Awhile back someone posted about where BuggyScott from AL. was anyone knoow anything? The post spooky,the horse with pig eyes it stated 14 responses I only read 7. Can someone tell more about pig eyes never heard of it or seen one that I knew of Thanks

I found this good piece of information on the web about horses vision and thought I would share it. It's a good read and can help people understand why horses act different to objects. They don't see everything just like you do......

If you want to find all the articles on "pig eye" just click on the search button and it will pull out all the posts that mention pig eye or anything between the quotation marks.

below is the web article:

A Horse Of Course, by Don Blazer
If you have your eyes wide open, you’ll be able to see that horses, at one time or another, and sometimes in combination, can have a feather in the eye, a glass eye, a pig eye, a pop eye, a smoky eye or a walleye.

In addition, they have both monocular and binocular vision. The horse uses monocular vision to view separate things with each eye at the same time. These objects are to the side and rear of the horse. Binocular vision, for the horse, is frontal vision, and when using it the horse concentrates both eyes on the same object. (To know where a horse is looking, look at his ears. A horse is looking where his ears are pointing, whether together or separately.)

The horse can see to the front, the side and the rear. In fact, he has a field of vision of up to 300 degrees.

But his wide-angle vision may adversely influence his ability to learn or the level of his intelligence, or both. Large eyes, set well out to the side of the head have always been considered a mark of quality in the horse. And while the horse should have large eyes, having the eyes placed too far to the side may be a handicap--from a learning point of view.

The farther out the eyes are placed on the side of the head, the more the horse must concentrate to achieve frontal vision. Distractions limit his ability to concentrate, which in turn makes him slower to learn, or, as some might say, less intelligent. On learning ability scales, animals that have only frontal vision generally rate higher than animals with monocular vision.

But this is only one of the horse’s vision-related limitations.

We are pretty sure the horse does not see in color. And we know the retina of the horse’s eye is somewhat flattened rather than curved. This means objects are quite frequently out of focus. To bring them into focus, a horse must lower, tilt, or raise his head.

The horse’s eye does not focus well on objects that are closer than four feet, and when a horse has his head high in the air, he cannot see the ground in front of him. Because of a special system within his eye, the corpora nigra which absorbs light rays from above, the horse cannot see clearly that which is above the level of his eyes.

And while the horse has a wide field of vision, he does have two blind spots. They are close to his face, directly in front of him; and the width of his body, directly behind him. These blind spots are the cause of many problems for both horse and man. (We are usually in one of those spots when we get bumped by the horse’s head, or kicked by a tiny hoof.)

All the special advantages and limitations of the horse’s vision have a great deal to do with the way the horse behaves.

Just imagine what a young horse sees the first time he is taken on a trail ride or to a horse show!

There is the excitement of a strange place, cars, motorcycles, people, noises and all sorts of unknown objects. Moreover, at any one time there is always something happening on each side of the horse. In many cases, the action isn’t in focus, and even if it were, the horse wouldn’t understand it. To see what is going on in front of him the horse must concentrate his full attention straight ahead, but how can he do that when there is so much new and interesting to see on each side of him?

Seeing is certainly disbelieving for the young horse. He must be asking himself, "How could my partner put me in such an incomprehensible world?"

Can you blame him for being a little flighty?

Most of us do, and consequently try to jerk, spank or force him into being calm when he is upset.

Such action will not work. Only understanding how the horse sees will help.

Now take a peek at some other eye-openers. A "feather in his eye" refers to a visible blemish on the eye. The blemish may be the result of an injury or a natural defect. In either case, it is considered a fault.

A glass eye lacks color and may be the cause for disqualification by some breed registries.

A pig eye is a small squinty eye, and a horse that has pig eyes is generally considered stubborn and hard to handle.

A pop eye is the opposite of pig eye; it is the description given to an eye that seems to be too large and protruding from the head.

A smoky eye is an eye that is cloudy in color, almost smoke gray.

A walleye is another term for an eye without color and is sometimes referred to as a China eye.

Thanks LC, this horse I referred to is more of the pop eyed horse,however he is coming along OK, as he has such a ugly head and seems to be a slow learner I am very skeptical as to his future at my place.Given a large dose of patience plus more time than two horses it is POSSIBLE that he might not kill me for a few weeks! If I sold him as is I MIGHT get $ 100 for him as there are not too many Percherons his area. I think that for no more than he is worth I will roll the dice and sit tight till he slicks off in June. smith

I think horses see colors. Especially green and yellow.

Mooney Ranch, you are correct. Further research on the web suggests there is still debate on which colors horses can see, below is more info on colors

William Micklem, in his book Complete Horse Riding Manual – published in 2003 – he says that “Research has shown that horses are dichromates, which means that they have limited color vision. They can distinguish between light and dark, between reds and blues, but not between greens and grays. This is why you will not find green or gray poles used in a grass showjumping arena.” (3)

Cherry Hill, in her book How to Think Like a Horse: The Essential Handbook for Understand Why Horses Do What They Do – published in 2006, she supports Micklem’s assertion that horses are dichromates. “The horse’s eye has two types of cone cells in the retina that are sensitive to color whereas a human has three types of cone cells. Whether horses can see colors as we do is still widely debated. Most researches agree that horses do have more than “shades of gray” discrimination but not the color range of humans. Exactly which colors horses see is sill unresolved.” (4)

“Equine vision expert Dr. Brian Timney, of the University of Western Ontario, explains that horses are like humans with color deficiencies. For example, humans with red-green color vision defects have only two hues (blue and yellow) rather than four. Such dichromates do not see intermediate hues, seeing instead white or gray or a faded form of the two colors.” (5)

“Horses have little difficulty in discriminating red or blue from gray. With respect to green and yellow, the results are mixed,” says Timney. His findings are similar to those from earlier studies but other researchers’ results differ. Exact answers have proven elusive in color vision research because of the difficulty in designing experiments with adequate controls (such as for brightness).” (5)

In the end, there is still debate about what colors horses see. It would be fair to say that there is a general agreement that horses can see colors, yet what colors those are remains to be conclusively confirmed.

I think yellow is one because when all them horseback riders meet me on the trail with my forecart and yellow sunshade they turn and run.