A recent collaborative project between equine researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Kentucky has resulted in an app that helps horse owners better determine their horse’s body weight.

Knowing the weight of a horse relative to the ideal weight of his breed can help owners better determine their horse’s nutritional needs and medication dosage.

Born from collaborations between UK and University of Minnesota over the past several years on equine metabolic studies, the two sets of university researchers often discussed how the industry needed a way to more easily measure a horse’s body weight.

“We wanted to come up with a better way to determine a horse’s body weight and provide something similar to the BMI (body mass index) measurement currently used in humans,” said Bob Coleman, PhD, PAS, associate professor in UK’s Department of Animal and Food Sciences and extension horse specialist. “We also wanted a scoring system that wasn’t going to be as impacted by the adiposity (fat deposits) of a horse as the current method of using girth measurement to determine a horse’s body weight