Research Article

MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION OF KONIK HORSES – MULTIVARIATE ANALYSES

Marcin Komosa, Hieronim Frąckowiak

Akademia Rolnicza w Poznaniu

1. Acta Sci. Pol. Zootechnica, 6(4), 2007, 45‒58

Abstract. The investigation was carried out on the population of 104 adult Konik horses. These horses came from the stable breeding from the Wielkopolska region (Poland). Each individual was characterized by 22 measurements. On the basis of the Principal Components Analysis it was stated that there is a tendency for individuals’ exterior to diversify. Three types of Konik horses were found. Thanks to the Canonical Discriminant Analysis 13 (out of 22) metric features were pointed out which differentiate these types. The greatest importance for describing the type have the length of femur and length of the region of foot which consists of the skeleton of tarsus, metetarsus and phalanges. A big role was also attributed to the height at the withers, length of the trunk, width of the chest and circumference of the fore cannon. The observations allowed to conclude that exterior changes are connected with strengthening of riding features in the population of Konik horses.

Keywords: biometry, exterior, Konik horses