horse body condition score by evaluating as many different horses as possible, assessing the six areas in the same order each time so that you develop a system.
You’ll find that in some disciplines, like racing, and some life stages, such as pregnancy, a higher or lower score than the moderate 5 might be preferred. Also, some extremes in conformation (such as very high withers or a swayback) can make evaluating the degree of fat cover over a certain area challenging.
In these cases, you may have to throw out one or two of the six scores before averaging the rest to come up with a single numerical value. And because some horses didn’t read the book, it’s okay to record an in-between value like 4.5 or 6.5 using half points.
Video on Using the Henneke Body Condition Scoring System
Watch this video as Dr. Gray explains how to use the Henneke Horse Body Condition Scoring System.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Hi, I'm Dr. Lydia Gray. I'm the staff veterinarian here at SmartPak, and today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics: body condition scoring. What it is, why you should be doing it, how to do it, and then some additional measurements that could also help.
The body condition scoring scale is a numerical based, standardized system of assessing fat cover in a horse. It was developed in the 80s by Don Henneke and his team at Texas A&M University. It ranges from 1-9, with one being emaciated and 9 being very fat or obese, and each number in the scale roughly corresponds to about 50 pounds.
By developing this universal standard of body condition scoring, horses owners and veterinarians, nutritonists, and other health care professionals are able to talk apples to apples or at least be on the same page when it comes to discussing a horse's weight. Because one person's perception of what a thin or skinny horse is is different than another person's perception.
It's also helpful when tracking a horse that's in a controlled weight loss program. If you're trying to get the horse to go from an 8 to a seven and a half to a 7, when you use those numbers, everyone knows what you are talking about.
Everyone knows that too thin isn't good, but too fat isn't good either. A study out of Virginia showed that just over half, 51% to be exact, of the horses they studied came in at sevens, eights, and nines, which is overweight or obese. And there are some serious health risks associated with being overweight and obese, such as laminitis, Equine Metabolic Syndrome, bone, joint and tendon injuries, difficulty cooling off after exercise or during hot weather, and just a general reduction in performance levels.
Next, let's talk about how to body condition score. There are six areas to be assessed when measuring the fat cover on a horse's body. The first is along the neck...
then behind the shoulders...
along the withers...
across the ribs...
down the back or the loin...
and then the tail head.
When evaluating each of these six areas, it's important to lay your hands on them and feel them, as well as to visualize or look at them, because looks can be deceiving.
Henneke's body condition scoring chart has criteria for each of the six locations that correspond to the nine numbers. So, you use that to come up with a number for each location, and then you just sort of average them up to come up with a general impression for that particular horse.
Now, not every horse read the book, so it's ok to not have a nice, neat, whole number like a four, five, or a six. Four and a half, five and a half, six and a half is just fine.
Understand that in some disciplines, like racing, and some life stages, like pregnancy, a lower or higher body condition score is preferred. And some horses have extremes in conformation, like a sway back or high withers, that make giving a number to that part of the body very difficult. It's ok to throw those out and just average up the rest of them.
Now that we've covered body condition scoring, which is a subjective way of assessing your horse's condition, let's talk about an objective way, and then you can record both of these in your horse's journal to keep track.
The most common objective measurement is horse's weight. And to do this, you'll need a commercially available weight tape. I'd recommend picking one and sticking with it, because it's not the absolute numbers on here that are meaningful, it's more the trend, because you're doing this about every month or so.
If you don't have a commercially available weight tape, any flexible measuring tape will do, you just have to take an additional measurement, and then plug it into a formula. Or, plug it into our online horse weight calculator, and it will do the math for you.
With both of these measurement tools, now you can track your horse's weight and condition and work with your veterinarian and nutritionist to maintain his ideal score.
Weight and Body Condition Resources for Horse Owners:
- If your horse has scored a 7, 8, or 9, they are considered to be overweight. Learn how to keep weight off your horse if you have an easy keeper.
- Horses that score at a 4 or less are considered underweight. Here are some strategies for managing a hard keeper (a horse that struggles to put weight on).