Hi Karen, >>>I've weight-taped Icelandic's from about 650 to about 1050 pounds - and I probably haven't seen the worst extremes. When my friend had to take her Icelandic to the vet school, the scales showed him surprisingly close to the weight tape, within 50 pounds or so. I would imagine that a good many Icelandics are in the 800-pound range, give or take 100. :)
Our experience as well. Barbara has a scale in her barn in California and whenever we weighed the horses it was surprisingly accurate to the weight tape. If nothing else the weight tape gives people an idea if their horses are gaining or losing as it can be difficult to see when you see the horses everyday. We have had horses weighing between 630 (very tall and unbelievably thin) and as much as 1150 pounds (unbelievably fat). The heavy horses lose up to 300 pounds and then looked perfect. Not thin but what I consider a nice riding weight. I think that 750 - 900 is not an unusual range for the Icelandics. BTW - we have a mare in the SYH clinic who is 6 and she is 14.2 with a stick - I will get some photos with the measurement stick. She is very sweet and until this year was just too unbalanced to start - part of it, I think, was be cause she was laminitis last year and very overweight (not one of ours but a friends). One thing we have noticed about the weight of Icelandics is that generally they don't need as much sedation as another horse the same weight, especially the younger ones. Robyn Icelandic Horse Farm Robyn Hood & Phil Pretty Vernon BC Canada www.icefarm.com
