How has the standard of care dropped? Because they don’t have a beautifully groomed ring to be ridden in? Because you aren’t paying someone to take care of your horse? Because they’re eating from gasp a round bale? Because they might have to be ridden on trails? Because omg they’re staying out all the time instead of stalled for 12 hours a day?
horses don’t care one iota about how pretty the stalls are, how well groomed the staff is, that the riding ring cost $200k to build. To most horses, being allowed outside all the time, to roll in the mud, to run and buck and fart whenever they feel like it, is a HUGE increase in the “standard of care” over being pampered in a 12 in 12 out situation. You can get crappy hay fed at high end boarding barns. You can get feed fed that is high in sugars at high end boarding barns. Boarding doesn’t increase the standard of care any more than at home decreases it.
If moving your horses home includes a drastic change in the standard and complexity of horse care and a significant reduction in horse/barn amenities, yes, obviously you are going to save money, just as if you moved your horse from stall board at a fancy facility to pasture board at a more simple place. The savings is not in having your horses at home, it is in the simplification of their care wherever it is.
Who cares where the savings comes from? If someone needs people to ride with and big rings with fancy jumps and doesn’t have time due to a heavy work schedule to actually take care of a farm, then the cost savings doesn’t matter - it’s not for them. Heck, there are more than a few folks who go back to boarding during the Winter for the sake of some ameneties. But for many people, paying for the number of amenities are some barns is soooo not worth it. Some don’t want to pay for a heated barn and hot water in the barn and someone on call all the time to put on and remove blankets on a moment’s notice, or have part of board fees go to keeping the grounds in pristine shape when they have nothing to do with how the horse is kept.
People are quite capable in many cases of giving their horse as good or better care at home AND spending less money to do it.
Interestingly, I have had several fairly particular clients over the years who have ended up buying their own horse properties and moving their horses home and in each case their standards relaxed dramatically. It takes a lot of work to keep stalls clean, buckets fresh, blankets changed, fences fixed, arena groomed, aisle swept, etc, and when people realize exactly how much work, they often decide to drastically simplify things.
Of course. It’s one thing to shell out some money every month for someone else to do all the dirty work, it’s another to actually do it yourself. If you (in general) want a pristine barn with all the niceties of a nice boarding barn, then you’re going to have to work to keep it up.
OR, you can set up your home environment such that it doesn’t involve as much hands-on work, still maintain a very high standard of care as far as the horse is concerned, and save quite a bit.
Neither situation is right for every person.
Horse care is what you make of it, not necessarily what you pay someone else to do.