[USMA:30071] RE: Horses and hands

[James Wentworth]

Carleton MacDonald (cm) wrote:   <Does "15.2" mean 15.2 hands, or 15 hands 2 inches?>   This donkey web page http://www.lovelongears.com/hands.html has a description of the hand, its history, and how it is used (plus the entire measuring procedure).  The description of the hand reads thusly:    Parts of a hand are given after the whole unit, following a decimal. 10.2 hands (can also be read as just Ten-two) means ten hands and two more inches.  (4 inches x 10 hands equals 40 inches, plus two additional inches, so 10.2 is 42 inches tall).  10.3 would be 10 hands and 3 inches, forty-three (43) inches.  There is no such thing as 10 hands 4 inches, as 4 inches would be an additional hand.  However, even fractions of an inch can be listed, such as 10.3 � hh.  (Ten hands, 3 �" inches, or Ten-three and three-quarters: just �" shy of a full 11 hands.)   --  Jason