A method and apparatus for measuring and analyzing the state of hydration of a horse, camel or other hairy animal including providing power to a transmitting circuit to transmit a
signal to electrodes resulting in a
potential difference across the electrodes causing a flow of current between the electrodes reflecting the impedance encountered and sending a
signal reflecting such information to receiving circuits which pass that data to
processing circuits which process that data with other external inputs to produce an output display reflecting an indication of the state of hydration of the animal, comprising:means for providing a
voltage difference across two or more electrodes; means for maintaining said electrodes in a fixed
spatial relation and in good electrical contact with the
skin of the animal without penetrating the
skin of the animal on which said measurements are to be made; means for measuring the impedance of said animal in the region of or between the electrodes; means for transmitting the measured data to
processing circuits which process that data with other external inputs to produce an output display reflecting an indication of the state of hydration of the animal, wherein the other external inputs include one or more of the factors for sex, age,
electrode gap, and heart girth; and the output display provides indications of one or more of the outputs produced by formulations of the data reflecting the percentage of total
body water, the percentage of
extracellular fluid volume, the percentage of
plasma and the percentage of
intracellular fluid volume and the analyzing monitoring unit may be selected from the group of embodiments consisting of
software in a computer, hard wired circuits, printed circuits, integrated circuits, microcircuits, microchips,
silicon chips, digital chips, analog chips,
hybrid chips and combinations of any or all of the members of this group.