Flat Bone
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In the Fell Pony we also have the challenge of evaluating bone behind hair!
One of the earliest characteristics of the Fell Pony that I learned about, and was confused by, was flat bone. I remember watching a Fell Pony judge and breeder whom I respected place well a pony in a show that I thought had round bone, the opposite of the desired flat bone. Later I saw a pony that the same breeder and judge had bred and the bone in the lower legs was so flat as to appear razor thin. The breed description says, “plenty of good flat bone below the knee (eight inches at least)…” so that razor thin bone didn’t meet the ‘plenty of’ part of the breed standard, so I remained confused.
When I took a homebred colt for his stallion licensing exam - a new experience for me, the colt, and the vet - the vet measured around the cannon bone to be sure it was greater than 8” in circumference. “You know that there’s tendon as well as bone in that measurement, right?” I hadn’t thought of it before, but of course he was right, yet that circumference measurement was the standard by which flat bone is judged in our breed.
After all this confusion in my past study of this characteristic of the Fell Pony, I was thrilled to finally find an explanation of flat bone that made sense to me. I’ve been working on an article on draft horse conformation with my colleague Doc Hammill, and he suggested that I read as background Heather Smith Thomas’s book The Horse Conformation Handbook. Thomas says that modern day equines have less bone for body weight than ancestral types and hence we have challenges with soundness. Yet flat bone has to do with something different than bone quantity.
“When viewed from the side, the lower leg, including bone and tendon, should be wide, not narrow and round. The horseman’s term for ideal distance from front to back of the lower leg is flat bone (describing the combination of bone and tendon), which gives the lower leg the appearance of more substance from front to back.” (1) Ah ha! At last my confusion about flat bone is resolved! If that tendon is placed too far forward, it reduces the circumference of the lower leg. But it also lessons the leverage of the tendon, so weakness and eventual lameness can result.
Thomas goes on to say that typical equines for riding should (but often don’t) have 8” of ‘bone’ for every 1000#, so it’s clear why the Fell Pony, which is often lighter than 1000#, is considered to have plenty of bone with typically more than 8”. I’m now looking at lower legs to evaluate flat bone with new eyes!
1) Thomas, Heather Smith. The Horse Conformation Handbook. Storey Publishing, 2005, p. 121.
© Jenifer Morrissey, 2020
