While people spend hours of time and tons of money to try and hide their figure with clothes, horse blankets have the main priority of keeping the horse warm, clean, and free from rub marks.  Unfortunately, these wonderful blankets make it hard to keep a close eye on a horses weight.

Winter time is hard enough as it is.  The colder weather appears as the extra fat on the horse disappears trying to keep the horse warm.  Doesn't make sense to most, while they think a horse would keep the fat to stay warm (nice extra warm layer that it is.)  However, the fact of the matter is horses burn this spare fat naturally to stay warm.  Their feed intake will increase due to this extra need.  The use of blankets will help to keep the moisture in the air, or the heavy rain, from soaking the horse to the skin.  The use of blankest also makes it hard to catch a drop in weight.

Inventory of a horses health should be taken by the owner several times a week.  Horses lose weight extremely fast so don't let the cold weather keep you from checking on them regularly. 

A large livestock scale is the most accurate method of weight estimation, but a heart girth weight tape is also quite useful.  Weight tapes use a horse's heart girth measurement alone, but using body length plus heart girth tends to be more accurate.  To do this method, measure the heart girth (HG) in inches.  Take the total inches and square this number.  Then measure the body length (BL) of the horse (point of shoulder to point of hip).  Now multiply your squared heart girth inches by your body length in inches.  Finally, divide this number by 330.  This will tell you how many pounds your horse weight.  For Example:  BL = 70.5 inches/ HG = 77 inches.  HG squared multiplied by body length, divided by 330 equals weight.  77*77*70.5/330 = 1267