I have a very large yearling - warmblood with gtrat lines but I’m already worried he will be BIG. Too big. I know I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m already thinking about problems he may have as he continues to grow and what he will end up at, and if he will be able to perform as the sport horse he was intended to be, or not. Anyone have success stories they can share to help me not dwell on the possible negative results?
How old in months, and how big is he? How big are his parents? What are you feeding him, and what’s his turnout like?
Size doesn’t automatically mean problems. Problems arise from intense growth rates, over work or hard pasture play, and poor nutrition. Also, as someone who is in medicine, chips are commonly seen in large yearlings and most are removed due to aesthetic reasoning. People worry about OCD’s which is valid, but they aren’t a game changer like they used to be unless they are just in an absolutely horrid spot.
Warmbloods tend to have issues in the neck, but as long as you aren’t doing anything that is going to cause compression early on, it’ll be fine. Anything else is luck of the draw even on the most perfectly conformed creature. Just let him grow at his natural rate, feed good quality feed, stay in conversations with your vet, and let him roam in the great outdoors. All will be well.
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Thank you, I haven’t sticked him but he is TALL and Wide. Not fat. He is 14 months but the size of much older, I believe. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as he was his mother’s largest foal yet. I just wasn’t sure if largest baby automatically equals largest adult. He is fed a ration balancer and grass hay. He is out 24/7.
It’s amazing how some will level out as they age up. But today I had a long yearling sitting at around 16hh and about 900lbs. Big dude, tiny chip, didn’t even need a removal if it weren’t for the sales. And many of these chips, on personal belief, comes from insane growth rates that are fueled by high sugar grains and not enough turnout time so they play hard when they get to.
I’ve seen HUGE babies and was so convinced they’d be monsters, only to have them stop their quick growth rate and be dwarfed by the runt of the barn😅 horses are wild.
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Thank you for the encouragement. My hope is that he finishes under 18h🤞🏼
We had a very large yearling (TB, not warmblood), whom we took to a yearling sale. Buyers weren’t interested: he was too big, too long, too everything. We sold him for 32K which in TBs is definitely not much. He grew up and raced from age 3 to 6, was a G2 winner, G1 placed, and earned 600k. He even qualified to run in the KY Derby. As an adult horse, he’s still big, but not huge.
a yearling picture from the sale:
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Where are his withers relative to you and how tall are you? Are you used to WB yearlings?
It’s not automatic, no. There are general rules for rate of growth in horses, as with every species, but there are also outliers. There are those who grow slowly at first and then finish quickly. There are those who shoot up in the first year or 2, then crawwwwlllll to their final height
My homebred was supposed to be around 17h, by everything - his sire’s height, his sire’s offspring out of mares similar in type and height to mine. He was 13.2 give or take at birth, string tested to 17h, was 14.3+ at 12 months (same as my last foal who did mature to 17h), and he matured to just shy of 16.2
As long as you’re feeding the amount his age and weight should get, that’s great.
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If you have the ration balancer on hand for the horses that you are raising, surely you can give that to the retired OTTBs that you have.
Wow you are so right!!
I ride a 19 hand Hanoverian who has regularly jumped around the 1.35m. He needs proper maintenance (mostly in the form of riding him correctly so he doesn’t pound on his front end). But otherwise he’s pretty straightforward and is a wonderful athlete.
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I have an 18hh warmblood doing GP dressage. He was 16.3hh as a 2 yr old. His dam was over 17hh, so we knew he was going to be big. He is big all around not just at the withers.
I would say he has a normal amount of maintenance for his size, age, and workload. Growing up he was kinda wonky till he stopped growing. I could tell when he did as he no longer struggled. He’s had some issues that required surgery that may have been due to his size and rate of growth, but obviously he is competing at GP level and maintaining soundness with the workload so ultimately they were just set backs.
I am very careful of his weight and fitness and he does require more than a basic shoeing set up.
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