I’m there too. Since DH passed away, I’ve been struggling to keep going. I think I found a home for DH’s appy; they’re coming Sunday to look at him. However, my boy Spud is so attached to him that it’ll be very stressful for him not to have company. If he can’t adjust, I’ll bring Odin home from where he’s being boarded but I’m hoping to send him to full training soon and get him sold. I plan to move by the end of summer and, unfortunately, will be unable to bring Spud with me. I’ve mentioned before he has some psychological issues resulting from an abusive trainer and has a lot of anxiety and can be unpredictable so it takes someone who knows how to handle him the way he needs to be handled. If I can’t find a home, rather than him falling into a bad situation, I’ll put him down.
I think we need to make it more acceptable/reasonable to put a horse down that is no longer useful if it is making someone put their goals on hold or putting them in financial strain. This trend of owing a horse a retirement, or feeling special because you are sacrificing your goals for an old horse is fine for some, but I don’t think the horse cares/knows. Put them down. Feel sad for a bit, and then pursue your goals.
I do feel potential guilt when we shut down in time. We built specifically to be affordable and efficient, albeit not fancy. There are still places that are priced reasonably, but they are getting more scarce and new facilities are build made more fancy/expensive.
The author of this is a good friend of mine. We would love not to have to price people out of the hobby, but this below is the reality
Being a horse boarding barn or riding school barn is hard currently!
What you should charge for board (insurance for the house, for the barn, for the horses, hay, shavings, manure removal, good staff, red ant control, creeping indigo spraying, pond treatment with weed control, rodent and spider control, auto fly system, mats, extra bedding, etc. ADDING fence repair, auto waters repair. Wood chewing, re seeding pastures, irrigation, FILLING holes dug by your equine family member, etc) has to be high just to pay costs. ADDING, hand walking when needed, calling the vet and meeting them in the middle of the night, checking on a horse every hour when needed, HOOKING up the trailer and hauling your horse to the vet, but feeling bad for charging for it. So eating the costs
By my calculations, all listed above with 5 flakes timothy and fresh bedding when needed is over $900 just to pay costs (in FL), = no profit for your barn owner, no payment towards their mortgage, no payroll, just sweat and tears.
How long can we continue making no profit but working 24/7 for the horses in our care. Putting our clients and their horses before our families?
My advise. Thank your boading barn, thank your trainer, ask if they need help, and understand when they don’t reply to your message immediately. We have families, and most the time your horse family has to come before our kids.
We want horses to be available to everyone for ever, but that might not be in the future without some support from our clients.
Thanks for readings and open to constructive comments!
I want to send a warm hug to everyone that is feeling as if they can’t or shortly won’t be able to afford horses.
It’s very expensive. I’m very fortunate that we were able to buy a home w a small acreage and build the necessities for horse keeping when we did. Just the basic necessities were eye wateringly expensive. I’m able to keep two in pretty good style and possibly could swing a third. I continue to resist a third bc the cost of vet care. Not that my vet is charging too much, it’s just expensive beyond just basic maintenance. And a third horse to be responsible for… just too much for me to sign up for. Hay isn’t cheap either. I’m feeding fancy trucked in O/A mostly and it’s $23 for a little 60lb bale if I pick it up. Add two dollars if I want it delivered and stacked. I’ve got decent grass but I feed at least some hay year round.
I could never afford the level of care my horses get at home in a board barn even if it was available.
Last year when my old mare severely injured her back in January, it was $1100 for an emergency euthanasia and disposal. Ground was frozen so we couldn’t bury her, but using backhoe services instead of being hauled off site and disposed of would have only saved me a a couple hundred dollars. So emphasis on making euthanasia reasonable.
Today I went and rode MY horse.
Tomorrow he will become someone else’s horse, she has part leased him for 6 months, now he will become hers. I am heartbroken, especially as at 66, on fixed income, I think this is the end of my horse owning life.
I now have to face the prospect of getting rid of all my remaining stuff.
I will be visiting the liquor store tomorrow on my way home, amd toasting the end of this part of my life.
BUT, but, it looks like I will get to ride my trainers Friesian from May, so I will still get my fix, but doesn’t help tonight.
I don’t think I have any riding related goals at this point. My mare will stay a big, expensive pet until something catastrophic happens, or her quality of life declines. The BO and the vet are aware that she’s the horsey equivalent of a DNR… No colic surgery, no trying to get her over a bad founder, etc.
I’m sorry, can you clarify? Are you talking about healthy older horses being euthanized so someone can get a younger or newer horse to show for their goals??
I hope that I just read that wrong.
That is my thought too. My horse turns 21 this year and I have owned her since she was a long yearling. I will be 68 in August. When she is gone, I am done. I probably should have sold her long before now as from 2012 until about 2020, I did very little riding due to multiple surgeries and one in particular that I was not sure I would even be able to sit on a horse again. It was a 2 year wait to find out but I could 
. It would have to be a very special situation to rehome her now so we will persevere.
Susan
a close freind of my daughter was commenting about the cost of a 30 minute lesson for her beginner daughter…they do live in the highest income zip code of Texas with an Average personal income of $249,000… this 30 minute basically pony ride cost $135 per “lesson”
Costs for Basic care items have become a runaway gallop, most items are up at least 25% over last year.
The special TEFF hay we have been feeding is up 60% so have located a local replacement at 25% of the TEFF’s cost. I will only use the TEFF for the special needs older mare who was a rescue
On another thread here there was a poster looking at a portable hot water heater, I have one of the same they are looking at, bought it less than three years ago for $99 which included shipping, they are being quoted $159.99 for the same model (not sure if shipping was included) but the cost of the L5 heater to have gone up Sixty Percent in a short period is questionable.
Shopping around now has become a constant activity…everything thing’s cost is checked and cross check between vendors/suppliers. Personal relationships with suppliers is now becoming a real value AND I am using those long time friendships to the max.
Euthanasia solution is expensive and involves a bit of paperwork (restricted substance). It has also been, off and on, difficult to source. And vets hate euthanizing. Even when it is the kindest possible course it takes a little bit of your soul. I’m sure you have felt this as an owner. There are a limited number of facilities that handle chemically euthanized large animals. They have overhead and paperwork. Then there is trucking the deceased from farm to facility. No one is getting rich on euthanasia.
No one implied anyone was. I’m sorry if you interpreted my response to mean that. And I am absolutely not “vet blaming,” it sounds like you may have read that in my words.
I know the logistics that go into euthanasia. The euthanasia solution and the vet are the cheapest part of the process.
The logistics behind disposal part of euthanasia are challenging, but that is still the area where we can enact the most change. 50+ years ago we had lots of options; not always “nice” options, but they were options. But we have progressively removed those options leaving nothing but the high cost ones.
Ummmmmmm……… 
disagree
What I’ve seen happening with bedding is mills that formerly made shavings have transitioned to fence boards, posts, and building material. Wood itself has skyrocketed in price while the people needed to harvest and work it have been in short supply, too. One of the mills we got shavings from did just that, and started shipping shavings from South Carolina instead of closer in Virginia, which raised the freight price astronomically.
Yes, I feel this way also!
I can’t even imagine!
I think there was a day when it was much more acceptable to send an old, lame horse to auction even knowing it would probably go to slaughter. Kill pens were just a normal part of equestrian life.
I’m not exactly certain what the OP meant, but it is generally frowned upon in these parts to sell an old unrideable horse since chances are they won’t end up in a good place. If they have had a few years of retirement and are beginning to decline, as well as becoming progressively more expensive to keep, why is this such a horrible thing? Not everyone has the property to keep them, sadly.
Reading this thread has been a real downer. So many who love horses and would like to keep them simply can’t anymore, and that’s heartbreaking for both the people and the horses. It makes me appreciate how very lucky I am to be able to keep my horses at home in a part of the country that is still relatively cheap. And even here my price of hay doubled last year.
I’m currently giving “lessons” to a neighborhood girl who would love to have a horse. There’s no way her family could afford to give a horse a good home. They can’t even afford to pay for riding lessons, so the kid comes over once a week and I do what I can to teach her basic horsemanship and riding with my horses. She loves it, but I’m afraid she’ll never be able to fully indulge that passion because it’s simply too expensive.
It’s not even that expensive by Florida standards. And I’m lucky to live in an area where I can obtain “import hay” quickly and easily if not cheaply. I can get O/A out of Kentucky for closer to $15 / bale but the quality isn’t as good as the $23 / bale from Idaho.
