Every domesticated horse, regardless of breed, belongs to the same species — all are descended from wild horse populations that once roamed Eurasia. And yet no two horses are quite the same. The terms below are the vocabulary horse people use to describe a horse's sex, age, and role.
Stallions, Geldings & Mares
A stallion is an ungelded (intact) male horse at least four years old. A gelding is a male horse that has been castrated, usually to make him calmer and easier to handle. A mare is a female horse four years of age or older; a mare kept specifically for breeding is called a broodmare. Mares that are sexually mature come into season on a cycle each year between spring and autumn, which is when breeding takes place.
Foals, Fillies & Colts
A foal is any horse under a year old. A female foal or young horse is a filly; a male is a colt. Pregnancy in horses lasts about 11 months, and mares typically lie down to give birth, front feet and legs emerging first, followed by the head and body. A healthy foal stands and nurses within about an hour of birth, is usually weaned around six months, and reaches its adult size somewhere between four and five years old.
One Species, Many Types
Horses are commonly sorted into a handful of broad groups by build and temperament: Arabians and other "hot bloods," Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Trotters and Pacers, "cold blood" draft breeds, and ponies. Within those groups sit dozens of individual breeds, each defined by its own specific traits — see the horse breed profiles for details on more than 60 of them.
Bones, Muscle & Instinct
A horse's skeleton has roughly 205 bones, and its stamina, strength, and agility come from that flexible frame working with a well-developed muscle system. Horses are also prey animals with a strong, inborn flight instinct — much of their behavior is instinctive rather than learned, and a frightened horse's default reaction is to flee first and assess later. A horse's approximate age can also be read from its teeth, which wear and change in predictable patterns over its lifetime.
How to tell a horse's age by its teeth →← Back to Horse Articles