I read much over blown concern about younger horses carrying weight on their back before their growth plates are completely fused. While this is a tremendous problem in racing and other competitions, very few horse owners actually place their young horses at risk because of the age that they begin training. Most horse owners, like most humans, are extreme procrastinators and even if they intended to start a colt too soon, they generally do not get around to doing so.
However, young horses are at risk for serious health problems that are associated with having too much weight on their backs....and their necks...and their bellies. Fat kills. Fat cripples. No horse, but especially colts, should be allowed to become, or remain, obese. The terrible problem is that fewer and fewer horse owners have any idea what a healthy horse looks like. That is especially true of younger horses, stallions in the spring and summer, and pregnant mares.
The body weight score is a good guideline but some breeds do not fit correctly into those broad out lines. Akal Tekes, Saddlebreds and many strains of mustangs would be dangerously obese if those standards were strictly applied to those, and similar breeds. For most strains of Colonial Spanish horse a horse with a flat back is too fat. Our horses are generally spine high and rafter hipped. Enough sweet feed can fatten them up into looking like quarter horses but their bodies pay the cost for doing so.
Here is a shot of Ta Sunka Witco at about age three. I suspect that many horse owners would think that he needed extra weight. They would be wrong.
And if fattened badly enough, for long enough, they would be dead wrong.
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