The American Horse Council estimates 6.6m, not 2.4.
They say the difference is because USDA only counts “horses on working farms” which they say may not account for boarding, training, or riding facilities.
Starts at 27:50 or 30.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/39bPWJeV2W8Sh0CTX58Rfs?si=3cAcp483SFyLTeTaS3bobw
Edited to correct NHC to AHC
It’s hard to believe there are 4.2M horses “missed” by the USDA?!?
I didn’t buy the AHC report, so I’m not sure exactly how their metrics differ beyond how it was explained in the podcast. In 2017, they said the population was 7.2 million.
Popping in from NE to say I’m surprised it is “only” 40%. Maybe we’ve gotten the worst of it, we’ve been HCOL for a long time. Residential pressure, high cost of living, and real estate taxes have forced most to close or convert to a better use.
A long-standing barn adjacent to me just announced to its thirty+ boarders that they have until May 1st to move, per the developers that bought it. This boarding barn is the last boarding barn in this city’s province, and has quite a bit of history. I’m wondering where 30+ horses are going to go. The surviving barns already have a waiting list. Small private farms have been snatched up for housing. The mid-level barns are gone but some “boutique boarding” barn situations remain, not tenable or affordable for everyone though.
Pretty soon there is going to be a big boarding barn bubble in this area, and people aren’t going to be able to get into horses anymore. There is already a boarding barn shortage with lots of boarders having nowhere to go.
Here, a lot of the places that board in a smaller way – places that won’t have websites or facebook pages, and are often only found through word of mouth or a bulletin board at a vet clinic, for instance – have always been family owned and run.
Typically, it’s a family with kids into horses, parents build a barn with several extra stalls, have an arena, maybe a round pen, possibly a jump course, pastures etc., and a small to moderate number of boarders. There might be a decent amount of land involved, too, as horses generally aren’t kept in small corral situations see in some areas.
I boarded at these types of facilities for most of the time back in my boarding days, rather than the big barns. Don’t think these places, or the horses kept there, get included in surveys, as I never heard about them (at this type of family place, I think I would have heard something over the years).
I personally never received one back then, even when I was boarding up to five horses, and haven’t received one here at our own place since we sold our broodmares. I can believe that there are fewer horses than before, but perhaps quite a few have fallen through the cracks, as well.
I’ve seen a noticeable decline in just the past ~10 years in my area of SoCal. The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, LAEC, is a popular showground in the area AND located near Hollywood. The area around it (the Rancho) was traditionally horse country; many of those old Western movies were filmed with horses from the neighborhood because you could just walk your horse over to the film lot.
Over the last several years, the horses have consistently been pushed out of the area. Several large lots were purchased to build a huge amount of apartments, including the lot right outside of LAEC. There were ~5 large barns along the street less than a decade ago. 2 were torn down post-Covid; one is supposed to become an office space (?) and the other is supposed to become a horse/dog boarding facility. Another has a big for sale sign up and everyone’s worried a developer will buy it to turn it into housing.
Barn owners are faced with aging/dilapidated facilities that need to be gutted. There is no money to do it and boarders can’t/won’t pay more. Boarding makes no money on a good day and makes even less as the price of necessary goods keeps going up. So the owners sell the barn and those problems.
We have lost 4-5 large (30-75 horse) public barns in the last 3 years to development.
I’m not sure what is going to happen. I worry that fewer lesson barns, further away, pushed out of the city by development, will keep parents from providing lessons, which results ultimately in the torch not being passed on. No kids to get addicted, fewer adults ride.
The cost is unbelievable to fix up an older facility. We are doing it now and it is just…we’ll never make that back. Not even in resale.
Well, the truth might be somewhere between the USDA numbers and the AHC numbers, but one thing to keep in mind is that the AHC is a lobbying group. It’s in their best interest to inflate their “constituent” numbers so they look influential.
This is the hard truth. The costs for capital improvements are just prohibitive for many, so rather than fix it up, a property is sold to a developer who will tear it down.
No wonder horses are so darned expensive now. Less to choose from.
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