All race horses in the northern hemisphere are born during the first months of each year, and the convention is established that they are due every January 1.
Although they start running when they are two years old, it is not until they turn three when they reach 97/98% of their external growth, when the cartilage of the long bones is ossified. Its full bone development will not end until the age of 5, which will be when the bones have acquired their ultimate strength. Here you have the stages of the horse’s development.
- Handling and dressage foals and yearlings
The newborn foals immediately stand at about 40 kilos and, if everything goes normal, at four months, they will weigh about 165. During their first year of life, foals are called foals.
Weaning takes effect at least six months later and a good lactation will be essential for sports becoming. It is important that weaning is not traumatic. Possibly the forging of temperament and also some of the possible mania that can manifest in adulthood, have been acquired in this initial period of time. Therefore, in the mares, the foals are habituated to human contact. Weaning is considered a relevant event for breeding because it involves separation from the mother and adaptation to a new diet. With the teething of finished milk, foal, in what is known as gradual weaning, can begin grazing, complementing the amount of milk your mother is still providing. This process can last for four weeks.
The separation of the mothers is carried out by segregating males from females in different Meadows by which they gallopade in wide spaces without obstacles. Feeders and drinkers are often placed distant from each other to induce movement.
This exercise will contribute to your general development and will strengthen muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints and will cause both appetite and proper digestion and assimilation.
Met the first year, the foals are called “yearlings” and the eighteen months preparing for the auction, passing the animals of the regime of freedom to the lairage. By closing the meadow, you can avoid some unsettled slashes and matures, and by brushing and food supplements, you look bright hair that makes you more attractive to potential buyers.
Through the taming, the foal learns, first, to conduct himself with the action of the different airs and then, little by little, to support the head placed with a brake, and the reins. The next step is to put a specific weight mount inside the box. Later he will get used to some stirrups that will graze his ribs when he walks. After several days a light rider will climb and slowly go from rest to walk and then respond to the reins. The next step is to learn to walk behind an old and quiet horse, step by step, and trot. Finally, and already with other yearlings, he will start galloping mounted.
- The two years and the first race
Early workouts contribute to muscle and lung development. Foals learn to breathe by galloping and gradually reduce the number of inspirations, thereby improving sports performance. At that stage, exercise usually consists of exchanging gear at a pace, with the trot and short gallop, and then expanding to a somewhat livelier gallop, simply to dilate the lungs. Another aspect that is worked in the training sessions is the moral of the colt and his willingness to beat the other products with which he gallops.
Not all preparers follow the same training guidelines; not all foals need the same intensity. There are more apathetic horses, which require more time and more demanding jobs and others, on the other hand, which are used more generously and which easily reach the form necessary to debut. There are sometimes setbacks that delay the debut date. Among them are the surges and the zeal in the females.
Despite the importance of the training gallops to decide on the date of the Sports debut, these do not always allow to predict precisely how the colt will run when it leaves the track. There are horses that Gallop a lot in morning training and then compete worse and others that are better used in racing when they perceive that the competition is real.
Two-year-old foals compete with each other (except at the end of the season) and at shorter distances. The programs of the different racks include races, until April 30, only in races of 800 to 1,000 meters. Subsequently, the footage gradually rises to a maximum of 1,800 meters.
During the first months, our calendar provides for two-year-old foals to participate in equal weight and from the middle of the year, the fillets receive a discharge in attention to the higher weight and musculature that the males develop.
Mainly during the two-and three-year seasons, the rules of the race programs provide for tests reserved for females.
- The classical age
There is a general convention that the sporting value achieved during the season in which horses are three years old is the one that best determines their future cost as breeders. For this reason, in all countries, there is a particular calendar so that horses entered with the Natural year in the three years (the so-called” classical age”) can rule among themselves supremacy in the three ranges of distance: speed, mile, and background.
One factor distorting the performance of females, and precisely with higher intensity in spring, his zeal. It usually involves irritability, lack of appetite, and less competitive value for a week.
The hippodromes also program intergenerational races, in which the three years face the old (four or more years) with weights by age or under the handicap modality. Due to the development of a foal of three years is not complete, in the careers of fixed-weight-for-age horses old recharge kilos. By way of example, in the Madrid Grand Prix, a race at the top of the Spanish calendar that takes place at the end of the spring, the three years are 55 kilos, and the old ones are 61. These differences are decreasing as the calendar and physical development of the three years’ progress.
- The old horses
Arriving on January 1 of the year when the fourth quarter is celebrated since its birth, the horses are known colloquially as “old.”
The elite races in which products from four years onwards have the option to participate are open to all specimens that are at least that age, except those that since the end of June (this is the case of the Madrid Grand Prix) allow access to the three-year copies. The three years, when they compete against the Old Men in non-handicap races, receive, in view of their minor physical development and to balance their choices, a discharge.
Horses evolve very differently between the ages of three and four, and those with higher than average elevations (approximately 160 cm) tend to improve their performance more at the age of four as they need more time to adjust their large bone structure. On the other hand, it is generally admitted that as they advance in age, horses gain in bottom capacity and lose speed.