Many families use wagon pulled by traction horses as their means of work or supplemental income. In Pelotas, there has been a Veterinary Clinic since 2006, which provides free weekly clinical care to these horses, due to concern about their health. The objectives of this study were to evaluate and record the biometric patterns of traction horses in Pelotas. We evaluated 219 horses, 129 females and 90 males. We measured chest width (ChW), leg perimeter (LP), thoracic perimeter (TP), croup width (CrW), height (H) and weight (W) of the animal. Through these values, we calculated the compactness index 1 (CCI1=(W/WH)/100), compactness index 2 (CCI2 = (W/[WH-1]/100) and conformation index (CFI=TP²/WH). The animals of both sexes showed the following averages: H - 1.38 ± 0.07 m; LP - 0.19 ± 0.02 cm; TP - 1.56 ± 0.10 m; ChW - 0.26 ± 0.05 cm; CrW - 0.22 ± 0.05 cm; weight - 308 ± 60 kg. Regarding the ICC1, ICC2 and ICF indices, the averages for both sexes were, respectively: 2.30; 8.39; 1.82. Accordingly, the indices obtained showed that most of the evaluated horses were inadequate to pull heavy loads and had greater ability to pull light loads or to be used as riding horses.
biometrics; compactness index; horses; traction; wagon