About+Horses

= About Horses = = by Hazel Swain =

Wild horses have been around for many years. In fact, horses go back to the time of the Indians. The female horses are called mares and the male horses are called stallions. The baby horse is called a foal. The name for a baby girl horse is a filly, a colt is a baby boy. A yearling is a horse that is one year old. A baby horse can stand and run a short while after it is born. When a horse is born its legs are very long so it cannot reach the grass to eat. Horses are herbivorous which means they only eat plants.

What Horses Can Be Used For
A horse can be used for many things such as racing, pulling carriages, horseback rides, carnivals, just for fun, and a long time ago they used horses for war and fighting. People started capturing horses and train them for their own use of pulling wagons and carriages and working on farms. Nowadays they are mostly used for pleasure or business such as racing.


Horses stay together in a group called a herd and they have a mare and a stallion as leaders. Horses come in many different variety of coat colors. Some of them are brown and black. If a horse’s coat color is red, it is called a chestnut and if the coat is black and white it is called either a palomino or a painted lady (there are different kinds). Most horses have white markings on their head. This is a way to tell horses of the same coat color apart; a white diamond shape marking on the top of their head is called a star.

A horse's tail is used for swatting away flies ﻿in summer and spring and it is also used amongst horses as a signal to others to let them know how they are feeling (it is one of their ways to communicating.) The tail is best for swatting if it is kept naturally long and thick. Horses have different types of walks: a slow walk, a slightly faster walk which is called trotting or jogging and the fast walk which is called galloping.