Im not sure what Rafter hips are? But I think yea, compared to Stock horses they seem alot more lean and you can feel their hip more with your hand. How can you tell if the horse is naturally lean due to high metabolism and if its a hard keeper? My mare gets alot of food, but she also runs EVERYWHERE, alot more then the appys and quarter horses at the boarding facility. My first Arabian mare wasnt a hard keeper but she still had a different look to her hips, at one point we even thought she was pregnant because before we bought her she was bred to a Thoroughbred, so we fed her accordingly to what we thought a pregnant mare needed, but apparently either she aborted her foal, or was never in foal and just fat. But even then you could feel her hips more so then my neighbors Quarter horses.
The guy who has been training my mare has an arabian with a foal at her side and she is extra bony, like almost to the point that I think that shes in danger, but she isnt ribby at all which is strange and the trainer said its just a trait for Arabs to be thinner then other horses....but I don t know if thats true?
- Jennie