Advice pls on travelling a very tall horse.

Spot_the_Risk

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Asking for a friend.

She has a young horse who is suspected to make over 18hh and also has a very high head carriage. He currently travels in her Ifor 511 but he is already nearly touching the roof when stood normally, and there is more growing to do! He is a good traveller.

So, for those of you with very tall horses, what do you do!?
 
I have a friend with a friesan x TB who is over 18hh (see photo below) and she has issues with headroom in most things but likes my rear facing 7.5 horsebox as has approx 8ft headroom as we got it specifically for our large ID so accommodates larger horses a lot more than most. But his ears can still touch the ceiling if he lifts his head

We have several folks with large horses that are interested in our box when we are done with it for this reason.

I would look at good poll protection and start measuring headroom as that is a figure not often seen in adverts



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My boy who is out on loan has to stand with his head down while travelling, he is pretty thick but has mastered that OK. He does wear poll protection. He is 18hh.
 
I had this issue with my new boy, who is around the 17.3-18hh mark and long in the body. He doesn't fit comfortably in my lorry, which was built around my other 17.3, and his ears just about touch the roof of our 511. We tried travelling him with his head down but he wasn't for it and tried to lie down.

We've ended up having to buy another lorry, which is being built around the two big boys. It has several inches on the 511 in height so it might be worth maybe looking at something like that?

In the meantime, I would maybe try to pad out the roof and pop a poll guard on just to be on the safe side.
 
Larger horses need 8 ft headroom. A lot of even the new 3.5 tonne boxes can accommodate this. My last two 7.5 tonnes, conversions, did too.

If you go for a 7.5 tonne, then make sure you also get an 8ft width one (a lot only come in at 7ft6ins), and angle the partition to increase the length even further.
 
I bought my 3.5tonne type lorry specifically for my 18 hand tb as it was really the only option i could fine that had sufficient headroom. It also gave him enough room in front of the partition to let him stretch his neck out to enable him to balance properly. We had previously struggled in larger lorries where the horses were stalled herringbone.
 
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