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I have been waiting for some sort of response on this subject but 
haven't seen one.  So tonight I went surfing on the Net to see if I 
could find the answer.  I found it.  P3, aka, coffin bone, is fused at 
birth.  Vertebrae growth plates close between 5 1/2 yrs and 8 yrs 
depending on height, length of neck and sex (males take 6 months longer 
than females).  [I think there is joke in there somewhere :)]

Dr Deb Bennett, Ph. D. has written an article called "TIMING AND RATE OF 
SKELETAL MATURATION IN HORSES" which can be found at
http://www.equinestudies.org/knowledge_base/ranger.html
In this article she includes a schedule of the closing of growth plates 
for bones.  She states, "The process of converting the growth plates to 
bone goes from the bottom of the animal up. In other words, the lower 
down toward the hoofs you look, the earlier the growth plates will have 
fused; and the higher up toward the animal's back you look, the later. 
The growth plate at the top of the coffin bone (the most distal bone of 
the limb) is fused at birth. What that means is that the coffin bones 
get no taller after birth (they get much larger around, though, by 
another mechanism). That's the first one."  She then lists when each 
bone's plates close ending with, "And what do you think is last? The 
vertebral column, of course. A normal horse has 32 vertebrae between the 
back of the skull and the root of the dock, and there are several growth 
plates on each one, the most important of which is the one capping the 
centrum. These do not fuse until the horse is at least 5 ½ years old 
(and this figure applies to a small-sized, scrubby, range-raised mare. 
The taller your horse and the longer its neck, the later the last 
fusions will occur. And for a male - is this a surprise? - you add six 
months. So, for example, a 17-hand Thoroughbred or Saddlebred or 
Warmblood gelding may not be fully mature until his 8th year - something 
that owners of such individuals have often told me that they "suspected").


k s swigart wrote:
> Karen Sullivan wrote:
>
> > Like the spine, the coffin bone is not finished
> > growing until age 4-5....
>
> Could I get a reference for this?
>
> What type of growing does a coffin bone do and how.
>
> It is my understanding that the P2/P3 joint (i.e. the joint between the
> coffin bone and the short pastern bone) is actually "closed" (i.e. the
> bone no longer has any cartligeous growth plates) before a horse is
> born.  But I am willing to confess that my understanding my be wrong.

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