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The Demographics of the U.S. EquinePopulation

Emily R. Kilby

10CHAPTER

In this demographic examina-tion of America’s equine popu-lation, the numbers clearly

show upward trends in all thingsequestrian over the past fifty years.Will that trajectory continue,adding year after year to the cur-rent ten million population, or willloss of open spaces turn the tide asit limits horse housing and ridingroom? Will ownership patternsundergo fundamental changeswhen population density, landcosts, and escalating environmen-tal controls eliminate the “back-yard”-keeping concept and makesuburban boarding stables unten-ab le? Wi l l horse product ionexpenses rise in the face of landpressures to the point that eques-trian involvement, now a highlyegalitarian pursuit in this coun-try, truly becomes a rich person’sgame?

Horse people started frettingover these sorts of questions notlong after horses stopped beingbeasts of burden in this countryand became mostly recreationalpartners and companions. So far,the equine species has flourishedin its nonutilitarian role, butthere’s no end run around the factthat horses are and always will belarge animals in a shrinking natu-ral world.

How Many U.S.Horses Are There?This most basic question of demo-graphic research is yet to beanswered with satisfactory accu-racy for the U.S. equine popula-tion. Horses and other equidae areno longer sufficiently critical to national well-being to warrantthe close government oversightafforded food-producing animals,nor are they so much a part of theaverage American experience as toinspire close scrutiny of their num-bers and condition. Instead, avail-able demographic data for horsesand their kin have arisen from spe-cial interests or within restrictedpopulations, resulting in seeminglyconflicting figures.

The American Horse CouncilFoundation (AHCF), a fundingentity of the American HorseCouncil, commissioned a study in2004 using data provided by horseowners for the previous year. Theresulting report put the Americanhorse population at 9.2 million in2003, a 33 percent increase overthe 6.9 million reported ten yearsbefore (AHCF 2005).

According to the National Agri-cultural Statistics Service (NASS),an agency of the U.S. Department

of Agriculture (USDA), the coun-try’s equine inventory was 3.75 mil-lion in 2002 (USDA 2002). NASSreported 3.15 million horses,ponies, donkeys, and mules in 1997and, in 1992, 2.12 million. In a sin-gle decade, the equine populationjumped 1.63 million, or 77 percent,at least according to USDA.

The American Veterinary Med-ical Association (AVMA) put the2001 horse population at 5.1 mil-lion (AVMA 2002), a 28 percentincrease over the 4 million calcu-lated for 1996, which had repre-sented an 18 percent decreasefrom the 4.9 million estimated fiveyears before that.

Equine Census TakingThe American horse population isnot nearly so volatile as these con-flicting figures seem to indicate.Indeed, vast changes have occurredin equine numbers over the pastcentury, with as many as six millionhorses and mules disappearing ina single decade, but those losseswere in response to the mechaniza-tion of farming and transportation(Table 1). (The lack of data from1960 to the present is regrettable.USDA surveys ceased to be an accu-

Introduction

175

rate assessment because they didnot take into account recreationalhorses, and the horse industry hasattempted only occasionally toundertake a national horse popula-tion assessment in the past thirty-six years.) However, it appears tobe fairly safe to conclude that the1950s marked the low point ofAmerican equine numbers, withhorses and mules largely phasedout of agricultural production andtransportation but not yet fillingsignificant recreational roles. Sincethen, the trend in equine numbershas been steadily upward.

The surveys’ purposes, designs,and sampling methodology accountfor the three divergent assessmentsof the American equine populationcited above and most likely for therelatively large shifts reportedlyoccurring within short intervals as well.

American Horse Council The AHC has surveyed the eco-nomic activity associated withhorses and horse uses ever ydecade since the mid-1980s. Thedata are collected primarily forpolitical purposes. By specifyingdollars-and-cents figures for a spe-cialized and relatively small recre-ational and business entity, theAHC, a lobbying organization, canbetter influence national and statelegislatures in matters affectinghorse breeders, owners, trainers,dealers, and recreational, sport-ing, and business users. The largerthe numbers shown, the moreimpact equestr ian interestsappear to have.

The AHC’s population figureswere shaped by the followingstudy characteristics, as ex-plained in the study’s technicalappendix (AHCF 2005):

• The commerce of horse involve-ment was the survey focus.Respondents in the ownergroup had to be at least eight-een years old and owner or part-owner of a horse(s). Data foryouth involvement and for non-owning equestrians may beunderreported or excluded.

• The survey posed questions interms of horses only. No input isexplicitly solicited for otherequidae, which include ponies,miniature horses, donkeys/bur-ros, and mules. It is not uncom-mon for recreational horse own-ers to maintain a mix of breedsand types, and if respondentsanswered the questions quiteliterally, the lesser but still sig-nificant population of poniesand asses is not included in the9.2 million figure. Finally, itappears that owners and pro-ducers specializing in minia-ture horses might have beenexcluded entirely.

• The survey sample was derivedfrom equestrian membershiplists and business databases.The 18,648 usable owner/indus-try supplier responses fromwhich the report data were sub-sequently derived (along withdifferent surveys of horse showand racing management) repre-sent a valid pool for studyingeconomic matters, but the sam-ple would have excluded ownerswho maintain horses with littleor no organizational contact orcommercial involvement. Horsepopulation figures and activityprofiles may have been skewedby this selection process.

• The primary response mecha-nism was through an Internetwebsite, with a small proportionof mailed questionnaires forthose without computer access.Again, the methodology selectedagainst owners outside main-stream culture, which would nothave much effect on an eco-nomic impact study but probablyunderrepresents “invisible” own-

176 The State of the Animals IV: 2007

Table 1U.S. Equine Population DuringMechanization of Agriculture and Transportation

Year Number of Horses and Mules

1900 21,531,635

1905 22,077,000

1910 24,042,882

1915 26,493,000

1920 25,199,552

1925 22,081,520

1930 18,885,856

1935 16,676,000

1940 13,931,531

1945 11,629,000

1950 7,604,000

1955 4,309,000

1960 3,089,000

Source: Adapted from Ensminger (1969).

ers in providing raw equine pop-ulation figures.

The AHC report’s very precisetally of U.S. horses in 2003—9,222,847—is actually the centerpoint of a statistically determinedrange defining a 95 percent confi-dence interval. According to thesecalculations, if the same methodol-ogy were applied a hundred times,ninety-five of the surveys wouldproduce a U.S. horse populationf i gu re som ewhere be t ween8,869,858 and 9,575,837. Giventhe methodology’s exclusion ofcertain types of horse owners andsome equine classes, the actualequine population seems likely tobe at the higher end of the rangeor possibly exceeding that 9.6 mil-lion (rounded) maximum figure.

U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA has kept tabs on agriculturalproduction through periodic cen-suses, starting in 1840. Every fiveyears, NASS attempts to survey allU.S. agricultural producers with ashorter form and chooses a sizablesampling of them for a more detailedassessment of agricultural practicesand expenses. For the most recentenumeration, approximately 2.8 mil-lion census packets were mailed inDecember 2002, and follow-up con-tacts continued until each countyhad at least a 75 percent responserate. Such blanket coverage assuresa very accurate count of most food-and fiber-producing units in thecountry, but horses and their kin arespecial case animals.

USDA’s equine population figuresare significantly limited by the pri-mary criterion for inclusion in theenumeration: censuses are sent toall agricultural operations that pro-duce or sell $1,000 or more of agri-cultural products annually or woulddo so in normal years. The largeblock of “backyard” owners whomaintain horses on a few acres ornonagricultural “farmettes” wouldnot be surveyed. It is also unclear ifsuburban boarding, training, and les-

son stables would be captured dur-ing the list-building process.

The most recent USDA enumera-tion lists 3.64 million horses andponies and 105,358 mules, burros,and donkeys in the “other animalproduction category,” along withthe likes of bison, goats, rabbits,and bees. Horse/pony numbers onincome-producing farms increasedby one million between 1992 and1997 and by another half-million by2002, a 78 percent increase overall.During the same decade, ass num-bers nearly doubled between 1992and 1997, rising from 67,692 to123,211, then fell back to 105,358in 2002. While the progression inhorse/pony numbers reflects thepopulation trend reported by otherobservers, the rather precipitousrise and retreat of ass numbers in asingle decade begs the question ofa sampling or reporting anomaly inone of the years.

Recognizing the shortcomings ofthe purely agricultural enumerationmodel for gathering equine data,USDA conducted additional surveysfollowing the 1997 census to esti-mate the number of all equidae inthe country and their sales, not justthose on qualifying agriculturalestablishments. By includingequine data estimated from enu-merations of sixteen thousand ran-domly selected square-mile areasacross the country and surveys oftwenty thousand larger farms andcommercial operations, along withthe basic findings from the standardcensus, NASS calculated the totalnumber of equidae at the start of1998 to be 5,250,400 and a yearlater to be 5,317,400 (USDA 1999).If that 1.3 percent annual increasecontinued until 2003, there wouldbe 5.6 million equidae by this sur-vey model, still millions shy of theAHC count for that year.

American VeterinaryMedical Association The professional association for U.S.veterinarians conducts animal own-ership surveys at half-decade inter-

vals and produces a demographicssourcebook to aid its members inmaking business and marketingdecisions. The data for these reportscome from a statistically representa-tive sample chosen from an estab-lished panel of U.S. households thathave agreed to participate in surveysof this nature (Clancy and Rowan2003). The most recent survey, per-formed in 2001, found 1.7 percentof responding households reportinghorse ownership, with an average of2.9 horses per owning household.Using data of this sort for the vari-ous species, the AVMA can offer pop-ulation-estimating formulas for vet-erinarians to use in calculatingpotential client pools in their com-munities. The AVMA’s equine for-mula is therefore: divide the com-munity population by 2.69 to getthe number of households, thenmultiply the number of householdsby 0.05. The national proportionof horses to households was deter-mined by this study.

Though it does provide a usefulbusiness tool, the AVMA’s enumer-ation method is too many stepsremoved from an actual hooves-on-the-ground count to generate reli-able population figures.

• The survey goal was to charac-terize ownership patterns, notperform a true count of petspecies in the United States.

• The survey focused on compan-ion/recreational owners andmay have underrepresented orexcluded horses used for breed-ing, work, and competition.

• The respondent pool was ini-tially skewed by the self-selectionof participants, then narrowedfurther by selecting a samplerepresentative of the entire U.S.population, not one representa-tive of U.S. horse owners. Horseownership is a phenomenonassociated with rural areas andsmaller communities whosepopulations may not have beensufficiently represented in theAVMA sample for accurateequine data collection.

177The Demographics of the U.S. Equine Population

Applying the AVMA formula tothe 2003 U.S. estimated humanpopulation produces an estimated5,297,938 companion/recreationalequidae. Extrapolating an “agricul-tural” equid population for 2003 by increasing USDA’s 2002 countano the r 1 . 3 pe rcen t y i e l d s3,798,381. Some overlap probablyoccurs between the AVMA and theUSDA respondent pools, but sam-pling procedures and criteria for in-clusion for each are quite distinct,producing data from two essentiallydiscrete groups of horse keepers.The total of these two estimatedpopulations is 9,096,319, very closeto AHC’s count of 9,222,847 for2003. The AHC’s broader-rangingsampling method appears to havecaptured both companion/recre-ational and production owners for the most accurate and com-plete numeric snapshot of today’sequid population.

Wild Horses and Burros None of the censuses cited aboveincludes equidae roaming on federallands or maintained in governmentholding facilities. This unownedpopulation originated from domesti-cated horses and burros whoescaped or were freed onto rangelands, starting in the sixteenth cen-tury with the first Spanish explorers.The Atlantic barrier islands, fromcoastal Maryland down through theGeorgia coast, have also harboredferal herds since the colonial era.Even under seemingly harsh condi-tions, these feral equidae reproducequite successfully, with modern-dayherds capable of doubling in sizeevery five years, given the absence ofnatural predators in most of today’sranges (BLM 2006). Until the 1960sfree-ranging horses and burros wereconsidered wildlife of sorts, fairgame for public taking for taming,selling for pet food or slaughter, orkilling to reduce grazing competi-tion for domestic stock.

Since passage of the Wild andFree-Roaming Horse and Burro Actof 1971 and its implementation in1973, the Department of the Inte-rior’s Bureau of Land Management(BLM) has been responsible foroverseeing herds on federal lands inten Western states (Arizona, Cali-fornia, Colorado, Idaho, Montana,Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah,and Wyoming). The agency ischarged with multipurpose manage-ment of vast federal holdings forrecreation, logging, mining, graz-ing, and wildlife management, inaddition to the equine oversight,and at the same time sustaining thehealth and productivity of publiclands (BLM 2006).

Wild horse and burro popula-tions are now held to populationlimits that will prevent overgrazingor other destruction of their rangelands while still leaving adequateherd numbers for a healthy genepool. Each management area hasan upper population limit deter-mined by available resources, andherds are subject to periodicculling to maintain optimum pop-ulations. Additionally, birth controlmeasures are now being applied towild horses to lower their repro-duction rates and reduce the num-ber of excess animals needingremoval. The BLM (2006) disposesof excess horses and burros fromfederal lands as follows:

• “adopting” them out to pri-vate citizens with restrictionsto assure adequate care andprevent their being sold to slaughter;

• maintaining them in holdingfacilities until adoption or inlong-range pasturage if theyare not adopted; and

• since December 2004 dispos-ing of the unadoptable popula-tion through unrestricted sale,meaning that buyers can dealwith the animals as they wouldafter a private transaction,although challenges were sub-sequently made to this man-agement change.

As of March 2006 the BLM(2006) population included:

• approximately thirty-two thou-sand horses and burros onpublic range lands, exceedingthe optimum total populationof twenty-eight thousand byfour thousand and

• twenty-six thousand in short-and long-term holding facilities.

In fiscal year 2005, ending in Sep-tember, 11,023 animals were re-moved from the Western ranges. Byearly 2006, 5,701 of them had beenadopted out, continuing the streamof 208,000 BLM horses and burrosthat have been placed with privateowners since 1973. The remainderleft in BLM holding facilities were tobe offered for adoption three timesbefore being deemed unadoptableand made available for unrestrictedsale. Until the December 2004 legis-lation, unadoptable horses werekept as government property for theremainder of their lives. The BLM’s2005 budget for the Wild Horse andBurro Program was $39.6 million,with $20.1 million used to maintaingathered animals in short- and long-term holding facilities. The legisla-tion allowing unrestricted sale wasintended to eliminate the expense oflifetime care for the unadoptables.

Where it has jurisdiction overnational seashores, the NationalPark Service (NPS) either removesferal horses there as non-nativespecies or attempts to maintainbarrier island horse populations atlevels that do not harm the ecologi-cal balance. On Assateague Island,for instance, the NPS now uses con-traceptive injections to reduce theMaryland herd’s reproduction rateto maintain a population of 150adults (Kirkpatrick 2005). On theVirginia portion of Assateague, theChincoteague Volunteer Fire Com-pany conducts an annual July “ponypenning” to cull that herd to thesame target number (NPS 2003).

Horse herds on barrier islands far-ther down the coast have met witha patchwork of population-controlmeasures as coastal development


has overrun their ranges, andawareness of their damage to thefragile barrier-island ecology hasgrown. Over the years some herdshave been removed entirely fromthe islands, others have been fencedaway from the new communitiesbuilt on their former ranges (withonly marginal success), and othersstill are managed by the NPS or pri-vate entities to maintain a viablepresence on their historic ranges(Hause 2006). If the various targetpopulations have been met andmaintained, the current horse pop-ulation on barrier islands along theAtlantic coast appears to numberaround a thousand, a far cry fromthe National Geographic Society’s1926 estimate of six thousand wildhorses roaming the Outer Banksjust from Currituck to Shackleford(Hause 2006).

Government agencies now man-age most unowned horses roamingfree on public lands. The BLM’s2005 fiscal year count of wild horsesin ten Western states was 27,369;the number of wild burros rangingin five of those states totaled 4,391(BLM 2005). With the East Coastbarrier horses added in, approxi-mately 33,000 free -roamingequidae are currently in the UnitedStates. Another 27,000 are living aswards of the state, so to speak, inholding facilities, for a total feral/once-feral population of 60,000.

“Invisible”PopulationsAs large as horses are, they do goundetected by government andassociation enumerators alike. Anuntold number of equidae live aspets or pensioners in places, suchas semisuburban smallholdings,not normally associated with live-stock keeping, and many urbancenters have an equestrian pres-ence, such as police horses, ridingstables, and carriage operators,that exists outside the norm. Otherequidae “hide” amid a menagerie

of critters on hobby farms or aswork animals on secluded proper-ties. Not all horse owners compete,register, join up, subscribe, or shopfor horsey things and thus revealtheir whereabouts for enumerators.If these “below the radar” animalsequal just 1 percent of the knownequine population of the country,that’s another hundred thousandadded to the true total.

Two more definable equine pop-ulations are most likely under-reported because they are legallyand/or culturally outside theAmerican mainstream.

Horses on IndianReservations These horses throughout thecountry actually live in sovereignlands and thus are not directlysubject to state or national regu-lation or oversight. Many Westerntribes maintain large numbers ofhorses for stock work on theirrange lands and also because ofdeep cultural and ceremonial sig-nificance attached to the species.For the 2002 agricultural census,which did survey reservations,NASS performed a special enu-meration of Native Americanfarms/ranches and merged thoseresults with full reservation datato produce “Appendix B,” detail-ing the agricultural characteris-t ics o f American Indian andEskimo farm operations.

According to NASS, Native Amer-icans on 12,174 properties produc-ing $1,000 or more in agriculturalgoods owned 115,464 horses in2002 (USDA 2002). Yet becausereservation horses are often han-dled as communal property ratherthan individually owned and be-cause large herds on Plains andWestern reservations are oftenmanaged as range animals, thatenumeration may be very approxi-mate. For instance, the NASS countgiven for horses on Indian-operatedranches in Washington State in2002 was 4,018, yet that statewidefigure is less than the 5,000 re-

ported by a newspaper writer in2004 for the Yakima Indian Reser-vation alone (Palmer 2004). ByBLM standards Washington Statehas no “wild” horses because theyare not on BLM-managed federallands, but the herds kept on thevast reservation acreages there andthroughout the West and the Plainsare certainly less clearly definedand probably more numerous thanthe NASS count suggests.

Amish Horses, Mules and Donkeys These are canvassed for NASS enu-merations, as long as they are onproperties that meet the $1,000-production standard. While themajority of the Amish in communi-ties now spread across twenty-fivestates do remain in agriculturalproduction to some degree, mem-bers are increasingly turning tocarpentry, manufacturing, andother nonfarm work for their liveli-hoods (Milicia 2004), thus remov-ing them from the NASS surveypool. With church tenants holdingthem separate from the “English”(non-Amish) world, Amish horseowners may not respond readily toagricultural censuses and are un-likely to have any presence at all inother forms of polling.

In lieu of reliable enumeration,the current number of Amishhorses and mules can be esti-mated by applying the horse-to-human ratio that existed in premo-torized America. In 1910, twoyears after the first Model T rolledon to the road s , t he re we re24,042,882 horses/mules and92,228,496 people for a 1:3.8ratio. Today’s Amish population,70 percent of which lives in Ohio,Pennsylvania, and Indiana, is esti-mated to number around 180,000and is rapidly growing (Milicia2004). If this statistical time travelhas validity, there are at least47,000 Amish horses and mules inthe United States.


How Many U.S.Horses Are There? Although current equine enumera-tions can be faulted for limitationsin their focus, methodology, andresults, their data, consideredcumulatively, point to the accuracyof the American Horse Council esti-mate. Projecting the AHCF horsepopulation figure for 2003 twoyears into the future (1.3 percentgrowth in ’04 and ’05 = 9,464,200),and adding overlooked ponies andasses (200,000), the country’s feralequidae (60,000) and the “invisi-ble” populations (200,000) producea figure of 9,924,000 for the 2006U.S. equine population.

The Future With institution of a National Ani-mal Identification System by 2010,all uncertainty should be removedfrom the equine-counting business.In the planning stages as of 2006,this USDA initiative will permittracking of all U.S. livestock fromfirst breath to last for the sake of dis-ease control and bioterrorism pro-tection. Each animal will be identi-fied through a standard codingsystem indicating place of origin,along with an individual identifier.Microchipping is the likely technol-ogy that will be applied to equidae,reporting all horses, ponies, andasses to a single database wherepopulation figures will be actualhooves-on-the-ground numbers, notstatistical extrapolations.

What Does the U.S.Equine Population Look Like?In a random encounter with a mem-ber of the equine species in theUnited States, this is the most likelysighting throughout much of thecountry: a riding horse, standingabout fifteen hands (sixty inchesmeasured at the shoulders), eitherfemale (a mare) or neutered male(a gelding)—but certainly not astallion—probably sorrel, tendingtoward a stocky build and ranging

in age between five and twenty. Therandom animal’s breeding, usuallydiscernible to experienced horse-people by its physical characteris-tics, or conformation, would mostlikely be quarter horse, the coun-try’s preponderant type by all meas-ures. The second most likely en-counter would be with a somewhatmore streamlined-looking horse ina “plain brown wrapper”—a sixteen-hand bay or dark brown Thorough-bred type, with perhaps a touch ofwhite on face and foot.

But in the United States, diversityrules the equine as well as the hu-man population, so that randomsighting might instead be of a four-foot-tall critter with a white andbrown coat, very long ears, a bray,not a neigh, and registration papersfrom an organization called theAmerican Council of Spotted Asses.Or the sighting could be of a large,high-headed black horse with feath-ery legs and flowing mane hitchedto a cart: a Friesian, one of many im-ported sorts increasingly broughtinto the country by horsepeopleseeking something more exoticthan the prevailing breeds for activ-ities outside the norm. The UnitedStates unquestionably has the mostvariegated collection of equidae onearth. The American Horse Coun-cil’s Horse Industry Directory listed106 registries for horses, ponies, orasses (AHC 2003). Some are multi-ples drawing registrations from thesame pool of animals, but an equalnumber of smaller organizationsprobably missed out on inclusion inthe directory.

Breed Registries Of the hundred or so U.S. registries,most record bloodlines to maintaina “pure” genetic pool by requiringthat newly registered animals be theoffspring of two parents who arealready in the studbook. The origi-nal purpose of recording livestockbloodlines and maintaining themgeneration after generation was togive breeders information with

which they could make mating deci-sions that would improve their ani-mals’ production and performance.Today DNA testing is required bythe more rigorous organizations toassure authenticity of parentage.The Thoroughbred studbook (TheJockey Club), started in England inthe early seventeenth century, is theoldest and most carefully main-tained of any, closely guarding thebloodlines and racing data of thebreed. Other studbooks are “open,”meaning that occasional outcross-ing is allowed with a few other spec-ified breeds. The quarter horse stud-book, for instance, has permittedmatings with Thoroughbreds, amongothers, particularly in producingracing stock. Crossbred registrieseither specify one type of matingpattern (for instance, Andalusian +quarter horse = Azteca horse, a reg-istrable “breed”) or register anytype of offspring from the specifiedpurebred parent (for example, thehalf-Arabian registry).

In addition to or in lieu of re-cording by bloodline, breeds arenow defined by other parameters.Almost a quarter of the registrieslisted in the AHC directory accepthorses on the basis of physical appear-ance, usually coloration, such aspalomino and buckskin, or markingpatterns, such as Appaloosas andpintos, but there’s even a registryfor curly-coated horses. Pony andminiature registries restrict entryby height as well as parentage.Gaited horses who move in a vari-ety of less common footfall patterns,with names like walker, paso, sin-glefooter, mangalarga, and foxtrot-ter, belong to a subset of registriesthat have increased in popularityalong with recreational horse usebecause they produce a bounce-free ride. Sports and activities, suchas flat and harness racing and per-formance/sport horses bred foreventing and jumping, are theorganizing principle for some ofthe oldest and some of the newestregistries. Finally, historically sig-nificant and geographically distinc-


tive horses get their own associa-tions, including Spanish mustangs,Icelandic horses, and a recreatedmedieval charger going under thename Spanish-Norman horse. Inthe modern proliferation of equineregistries, record-keeping moreoften has to do with membership

services and show-ring results thanwith actual breed improvement.

Registry TalliesTracking the tallies of annual regis-trations entered into the ninemajor U.S. registries is one way of

profiling the national equine popu-lation. Viewing registration trendsover time provides insights into thewaxing and waning of particularhorse types and equestrian inter-ests. In both 2006 and throughoutthe past decades, American Quar-ter Horse Association (AQHA) reg-


Table 2Annual New Registrations for the Nine Largest U.S. Horse Breed Registries

TennesseeQuarter Thorough- Standard- Walking Saddle-

Year Horse Paint bred Arabian Appaloosa bred Horse bred Morgan

1977 94,445 5,565 27,551 18,797 19,316 13,929 6,212 3,855 3,700

1983 168,346 14,626 43,787 18,391 22,184 20,298 7,561 2,787 5,317

1985 157,360 12,692 46,635 30,004 16,189 18,384 7,812 4,351 4,538

1988 128,352 14,929 45,256 24,578 12,317 17,393 8,400 3,811 3,526

1989 NA 14,930 44,250 21,723 10,746 16,896 8,850 3,708 3,732

1990* 115,000 15,000 40,333 13,000 10,000 15,000 8,000 3,700 3,400

1991 101,390 18,648 38,149 12,993 9,902 13,617 8,092 3,570 3,392

1992 102,843 22,396 35,050 12,544 10 033 13,029 8,123 3,048 2,408

1993 104,876 24,220 33,820 12,349 9,079 12,086 7,510 3,353 3,120

1994 106,017 27,549 32,117 12,962 10,104 12,204 7,856 3,192 3,038

1995 107,332 34,846 31,882 12,398 10,903 10,918 9,450 2,300 3,063

1996 108,604 41,491 32,242 11,645 10,067 11,589 10,991 2,142 3,053

1997 110,714 50,440 32,115 11,594 11,030 11,336 12,256 3,213 3,415

1998 125,308 55,356 32,944 11,320 9,100 10,881 13,250 2,952 3,100

1999 135,528 62,186 33,838 11,501 10,099 11,183 13,375 2,705 3,220

2000 145,936 62,511 34,719 9,660 10,906 11,281 14,387 2,908 3,654

2001 150,956 56,869 34,705 9,266 9,322 11,261 14,479 3,050 3,475

2002 156,199 60,000 32,941 9,394 9,092 11,699 14,865 2,931 3,976

2003 160,980 51,000 33,671 9,400 9,200 11,050 14,978 2,578 2,938

2004** 162,590 52,000 34,070 9,000 9,200 11,500 15,000 3,200 3,500

2005** 165,000 44,000 34,070 8,000 7,000 11,000 13,500 3,000 3,400

*Approximate, except for Thoroughbred.

**Registry estimates.

Sources: Thoroughbred registrations for the U.S. only: The Jockey Club (2006); other breeds, years 1992–2001: AHC (2003); remaining years: EQUUS (1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004).


istrations exceeded all others bytens of thousands (Tables 2 and 3).

The American Paint Horse Associ-ation (APHA), formed in 1965 toregister quarter horse types withmore white coat markings than arepermitted for AQHA registration, isnow the second-largest breed reg-istry. During the past fifteen years,registered quarter horses and paintscombined made up almost three-quarters of all registrations in thatnine-breed cohort. It is safe to saythat the multipurpose, American-made breed derived from bloodlinesthat excelled in sprint racing duringcolonial days (hence the “quartermile” designation), then seasonedas stock horses on the Westernranges represents the preferredusing type for today’s Americanowner. Quarter horses are just whatthe recreational market wants:medium in size, comparatively easy-going and low maintenance, andcapable of performing a variety ofactivities, particularly as the registryhas allowed outcrossing to createthe more streamlined physiquesfavored in the “English” disciplines(an equestrian style based on a flatsaddle that includes hunters,jumpers, dressage, and polo, and“saddleseat” style riding) to theoriginal, stockier cattle-horse type.

Breed Numbers Quarter horse/paint dominance isindisputable, but the diverse U.S.equine population cannot be char-acterized by registration numbersalone. Despite the opportunities to“paper” just about any variety ofequid, a portion of the population—probably a significant one—wasnever registered, or its registrationshave gotten lost with changes ofownership. Membership and regis-tration fees are expensive, and themajority of Americans are involvedin horse activities that don’t requireregistry/association affiliation, thuspapers are not a compelling needthroughout the horse-owning popu-lation. The AHC economic impact

study, supported largely by theThoroughbred and quarter horseassociations, characterized themakeup of the 2003 U.S. horse pop-ulation using only three broad pro-files: Thoroughbred, quarter horse,and “other,” which included otherregistered and nonregisteredhorses. The survey respondentsreported ownership for 2003 in thefollowing proportions (AHC 2005):

• Thoroughbred—14 percent, or 1,291,807

• Quarter horse—35.6 percent,or 3,288,302

• Other horses—50.3 percent,or 4,642,739

Identical 50–50 proportions forthe combined Thoroughbred-quarterhorse cohort and the other-horsegroup were also found by the onlyscientific survey yet done of the U.S.horse population and its manage-

ment, conducted in 1998 for theUSDA’s National Animal Health Mon-itoring System (NAHMS) (USDA1998). However, the 1998 sample ofowners, selected from twenty-eightstates accounting for 78 percent ofthe national equine population enu-merated by NASS for 1992, reportedan even greater concentration ofquarter horses—40 percent—thanthe more recent AHC study. TheNAHMS survey included all equidaefound on U.S. properties and de-tailed the “other horses” that werelumped together in the AHC study.Table 4 shows the NAHMS-deter-mined composition of the U.S.equine population by type and breedas percentages of the total and ascurrent head counts, based on a2005 population of ten million.

Comparison of Tables 3 and 4shows little agreement between

Table 3Fifteen-Year Total Registrations for Nine Major U.S. Registries, 1991–2005

Association Percentage of Registry Total Nine-Breed Total

American QuarterHorse Association 2,844,273 59.6

American PaintHorse Association 663,512 13.9

The Jockey Club(Thoroughbreds) 506,333 10.6

U.S. Trotting Association(Standardbreds) 174,634 3.7

Tenn. Walking Horse Breeders’and Exhibitors’ Association 178,112 3.7

Arabian Horse Registry of America 164,026 3.4

Appaloosa Horse Club 145,037 3.0

American Morgan Horse Association 48,752 1.0

American SaddlebredHorse Association 44,142 0.9

Total 4,768,821

Source: Calculations from Table 2.

the population percentages in thetwo lists, but they diverge moststrikingly for quarter horses andpaints. The NAHMS quarter horsepercentage derived from ownerdata was 20 percentage pointslower than the registry’s share ofthe nine-breed total; for paints thefarm count was 5.4 percent, whilethe registry proportion equaled13.4. Only the Standardbred wasclose to the same percentage onboth lists, while the remainingspecified breeds were a little to alot higher on the farm than theregistry numbers would indicate.

One explanation for this dispar-ity is the methodologies. Registries

attempt to keep an exact count ofeach year’s new entries; theNAHMS percentages derived froma sample consisting of fewer thanthree thousand respondents takenfrom little more than half thestates. Yet a more significant rea-son for the differences is probablytiming. Since the 1998 survey wasconducted, AQHA and APHA haveexperienced strong growth, whilemost of the remaining registrieshave nudged upward very little,remained steady, or declined.

The three windows onto U.S.breed numbers seem impossiblycontradictory when actual popula-tion figures are compared. Taken at

face value, the breed populationsproduced by NAHMS percentagesand the two breed counts specifiedin the AHC study cannot be recon-ciled with reality. Even if every sin-gle quarter horse and Thorough-bred registered in the past fifteenyears were alive today, there wouldstill have to be an additional643,577 surviving older registeredquarter horses and another394,327 aged Thoroughbreds tofulfill the NAHMS percentage allot-ments. The overages are flippedusing AHC calculations: 444,000for quarter horses and 785,400 forThoroughbreds. All of the otherbreed counts derived from NAHMSpercentages exceed the cumulativeregistry figures as well.

Horses do not really have to beimmortal to make these numberswork. The more realistic explana-tion for the breed population infla-tion reflected in survey results isrecreational horse owners’ disre-gard for the formal paperingprocess. When questioned, as theywere on both surveys, about howmany of each breed they own, theyusually respond with the animals’known or suspected origins, notstrictly with their registration sta-tus. Given this tendency to reportby type, not registry affiliation, theU.S. horse population probably hasa much greater proportion ofunregistered horses than the 9 per-cent designated “other, not regis-tered” in the NAHMS results. Thatparticular group probably includesprimarily horses, often called“grade,” who are of unknown ori-gin and no discernible type. Allothers are probably enumerated inwhatever standard breed categorythey most closely resemble.

Special Populations The NAHMS study was uncom-monly inclusive and provides a use-ful glimpse of less visible equidaefound on U.S. equestrian proper-ties. The nonhorse group, includ-ing ponies, miniature horses, andasses, represented little over 10


Table 4U.S. Breed Distribution UsingPercentages Determined byUSDA/National Animal HealthMonitoring System, 1998*

Percentage ApproximateType/Breed of Population Population

Donkeys/burros 2.7 270,000

Mules 2.0 200,000

Miniature horses 1.6 160,000

Ponies 5.4 540,000

Horses 88.3 8,830,000

Quarter horse 39.5 3,487,850

Thoroughbred 10.2 900,600

Other, registered 9.1 803,530

Other, not registered 9.0 794,700

Arabian 7.8 688,740

Appaloosa 5.9 520,970

Paint 5.4 476,820

Draft 4.8 423,840

Tenn. Walking Horse 4.8 423,840

Standardbred 3.5 309,050

*Based on a current total equine population of ten million.

Source: USDA (1998)

percent of the equine populationon the surveyed properties in1998. Miniature horses, which con-stituted the smallest fraction at1.6 percent, are clearly the growthgroup in this niche. Between 1992and 2001, the American MiniatureHorse Association recorded 83,361new registrations, with the trajec-tory being upward throughout thedecade (AHC 2003). Even thoughthey were the smallest populationrecorded by NAHMS in 1998,annual registrations of these petequidae now exceed those for Ara-bians, Appaloosas, saddlebreds,and Morgans.

Age Characteristics Equidae are quite long-lived com-pared to livestock and small-petspecies. They commonly live intotheir twenties, even into their fortiesand beyond. According to the Guin-ness Book of World Records, the old-est documented horse was sixty-two,the oldest pony, fifty-five (EquineWorld Records 2006). Health-careadvances and ownership attitudeshave combined to extend the aver-age life span of recreational/com-panion equidae. In a 2000 specialreport on the aged equine popula-tion, EQUUS magazine reportedthat, according to their registries,52 percent of Arabians and 57 per-cent of Morgans were over fifteenyears of age, compared to 30 per-cent of quarter horses, 25 percent ofsaddlebreds, and 15 percent of painthorses and Standardbreds (EQUUS2000). In general, breeds register-ing an increasing number of animalsin the last five to ten years wouldhave a younger population thanwould those with declining registra-tions in the most recent decade.

The Standardbred youthfulnessdoes not reflect recent breed growth,however. Instead, it is the conse-quence of the relatively short pro-ductive life of racehorses. Standard-breds tend to race longer thanThoroughbreds, but even then a trot-ter or pacer still competing at agetwelve is considered an old-timer.

Unless the retired Standardbred isused for breeding—not an optionfor geldings—he or she must be con-verted to pleasure or carriage use ordisposed of. As riding animals,retired Thoroughbred runnersmay have more opportunitiesfor second careers as performers inother sports or as recreational ani-mals, but temperamentally theyare not always suitable for pleasuremounts.

The NAHMS survey excluded race-track populations from its analysisof age patterns in 1998. At that timethe survey group fell into the follow-ing age ranges (USDA 1998):

• 58.8 percent were f ive totwenty years of age, thehorse’s average working life;

• 23 percent were eighteenmonths to five years, thematuring and training period;

• 8.9 percent were six to eight-een months, horse adoles-cence, so to speak;

• 7.8 percent were twenty ormore years old, generally re-tirement time;

• 1.3 percent were under sixmonths, the period foals arenormally at their mothers’side; and

• 0.5 percent were of unknown age.When applied to a current

equine population of ten million,these percentages would producethe following age profile:

• 8,180,000 of training andusing age;

• 1,020,000 under using age; and• 780,000 over age twenty and

likely in retirement.The different equid types in the

1998 sample had some quite dis-tinctive age patterns. Horses, mak-ing up nearly 90 percent of the sam-ple, were right on the norm in allage groups. Ponies were the mostaged, with twice the percentage(15.2) of over-twenties and half thepercentage (0.6) of sucklings intheir numbers, though they wereclose to the average in the five-to-twenty age group. Mules also lackedan up-and-coming population, with

only 13.8 percent under age five,compared to the 33.2 percent ofthe total sample and an exception-ally high percentage—81.7—in thefive-to-twenty group and only 4.3percent over age twenty. Miniaturehorses and donkeys were well out-side the age norms in the oppositedirection (though the small samplesizes leave room for larger standarderrors): nearly half of each groupwas in the eighteen-month to five-year group, and they exceeded thenorms for the two younger groupsas well; their percentages in theover-20 group were markedly lessthan the norm (2.7 for minis; 0.9for donkeys).

Today’s equine age profile nodoubt follows the same basic bellcurve, but the percentages are likelyto have undergone some adjust-ments. Except for quarter horsesand paints, production in the largerAmerican breeds has been prettyflat or in decline for the past decadeor longer. That would indicate anoverall aging of the population. Yetthe loss of business in establishedbreeds may simply mean that Amer-ican tastes/interests have splinteredoff in many new directions, wheresmaller breeds registering a fewhundred horses annually and impor-tation of “exotics” from other coun-tries are taking up the productionslack. Another possibility in theslowing of established registries isan increase in “backyard” cross-breeding. Pleasure owners have apropensity to grow one or two oftheir own from a favorite companionmare. The motive usually has moreto do with sentiment than produc-ing to a breed standard, and regis-trations would not be sought acrossthe board.

The FutureAs of mid-2006, NAHMS was in theprocess of preparing to publish a2005 version of its horse manage-ment and health survey. It will beinteresting to see how the currentfrom-the-farm population profilesdiffer from the 1998 findings in


light of changing production pat-terns of registered stock duringthe intervening years, shifts inminor populations, particularly ofminiature horses, and the aging—or not—of U.S. equidae.

Where Do U.S.Horses Live?Ranking states by the numbers ofhorses residing within their bound-aries is the usual way of examiningequine population patterns andtheir significance. Both the AHC’snational economic impact studyand numerous state-generated eco-nomic valuations use raw horsenumbers as primary data on whichall other calculations are based. Itmakes sense that the more horseswho are maintained within a state,the more economic activity willtake place around them. Reckonedby head count only (AHCF 2005),the top ten horsiest places in thecountry are

1. Texas 978,822 horses2. California 698,3453. Florida 500,1244. Oklahoma 326,1345. Kentucky 320,1736. Ohio 306,8987. Missouri 281,2558. North Carolina 256,2699. Pennsylvania 255,763

10. Colorado 255,503The USDA’s equine-specific census

of 1998 and 1999 arrived at a ratherdifferent state ranking based on itspopulation estimates (USDA 1999).None of the state figures below is inany way comparable to the AHC’snumbers (see the earlier discussionconcerning methodologies):

1. Texas 600,0002. California 240,0003. Tennessee 190,0004. Florida 170,000 4. Pennsylvania 170,000 4. Oklahoma 170,0005. Ohio 160,0006. Minnesota 155,000 6. New York 155,000 6. Washington 155,000

The NAHMS study, anotherUSDA effort but concerned not so much with enumeration as with surveying horse manage-ment practices for health-monitor-ing purposes, reported 1998 pop-u lat ion patterns by region (USDA 1998):

• Ten southern states, includingTexas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, accounted for40 percent of the surveyedequine population.

• Seven Western states, includ-ing California and Colorado,accounted for 26 percent.

• Seven North-Central states,including Missouri, accountedfor 20 percent.

• Four Northeastern states, includ-ing Ohio and Pennsylvania,accounted for 13 percent.

Any useful assessment of loca-tion’s effects on the lives horseslead has to take into account morethan raw population numbers. Thevery largest states in terms of landarea are going to hold more horsesthan the medium to small states,but are horses also a large pres-ence to the human population inthe very large state and of littlesignificance in the small state?The state tallies by themselvesdon’t say. A more meaningfulapproach is to add two more fac-tors to the analysis: how manyhorses and how many people areon how much land? Viewedthrough this multifocal lens, theU.S. horse population looks quitedifferent (Table 5).

The top ten horsiest states interms of number of horses persquare mile of land area are

1. Maryland 15.6 per squaremile of land

2. New Jersey 11.23. Connecticut 10.74. Florida 9.35. Kentucky 8.06. Ohio 7.57. Virginia 6.08. Indiana 5.78. Pennsylvania 5.7 9. North Carolina 5.3

Someone driving through Mary-land would be twice as likely toencounter horses as would some-one traveling through Kentucky,and New Jersey and Connecticutresidents live with readier geo-graphical access to horses than doresidents of Texas and California.

The human-to-horse ratio definesthe states’ horsiness in yet anotherway. The ten locales with thefewest number of people for everyhorse are

1. Wyoming 5.1 peopleper horse

2. South Dakota 6.43. Montana 7.14. Idaho 8.85. North Dakota 10.76. Oklahoma 10.87. Nebraska 11.68. New Mexico 12.9 8. Kentucky 12.99. Iowa 14.8

Residents in these ten states arefar more likely to have direct con-tact with horses than are people inmore populous areas. Kentucky isthe anomaly in the listing for notbeing a wide-open-spaces Plainsor Western state. Human-to-horseratio is better proof than the headcount alone that a state is truly ahorsey area. In all the other low-ratio states, both the human andequine populations are sparse.Even then, the two species knock-ing around in an expansive landarea have closer associations thando tiny Rhode Island’s 308 peoplefor every one horse.

New England, home of less than 2 percent of the national horse population is, far and away, the least horsey area in the forty-eightcontiguous states. Expanding theregion to coincide with the U.S.Census Bureau’s Northeast designa-tion by including much horsier NewYork and Pennsylvania and the little-bit-horsier New Jersey improves thehorse presence to 8 percent of thenational total. At the same time,this region contains 19 percent ofthe human population (USCB2000) and includes the nation’s



Table 5State Horse Population Characteristics

Horse Horses/ Number of People/Population* Square Mile Horse***

United States 9,222,847 2.7** 31.8Northeast

Maine 37,854 1.2 34.8Massachusetts 37,529 4.8 171.0Rhode Island 3,509 3.4 308.0Vermont 24,540 2.7 25.3New Hampshire 14,681 1.6 88.5Connecticut 51,968 10.7 67.4New York 201,906 4.3 95.2New Jersey 82,982 11.2 104.8Pennsylvania 255,763 5.7 48.5

Southern RegionDelaware 11,083 5.7 74.9Maryland 152,930 15.6 36.3West Virginia 89,880 3.7 20.2Virginia 239,102 6.0 31.2North Carolina 256,269 5.3 33.3South Carolina 94,773 3.1 44.3Georgia 179,512 3.1 49.2Florida 500,124 9.3 34.8Kentucky 320,173 8.0 12.9Tennessee 206,668 5.0 28.6Alabama 148,152 2.9 30.6Mississippi 113,063 2.4 25.7Louisiana 164,305 3.8 27.5Texas 978,822 3.7 23.0Arkansas 168,014 3.2 16.4Oklahoma 326,134 4.7 10.8

Midwest RegionOhio 306,898 7.5 37.3Michigan 234,477 4.1 43.1Indiana 202,986 5.7 30.7Illinois 192,524 3.5 66.0Wisconsin 178,636 3.3 30.8Minnesota 182,229 2.3 28.0Missouri 281,255 4.1 20.5North Dakota 59,391 0.9 10.7South Dakota 120,878 1.6 6.4Iowa 199,220 3.6 14.8Nebraska 150,891 2.0 11.6Kansas 178,651 2.2 15.3

Western RegionNew Mexico 147,181 1.2 12.9Arizona 177,124 1.6 32.4Nevada 51,619 0.5 42.1Colorado 255,503 2.5 18.0Utah 120,183 1.5 19.9Idaho 158,458 1.9 8.8Montana 129,997 0.9 7.1Wyoming 99,257 1.0 5.1California 698,345 4.5 51.4Oregon 167,928 1.7 21.4Washington 249,964 3.8 24.8Alaska 11,449 0.0**** 57.2Hawaii 8,037 1.3 157.0

*AHCF (2005). **Land area for forty-eight contiguous states.***USCB (2004).****Fewer than 0.1 percent

four most densely populated states:New Jersey, at 1,134.4 people persquare mile; Rhode Island with1,003.2; Massachusetts with 809.8;and Connecticut with 702.9. NewYork is sixth and Pennsylvania tenthin population density. The conclu-sion seems unavoidable: a reversecorrelation exists between an area’shuman population density and itsequine population density. Thecause, too, seems obvious: morehuman inhabitants per square milemean less physical space for keep-ing large animals and for theservices, such as hay production,needed to sustain them. In addition,higher population density translatesto higher living costs, making horsehobbies less affordable.

As general principles, those con-clusions are true, but reality doesnot fall tidily into the either-peo-ple-or-horses dichotomy. Maine, forinstance, has the largest land areaof all the New England states andis, in fact, almost the same size asSouth Carolina, with less than athird of that state’s population.Even with plenty of room for lots ofhorses, this northernmost statehas only 1.2 horses per square mileand just one for every 35 people, a lower than middling placementin the national ratio rankings. New Hampshire also has the physi-cal space for horses, but its per-square-mile horse population isalmost as low as Maine’s, and thehuman-horse ratio, at 88.5:1, isone of the country’s highest. Yetneighboring Vermont, sharingmany of New Hampshire’s charac-teristics except for its spilloverpopulation from Boston, is a muchhorsier place, still below thenational average with only 2.7horses per square mile but with a better human-horse ratio. Thesmall state of Connecticut and verysmall state of New Jersey break the many humans/fewer horsesrule in the opposite direction by fitting proportionately largehorse populations into very subur-banized landscapes.

Culture and Climate Physical space in a state or regionis a major equine population deter-miner, but human demand decidesthe density rate. Maine, with itssmallholdings of poor agriculturalland and New England rectitude,has a comparatively short historywith horses as work animals and asrecreational presences. Its climatedoes not invite year-round horseenjoyment or make horse keepingan easy, inexpensive venture. Main-ers would apparently rather be sail-ing or snowshoeing than horsebackriding. Vermont’s distinction as thebirthplace of the Morgan breed andcontinued home of its registryprobably contributes to that state’sgreater equestrian involvement.Marylanders have no demographicreasons for their higher-than-aver-age horse interest. They live in themost densely populated state out-side the Northeast, ranking fifth inthe country, with 541.9 people persquare mile. With less than a thirdthe land area of Maine, Marylandhas four times its horse populationand the nation’s highest horse den-sity. The small state’s more congen-ial climate and better soil are fac-tors, but its historical associationswith horse sports back to the colo-nial era have encouraged commer-cial horse production and profes-sional operations, and well-paidworkers in two major metropolitanareas have the disposable incometo spend on horse enjoyment.

A warm climate apparently hasgreater appeal to horse ownersoverall than do large incomes.Horses themselves adapt quite wellto cold climates and are probablyhealthier in the north, wherethere’s less opportunity for bitinginsects to spread several seriousequine diseases and where heat-associated conditions, infections,and skin disorders are less com-mon. But horses cluster where peo-ple want to use/enjoy them, prima-rily in outdoor activities, and the

greatest concentration of the U.S.equine population—41 percent—isin the Southern region (AHCF2005), where only 36 percent ofthe U.S. population lives (USCB2000). In twelve of the sixteenSouthern states, the median house-hold income in 1999 was a little—or a lot—lower than the nationalmedian (USCB 2000). Along withits warmth, the Southern region ishistorically horse country from itslong and, in some areas, continuingdependence on live horsepower inagricultural and ranch work and itshorse-sport-and-socializing legacy.

The eleven Pacific Coast andMountain states in the Westernregion and the twelve states in theMidwest region (as defined byUSCB, not by the NAHMS study) areclosely matched in horse numbers,with 25 and 26 percent, respectively,as well as human population, with22 and 23 percent, respectively. Inthe northern tier of states, weathermay put a damper on horse enjoy-ment, but both regions offer bound-less space for equestrian activities,and horses have always been anessential element in Western andMidwestern work and culture. In thestates in these two regions with thelowest human-horse ratios, themedian household incomes in 1999were also below the national average(USCB 2000). As long as an area haslots of open space, horses are notthe luxury items that they are oftenperceived to be. In fact, a state’smedian income appears to be a poorpredictor of horsiness, given the factthat New Jersey, Connecticut, Mass-achusetts, and New Hampshire hadamong the highest median house-hold incomes in the country in 1999(USCB 2000) and only a small frac-tion of its horses.

Breeds by Region Regional breed differences re-ported in the NAHMS study (USDA1998) reflect the use patterns andequestrian preferences character-istic of each area:

• Quarter horses were the domi-nant breed everywhere exceptthe Northeast, where they rep-resented 24 percent of thepopulation, 16 percent lessthan the norm. If the surveyhad not included Ohio in thisregion, the proportion wouldhave been even less.

• Draft breeds made up only 1and 2 percent of the popula-tions in the Southern andWestern regions, respectively,but accounted for 11 percentin the Northeast and 12 per-cent in the Central region.

• Standardbreds had a negligiblepresence in the West (0.9 per-cent) and the South (2.1 per-cent), but approached 10 per-cent in the Northeast and 6percent in the Central region.The inclusion of Ohio as a North-eastern state has distorted theresults, as the Standardbred reg-istry is located in Columbus, andthe breed has more of a follow-ing in the Midwest.

• Thoroughbreds comprisedmore of the Southern horsepopulation than elsewhere(14.2 percent) and had thesmallest presence in the Cen-tral states (4.3 percent).

• As could be expected, Ten-nessee Walking Horses werefound in greatest concentrationin the Southern region (8.2 per-cent of the population there),but their second strongestshowing was in the Northeast,accounting for 4.3 percent ofthat area’s population.

• Arabians made up about 10percent of the horse popula-tion in the Northeast, Western,and Central regions, but only4.5 percent in the South.

• Appaloosas were consistentthroughout, ranging from 5to 7 percent.

• Paints had their greatest concen-tration in the Northeast, at 8.8percent, while they accountedfor around 5 percent of the restof the regions.


• As for the nonhorse populations,there were fewer ponies butmore miniature horses in theSouthern region than therewere elsewhere in the country.Mules had the smallest presencein the Northeast and the largestin the West, and donkeys/burrosmade up 4 percent of Southernequidae but only 1.4 percent ofthe Western population.

Wild horses and the “invisible”populations are particularly tied to their locales. Table 6 shows thetop locations for BLM, reservation,and Amish horses, with populationfigures where available. In their geographical niches, they are pro-tected from mainstream assimila-tion and influence.

Where Do U.S.Horses Originate?Despite economic- and tax-relatedslumps—and downright slides insome of the major breed registra-tions starting about twenty yearsago—the U.S. horse population hasexpanded steadily overall since themid-twentieth century. As some bigbubbles burst, particularly for Ara-bians and Appaloosas, and as race-horse production reversed, particu-larly for Standardbreds (Table 2),the small and medium breeds justkept on registering babies at theusual rate and sometimes at a littlebetter than that. There was stillthat host of recreational ownersand its every-now-and-then produc-tion pattern. The U.S. market hashad plenty of horses to go aroundsince the 1960s. Of that number,importation from other countriesaccounts for only a tiny fraction.

In the past decade, only 19,541live horses classified as purebredbreeding animals, divided aboutequally between mares and stal-lions, have come into the country(USDA 2006a). (The remaining300,000 or so live horses importedduring that same period appear tohave been brought into the country

to go directly to slaughter, al-though the “nonpurebred” divisioncould include performance horsesnot intended for breeding [USDA2006a; FAO 2006].) Instead ofshopping elsewhere, the nation’shorsemen grow their own, compar-atively few of them on massivefarms or ranches producing some-times more than a hundred foalsannually, many more on moderate-size operations with a dozen or twobroodmares, and, as discussed ear-lier, a great many on hobby proper-ties producing occasional foals forpersonal satisfaction.

AmateurInvolvement Size factors into the high level ofamateur involvement in U.S. horseproduction. In European countriesbreeding is generally left to the pro-fessionals, often with a nationalstandard and performance evalua-tion to ensure a quality product forspecific uses. In the United States,the national tendency toward inde-pendence/self-reliance, combinedwith plenty of rural and semiruralland, allows practically anyone withthe urge to do so to become a horsebreeder. Perusal of reader profilesfor four of the country’s largest gen-eral interest, all-breeds horse publi-cations supports that assertion:

• 39 percent o f EQUUS ’ s149,647 subscribers own oneor more broodmares (Equi-Search.com 2006).

• Almost half of Horse & Rider’s169,077 subscribers reportowning at least one broodmare(EquiSearch.com 2006).

• One-quarter of PracticalHorseman’s 78,224 readersown one or more broodmares(EquiSearch.com 2006).

• One-quarter of Western Horse-man’s 181,764 horse-owningreaders uses horses for breed-ing, whether professionally oras a hobby not specified (West-ern Horseman 2006).

CommercialProducers The AHC Economic Impact Studyexamined breeding in only the rac-ing and showing sectors, and thenonly for its financial implications. Ofthe country’s approximately eighthundred fifty thousand Thorough-breds in the racing industry, abouthalf were in training/competitionand the other half in the breedingsector, including mature producers,their immature offspring, and maresand stallions returning from thetrack to become breeding stock. Inshow horse production, the divisionbetween competitors and breederswas not at all even: more than twomillion were competing, while athird that many were producing newshow stock (AHCF 2005). Horsesbred to race have a much shortercompetitive life than do most showand competition horses, so produc-tion turnaround has to be quicker tokeep up a stream of starter horses.Speed over short distances is notenhanced by age, so successful run-ners are usually at their peak beforeage five. In other competitive disci-plines requiring schooling in behav-iors more “sophisticated” than all-out running, age four or five isoften the earliest starting point inshow careers.

The NAHMS horse managementstudy assessed the prevalence ofprofessional or semiprofessionalhorse breeders among all equineoperations, but the percentage maywell have changed in the interven-ing years. Of all sectors of the horseindustry, larger-scale breeders notbacked by financial reserves fromother sources are most susceptibleto economic downturns and finan-cial setbacks. Breeders’ productiondecisions take place at least twoyears, and usually longer, beforesales can bring in enough cash tocover production costs. Equine ges-tation lasts eleven months, and thefoal is usually four to six months oldat weaning. Occasional weanlingsales are made, but in the racehorse


world, yearlings are the first mar-ketable commodity. In recreationalsales buyers generally look for a lit-tle or a lot of training put into ananimal who can perform satisfacto-rily in the desired activity. Trainingdoes not begin until the youngsteris at least two years of age, andbasic to intermediate training forsome disciplines can take years. Ifthe market shrinks in the interimbetween the mating and the age atwhich the offspring can be sold, the“product” continues to need expen-sive feed, shelter, and care withoutmuch prospect for recouping theexpenses, let alone making enoughto cover capital expenses. Evenwhen production is cut back orstopped in response to current mar-ket pressures, the foals conceivedjust before the decision will still beborn and still need raising. Duringthe shutdown, maintenance or dis-posal of the production “machin-ery”—mares and stallions valuablefor their pedigrees, and often foremotional reasons as well—poses afurther difficulty for strapped breed-ers. When financial times and thehorse market improve, productionis equally slow to rebound. Horsereproduction, maturation, andtraining to usefulness take no lessthan three years, and there is noway around the resulting lag time

in the response to both oversupplyand undersupply. In the former sit-uation, the horses are likely to becaught in the squeeze when theycannot be sold, and bills for theircare continue to mount.

ProductionTrends At the time of the NAHMS survey,almost ten years ago, horse produc-tion was beginning to regain somemomentum after the 1980s bust,which resulted from a combinationof unfavorable tax changes, reces-sion in the oil industry and the U.S.economy, and deflation of hypedmarkets for some fancy show stock(Kilby 1989). The survey identified5.2 percent of the sampled opera-tions with breeding as their primaryfunction, the second-smallest sec-tor after boarding/training stables(USDA 1998). At the same time,the horses on these operationsmade up 14.8 percent of the total,for a higher-than-average per-farmcount. As an indicator of U.S. breed-ing activity, the age profile for U.S.equidae produced by NAHMS raisessome questions when examined inlight of breed registry figures. Usingeight million as a generous esti-mated national equine population

for 1998, the under-six-monthsgroup (1.3 percent of the total)would include 104,000 foals on theground during the polling. Yet thetotal new registrations (264,211)recorded by just nine registries forthat year was more than 2.5 timesthe number suggested by theNAHMS results.

One explanation for the disparityin foal production figures is the sur-vey procedure, which gathered datathrough phone interviews betweenMarch 16 and April 10, 1998. Al-though many commercial breedersaim to produce foals in the firstquarter of the year for competitiveadvantage in juvenile races andfuturity competitions, May is thepeak month for U.S. horse births,which then trail off in June and con-tinue at a low rate into early fall.But even doubling the percentageas compensation still does not addup to the registration indicators ofbreeding activity in this country.Taking the major breeds’ 1998 totaland adding a conservative hundredthousand more for small-breed reg-istrations and the unregisteredfoals produced in 1998 indicates a4.6 percent reproduction rate forthat year. When applied to the 2003population (9.2 million), that ratewould indicate a foal crop of423,200. The known registrations


Table 6Primary Locations of Three Special Equine Populations and Population Numbers, Where Available

Bureau of Land Management Amish HorsesHorses Burros Reservation Horses (top county)

Nevada 13,251 Arizona 1,542 Oklahoma 17,826 Ohio (Holmes)

Wyoming 3,991 Nevada 1,464 Arizona 15,598 Indiana (LaGrange)

California 3,079 California 1,228 South Dakota 10,695 Pennsylvania (Lancaster)

Oregon 2,670 Utah 142 Montana 8,230 Maryland (St. Mary’s)

Utah 2,420 Oregon 15 Texas 6,938 Communities in20+/- other states

Sources: BLM (2005); USDA (2002); Milicia (2004).

with the nine major breeds was265,795, leaving a remainder of157,405, which would have to beaccounted for through unregisteredoffspring and those entered intosmaller studbooks. That remaindermay be an inflated version of theproduction reality for the year, but,clearly, the U.S. foal crop has beencloser to 4 percent annually than to1.3 percent of the total population.

The gender makeup on NAHMS-surveyed equine operations for1998 (Table 7) shows some inter-esting differences among the sev-eral populations and again raisesquestions about its portrayal ofU.S. horse-reproduction activity.

First, the questions. If 10.6 per-cent of the surveyed populationwere pregnant mares (754,720 of an estimated horse population of7.12 million that year), the outcomewould be a virtual population ex-plosion that year. The live foal rate in bred domesticated mares is not100 percent by any means, but it isno longer the dismal 50 percentposited in the prereproductive tech-nology era (Loch and Massey 2006),so there is no way that many preg-nant mares could have produced thelikely number of foals born, startingwith the 264,000 registered in thenine breeds. That late in their gesta-tions, more than 755,000 pregnant

mares would be expected to have at least 650,000 foals running attheir sides by season’s end, which, of course, they did not. Two explana-tions could account for the sur-vey’s divergence from reality: eitherrespondents cited the number ofmares on their operations consid-ered to be breeding stock but not allof them were pregnant at that time,or the sample of respondents over-represented the active breeding sec-tor in the country as a whole. Tenpercent of the U.S. horse populationmay be thought of as broodmares,but they are not cranking out foalsevery year.

Other than that unlikely percent-age of pregnant mares, the moststriking feature in the NAHMS gen-der profile is the reproductive impli-cations for miniature horses. Thefact that more than one-quarter ofthe males remain intact into breed-ing age is mirrored in the high per-centage of pregnant females, a ratethat, in this special population, pre-sumably could be true, especiallycoupled with the upward trend inannual registrations cited earlier.Horse and even pony stallions, withtheir large size and testosterone-driven behaviors, can range from dif-ficult to dangerous to handle andmanage, requiring special housingand separate turnout in most domes-

ticated situations. Apparently minis,weighing much the same as theirhandlers and standing considerablyshorter, do not inspire the sameurgency to eliminate the hormone-driven behavior with castration.

Interesting, too, is the above nor-mal number of entire asses (jacks)in the gender profile but without acorresponding rise in pregnant jen-nies (female asses). It may well bethat donkeys/burros are maintainedas one-of-a-kinds on most horseproperties, whereas miniatures livein pairs or herds. Both of these smallpopulations of small animals are thepurest examples of what can be cat-egorized as “pet” equidae, with littleuse as typically defined. Theirdiminutive size reduces the dan-ger/difficulty of maintaining themales intact, saves on castrationcosts, and results in especially cuteand not very expensive mini babies.The reproductive picture of thesepet horses begins to resemble thatof pet dogs and cats.

ReproductionTechnologies The physical risks and managementdifficulties of dealing with the malehalf of the reproductive effort haspretty much disappeared through-


Table 7Gender Makeup of a Sample Equine Population, Eighteen Months of Age and Older, 1998

Males FemalesIntact Castrated Not Pregnant Pregnant

(Stallions) (Geldings)

Horses 7.4 40.4 39.7 10.6

Ponies 7.1 30.4 48.7 12.5

Miniature horses 27.0 26.8 24.7 14.5

Donkeys/burros 17.8 28.0 44.6 8.5

Note: Remaining percentages in each category “unknown.”

Source: USDA (1998).

out the equine industry. Horsebreeders still produce foals the old-fashioned way by what is called “livecover” (during which both animalsare typically under human restraintduring the mating to lessen the riskof injury), and some remain evenmore old-fashioned and “pasturebreed,” running a band of ten or somares with a stallion and lettingnature take its course. These twomore or less natural methodologiesusually result in higher conceptionrates, but there are more risks ofinjury—kicks, bites, falls, internaltears—to the animals in the processthan some owners care to take. Forsafety’s sake, many breeders collectsemen from stallions and inject it inthe mares even when the two mat-ing animals are on the same prop-erty. But the real incentives forhorse breeders’ interest in manipu-lated matings is in widening breed-ing choices that previously werelimited by geography and extendingreproductive possibilities once lim-ited by biology.

Today any mare owner anywherewho has sufficient funds, a capableveterinarian, and moderate dis-tance to an airport can breed to thebest (though stallion owners caninsist on a certain quality of mare)by using cooled, live transportedsemen or, with somewhat less suc-cess, thawed frozen semen. Embryotransplantation into surrogatedams allows competition mares toproduce a foal or more each yearwithout having to miss any showsor allows good mares with faulty/damaged organs to reproduce.Finally, the births in 2006 of thefirst commercially cloned horsestake equine reproduction to thepoint where owners can produceexactly the individual they want bymaking an identical genetic copyof an existing horse.

Regardless of the technology, thegoal has been to make a better—oreven perfect—racehorse, showhorse, polo pony, draft horse, orminiature. Like unplanned mat-ings, planned matings inevitably

produce some “worse” along withthe “betters,” creating a popula-tion of reject animals and spurringanother try for the next “better” ifnot “perfect” horse. The accessibil-ity of modern reproductive technol-ogy in U.S. horse breeding, not tomention the expense and manage-ment demands on owners whochoose to use it, would seem to bestrong influences in reducing thewastage of “unwanted” horses pro-duced in this country. If everyequine pregnancy is planned sopainstakingly and paid for so dearly,each offspring would be all themore valuable than the foals mass-produced each year from mediocrestock in hopes that there will be astandout or two in each crop.

Currently, all breed registries,except for The Jockey Club forThoroughbreds, allow some formof reproductive manipulation in thematings of their registered stock, ifonly the use of artificial insemina-tion involving a mare and stallionon the same property. Most stud-books accept foals produced by anyof the modern means up to cloning,which is too recent and too uncom-mon for rule book action. After all,the more foals registered, the bet-ter for the association. DNA testscan now assure the parentage offoals no matter how the egg was fer-tilized or whose uterus nourishedthe foal. That’s the fundamentalconcern of all bloodline registries.

How Are U.S.Horses Managed?When horses manage themselvesin free-range situations, theirmaintenance plan is simple:

• Drink at least five gallons offresh, unpolluted water daily,more when sweating.

• Take a lick or two of salt everyonce in a while to sustain min-eral levels.

• Graze sufficient forage to keepa light layer of fat over the ribsand backbone.

• Do all this in the company ofa half-dozen or so congenialherd mates.

• Roam over topography suffi-ciently varied and vegetated toprovide protection and comfortzones throughout the seasons.

The open-air wanderings holdcontagion and parasitism at bay,while all the unshod footworkkeeps the hooves in trim, and theendless grazing of coarse roughagewears continuously erupting teethevenly for trouble-free nipping andgrinding. It’s a simple, healthyplan not often available in domesti-cation due to lack of space, con-flicting work schedules for thehorses, and owners’ fear of injuryand blemishing.

Horses across the country can befound living entirely antitheticalexistences—tethered without suste-nance amid junk and clutter; shutaway perpetually in dark barns;swaddled in blankets inside opulent,heated stables; striving all day inharness, then standing in narrow tiestalls. But these are the extremes inan equine population that usuallygets at least a taste of the naturalway for part of each day. TheNAHMS survey found 85 percent ofits sample population living undertheir owners’ care either at nonagri-cultural residences or on farms/ranches involved in other agricul-tural pursuits. Northeastern horseowners were 12 percent less likelythan other regions’ owners to residewith their horses on farms/ranches,producing related bumps in the per-centage of horses at residences andboarding/training stables in theregion. Horses in the Central regionwere the least likely to be undercommercial care, and Westernhorses were the least likely to be atbreeding farms. Overall, the distri-bution of U.S. horses according totheir residences looked like Table 8in 1998.

The agricultural bent of this sur-vey’s sampling technique, plus theescalation of suburban ownershipin more recent years, probably


means that a greater proportion ofU.S. horses is kept in commercialboarding establishments today. Therespondents in this survey may alsohave been more experienced inhorse management than were thefull gamut of owners, as only 9 per-cent of the reporting operationswere newer than three years old,and the largest group had ownedhorses for twenty years or longer.

Keeping in mind, then, that theNAHMS management findingsprobably are not as suburbanized asthey should be and do not repre-sent the naive, negligent, and unen-lightened sector of ownership, thehorse’s natural maintenance planin U.S. domestication has beenadjusted as follows (USDA 1998):

• Water for horses on at least 60percent of operations came outof wells, except for those in theSouthern region, where surfacewater (streams and ponds) wasused more frequently than it wasin other areas of the country.

• Along with essentially universalsalt-block availability, close to 40percent of horses receive supple-mental vitamin-mineral mixes.

• Feed is generally provided, asopposed to expecting the ani-mals to maintain themselves byforaging alone. In fact, pas-turage is more often thoughtof as exercise space than as asource of nourishment. On 87

percent of operations that fedhay at least three months of theyear, the preferred variety wasgrass hay but by only narrowmargins over alfalfa, a protein-rich legume, and a grass-alfalfamix. Nutritionally, grass haymatches the horse’s digestiveneeds most closely. Hay is usu-ally distributed twice daily, if notmore frequently, or continually,matching the natural plan mostclosely. Minus the physical effortneeded in ranging to find thefood, domesticated horses tendto overindulge and be over-weight. The feeding of grain,particularly in winter, also iscommonplace in U.S. horsekeeping plans, but with no realparallel in the natural model,other than occasional snacks on the mature seed heads ofgrassy plants. These concen-trated energy sources, primarilydoled out from commercialbagged rations formulated tonutritional standards for differ-ent classes of horses, may benecessary to fuel hardworkinghorses. At least as often and forrecreational owners particu-larly, the addition of grain ismore of a bonding mechanismthan it is a nutritional necessity.Only 5.6 of operations reportedfeeding no grain, while 7.6 percent of the large majority

fed concentrates specially for-mulated for ease of chewing and better digestibility for geri-atric horses.

• Socialization, a very importantaspect of herd-living equidae,was guaranteed on at least halfof the reporting operations andprobably to some degree on themajority where three to twentyor more horses lived and thusoffered ample intraspeciesawareness, if not direct con-tact. Management on morethan a third of operations diddivide up the acreage intosmaller lots specifically to per-mit segregation of differentgroups of residents, but evenvisual contact satisfies theequine need for company.Almost half of the noncommer-cial respondents reported keep-ing just one or two equidae ontheir residential or farm proper-ties. In these small populations,horses at least paired are oftenmore content than horses keptsolo, but socialization outsidetheir own species, includingwith owners, can make up forlone horses’ isolation.

• The freedom to range and theresponsibility to seek one’s owncomforts were not year-roundoptions for many U.S. horses.Instead, their cut of the exerciseareas (number of acres dividedby the number of animals graz-ing/roaming there equals thestocking rate) on operations inall of the regions equaled about1.25 acres. In most areas of thecountry, they were confinedinside buildings for some part oftheir days as protection againstthe weather, more so in someareas than others. DuringNortheastern winters, 40 per-cent of operations kept theiranimals confined more thanhalf the time, and another 40percent stabled them fairlyoften but less than half thetime. In contrast, Westernhorses got the most freedom


Table 8U.S. Horse Residence Patterns, 1998

Percentage Number of Resident of Equine Equines Per

Location Population Location

Residence with equidae for personal use 55.0 5 or fewer

Farm or ranch 31.0 5 or fewer

Breeding farm 5.2 6–19

Boarding/training stable 3.9 6–19

Sources: NAHMS (1998).

year-round, rarely or never beingconfined in summer in 86 per-cent of management situationsand remaining unstabled duringwinter in 76 percent of the oper-ations. Central and Southernhorses were about midway be-tween the two regional ex-tremes in their confinementpatterns—unconfined in sum-mer on about 60 percent ofoperations, with only a 5 per-cent increase in confinementduring winter.

• Management practices on com-mercial operations reflectedawareness of the health impli-cations of unnatural confine-ment of a large population ofequidae in relatively smallareas. Residential and farmowners with just one or two ani-mals did the least to protecttheir animals against infectiousdiseases through vaccinationsand potentially serious effectsof parasitism through routinedeworming. Less than half ofthat group’s caretakers had atleast one animal vaccinated inthe previous year, while 90 per-cent of operations with morethan twenty residents had metthe same criterion. Dewormingwas performed more universally(86.7 of all operations), mostlikely because owners can per-form the treatment themselvesat small expense. Fecal testingfound that 83 percent of thesampled horse populationswere shedding only a low levelof parasite eggs or none at all,suggesting the managementprograms were effective. TheWestern region, where confine-ment was lowest, also had thelowest levels detected of para-site eggs. Dental care for horses(primarily periodic filing, or“floating,” of teeth to removesharp protrusions and level thegrinding surfaces) was soughtby only 44 percent of the totalsample, and most of that wasin the performance, racing, and

breeding sectors. Hoof care,one of the major sources ofequine lameness and disability,was not surveyed.

How Are U.S.Horses Used? Horses and their kin are thechamps of multitasking among allthe domesticated animals. Theyare partners in work, partners inplay, professional athletes, ama-teur athletes, beauty contestants,cultural icons, beasts of burden,marathon runners, service ani-mals, baby makers, boon compan-ions, basic transportation, school-masters, financial investments,animated lawn ornaments, andmore. The AHC economic impactstudy boils their many roles downto four categories, folding breed-ing animals into the activity forwhich they’re producing, and cal-culates their financial contributionto the gross domestic product. Itadds up to billions nationally.Tables 9, 10, and 11 show the divi-sion of all U.S. horses and those inselected states by their uses.

The numbers given were nothead counts but were calculatedstatistically, with extrapolation dueto poor response to the show man-agement survey, which may haveproduced some data flukes notreflected in the tables in stateswhere quarter horses do not rule.

In imputation of state show activ-ity, for example, Alaska received a0.7 in the statistical weightingschema, while Maryland showactivity rated a 0.5; Maryland mayhave fewer quarter horse shows,but it certainly does not have lessoverall show activity than Alaska.

The NAHMS survey identified sixprimary uses for horses in its sam-ple, making breeding a separateactivity as well as farm/ranchwork, which AHC included in“other.” The respondents wereasked to identify the primary useof the horses on their property,but the specific count of animalsin the varous “occupations” wasnot solicited.

With most pleasure respondentskeeping five or fewer animals andthe commercial operations gener-ally maintaining larger populations(Table 8), U.S. horses are notnearly so removed from competi-tion and commerce as the percent-ages might indicate at first glance(Table 12).

Even so, the AHCF and NAHMSsurveys again seem to be reportingon two different horse worlds.And, in fact, that was true to adegree. The economic impactstudy follows the money (and pos-sibly accentuates/inflates it, too)in the horse world; the NAHMSsurvey studied the minutia ofhorses’ everyday worlds, focusingnot on show rings and racing ovals


Table 9National Equine Use Patterns, 2003

Use Percentage of Total Number of Horses

Recreation 42 3,906,923

Showing/Competition 29 2,718,954

Other 19 1,752,439

Racing 9 844,531

Total 9,222,847

Source: AHCF (2005).

but on barns and f ields. TheNAHMS vision sees the world themajority of U.S. horses inhabit—out of the limelight and out onthe trails or out to pasture.

Recreational HorsesOne woman’s recreational horse isin the trailer and on the go to atrail ride here, an overnight camp-ing adventure there, and a specialtraining clinic way out there, weekin and week out. Another woman’srecreational horse is one of a halfdozen at her home, and she mightget a saddle on and ride over to theneighbor’s place a couple of timesa month, if she is lucky enough tosqueeze in some time for it. Withhorses, recreation can be justabout anything you please, fromprimping and pampering to rough-ing it in the outback; from a zen-

like search for the perfect circle orhalf pass (a lateral movement indressage) to the discovery of innerpeace as a volunteer in a therapeu-tic-riding program. The joinershave plenty of equestrian organiza-tions, local to national, to addsome socializing to the picture.The reclusive types can ride off intothe sunset on solitary trails. That isa major appeal of horse involve-ment—something for everyone.And for a surprising number, thesomething is tending to theirhorses at least twice daily, forkingmanure and heaving hay bales; wor-rying over ailments, injuries, andfeeds bills 365 days of the year; andhaving little time left over to actu-ally use the animals. They do thisyear after year, and, when askedwhat they do with their horses, theanswer is “just for pleasure.”

Horses in the recreational/pleas-ure category may do everythingthe pros do, though rarely so welland usually not quite so seriously.They may be kept in top workingtrim and put on as many miles ashuman commuters being traileredto various events or riding venues.The NAHMS study reported thatthe second most common reasonfor trailering horses was attendingshows/competitions (21 percent),with transportation to work beingthe first, and though practically allcommercial operations had trans-ported at least one horse duringthe previous year, 46 percent of thepurely pleasure group had done soas well, the greatest portion ofwhich was for recreation (USDA1998). That was almost ten yearsago; the rate of trailering by recre-ational owners has increased


Table 10Horse Involvement by Activity in Selected States, by Region

State Racing Showing Recreation Other Total

New York 23,216 60,746 89,223 28,721 201,906

New Jersey 7,271 27,061 39,581 9,070 82,982

Maryland 41,805 29,032 47,337 34,756 152,930

Florida 134,406 158,641 160,696 46,381 500,124

Kentucky 58,755 88,176 100,185 73,057 320,173

Louisiana 20,815 59,669 58,793 25,027 164,305

Texas 104,836 310,988 340,383 222,615 978,822

Oklahoma 22,225 118,513 113,776 71,620 326,134

Ohio 33,477 98,660 119,102 55,659 306,898

Indiana 14,339 61,024 105,695 21,929 202,986

Missouri 9,742 65,345 145,674 60,461 281,255

New Mexico 10,076 36,746 63,955 36,405 147,181

Colorado 10,113 76,979 106,624 61,787 255,503

California 82,236 191,945 315,261 108,903 698,345

Source: AHCF (2005), state breakouts.

steadily since, as they avail them-selves of public trails, educationalclinics, and riding vacations alongwith showing. Recreational horsesin the United States are often thecenter of a nonstop lifestyle.

On the other hand, recreationalhorses may do nothing at all exceptbe the object of someone’s deepestaffections, naive neglect, or irra-tional cruelty. Not a single criterionexists for being a recreational/pleasure horse in the United States.Any breed, age, size, capability, orappearance that catches a potentialbuyer’s interest or appears tomatch the requirements for thedreamed-of activity, and the buyeris a recreational horseperson afterhundreds—or hundreds of thou-sands—of dollars change hands.Horses do not need to be welltrained or sound of limb, wind, oreven mind for a recreational matchto be made with a willing owner.

Too often the first-time buyer, par-ticularly, sees the kind eye but notthe puffy ankle and slight limp thatgo with it, or the golden palominocoat but not the head-flinging re-sponse to a hand approaching thelovely face. Perhaps he sees theretired harness racer’s “snap” thatwill take the carriage down the roadwith style but not the trench wornalong the paddock fence, indicativeof a compulsive pacing that willmake the horse a hard animal tokeep weight on and/or live with in general. Worst of all, a well-mean-ing parent may think a young,untrained horse will make an ideal mount for a young, inexperi-enced child so “they can grow upand learn together.”

Somehow, a lot of rank begin-ners and their inappropriate horsesmake it through the steep learningcurve of first-time ownership, anda lifetime hobby/need is estab-lished. Of the nearly two millionhorse owners in this country (chil-dren under eighteen were notincluded in the survey), as calcu-lated by the AHCF study, 83 per-cent were over thirty, with the


Table 11Percentage of Selected States’ 2003 Horse Populations, by Primary Use*

State Recreation Showing Other Racing

Northeast

New York 44 30 14 11

New Jersey 48 33 11 9

South

Maryland 31 19 23 27

Florida 32 32 9 16

Kentucky 31 28 23 18

Louisiana 36 36 15 13

Texas 35 32 23 11

Oklahoma 35 36 22 7

Midwest

Ohio 39 32 18 11

Indiana 52 30 11 7

Missouri 52 23 21 3

West

New Mexico 43 25 25 7

Colorado 42 30 24 4

California 45 27 16 12

*Calculated from Table 9.Note: Rounding responsible for over/underages in percent totals.

Table 12Primary Use of U.S. Horses, 1998Primary Use of Percentage of Resident Horses Surveyed Operations

Pleasure 66.0

Farm/ranch 15.2

Showing/competition 6.5

Breeding 6.0

Other 3.6

Racing 1.9


largest block (41 percent) betweenthe ages of forty-five and fifty-nine(AHCF 2005). The elastic bound-aries of recreational horsemanshiphave room for even truly elderlypeople if they wish to go there. It’sthe place for older horses, too. Therecreational sector takes in past-their-prime pros from racing andupper-level sports and recyclestheir talents to compete at lowerlevels of the same sport or retrainsthem for other activities.

Recreational riders and theirhorses make up the broad base ofOlympic sports, such as dressage,eventing, and reining, taking onprogressively more difficult tests

and courses as they improve. Fewrise to the international level, butequestrian sports such as thesethat are physically and mentallychallenging and based on a longworking relationship with onehorse appeal to many in the recre-ational world. The past twentyyears have seen large increases inmost equestrian activities, butsports that test brains—training,skill, and strategy—not just beautyhave seen some of the steepestrises (Table 13).

Show Horses Every horse is potentially a showhorse if whoever happens to use

the animal pays the fees to entera competition, even if it is only anegg-and-spoon race with twelve-year-old competitors. On any givenweekend, spring through fall, andmaybe throughout the winter, too, hundreds of thousands ofhorses and their handlers/riders/drivers are going round and roundin dusty rings, being judged, get-ting pinned or shown the gate.Others are testing their limits onchallenging cross-country jump-ing courses or in polo arenas; cutting cattle, roping calves, rac-ing cloverleaf patterns aroundthree barrels; or having their en-durance tested in all-day judged


Table 13Selected Competitive-Sport Association Memberships over Two Decades

1985 1995 2005

U.S. Equestrian Federation* 45,238 62,000 87,050(multidiscipline oversight)

U.S. Pony Clubs 8,999 13,000 11,800(youth horsemanship education)

American Driving Society 850 2,500 3,016(international discipline)

U.S. Trotting Association 55,075 35,196 24,650(harness racing)

U.S. Dressage Federation 18,543 40,000 33,044(international discipline—English)

U.S. Eventing Association** 8,346 10,900 13,800(international discipline—English)

National Cutting Horse Assoc. 14,363 11,500 16,000(competitive cattle work)

National Reining Horse Association 2,050 7,000 13,000(international discipline—Western)

American Endurance Ride Conference 2,000 5,050 6,570(international discipline—100-mile contests)

Total 155,463 178,146 208,930

* Formerly American Horse Shows Association.**Formerly U.S. Combined Training Association.

Note: Members of all international disciplines who compete in their sports must also be members of the USEF; therefore, yearly totals include duplicate counts for those sports.

Sources: EQUUS (1995); EQUUS (2006).

trail rides. The AHC 2003 direc-tory listed forty horse associationand event organizers that spon-sored more than 10,500 competi-tions attracting in excess of tenmillion class entries.

Not all of these organizations pro-vided their counts (AHC 2003). Andcountless tiny shows are put on byriding stables as a goal/reward forthe students or to bring in outsideparticipants and make some moneyfrom entry fees. Many organizationsmount elaborate multiday showseach year, with income that some-times goes to charities. Most sport-specific groups and larger breedregistries/associations encourageparticipation and ownership bysanctioning restricted shows; re-cording results; and creating pointsystems, futurities, jackpots, andthe like to heighten competitionand motivate continued participa-tion, often culminating in days-longnational championship events.

The cost for a local riding-schoolshow might hit $50 a day; the big-time competitors can spend tens ofthousands for a show season, andthat’s not counting the horse. Tra-ditionally, showing in the Englishdisciplines has been done for thesole tangible reward of a ribbon,if o n e w a s l u c k y e n o u g h t oget pinned, and the pride in one’ssuperior horsemanship. Westerncompetitions and some jumpingevents sweeten the pot with cashwinnings, usually derived from futu-rity money collected from breedersearly in their prospective competi-tors’ lives, then two or three years’worth is paid out in big bucks tothe top finishers in the event. TheAQHA, a huge corporate operationsponsoring, among other things,2,500-plus approved shows andevents annually attracting close toten thousand entries, oversees thecollection, investment, and dis-bursement of an incentive fund,based on points earned during rec-ognized competitions. Between1986 and 2003 the fund distrib-uted $43,690,096.14, and many

millions more are currently in-vested for the 2006–2011 funds(AQHA 2004).

Only a small fraction of U.S.horses are full-time show horses,but they, in particular, are at riskbecause of all that cash. The outlayof huge sums of money to partici-pate and/or the prospect of win-ning immense payoffs puts a must-win cast on a competitionoriginally intended to improve thebreed through comparative evalua-tion. As showing was conceived,the stallion who got the blue rib-bon or whose offspring won the tro-phies had more mares brought tohim, and the quality of the stockimproved to everyone’s benefit.But competition for cash andacclaim rarely improves humannature, and the horses involvedcan bear the brunt. In the 1990s,for instance, hunter-jumper train-ers were killing horses for insur-ance money (Chronicle of the Horse1998), and for decades, despitelaws specifically banning the prac-tice, Tennessee Walking Horses’trainers have “sored” the horses’forefeet and legs to cause them tomove in an extreme fashion thatwins the big prize.

Shows can have a wider-reachingnegative effect on all horses pro-duced for a particular competitivestyle even if they don’t ever enter ashow ring. Judging standards orig-inated to define the ideal type forthat breed’s conformation and wayof moving, all based on a particularjob the horse would be expected tocarry out in real life. Yet as the blueribbon, rather than the functionalperformance, came to be the ulti-mate concern, breeders producewhat judges will pin, and whenjudges select for extremes, such asthe Tennessee Walking Horse’sexaggerated “big lick” gait, thequarter horse’s bulging musclesatop trim, tiny feet, or the Ara-bian’s wild-eyed “animation,” thenonfunctional or antifunctionalwinning characteristics spreadthrough the breed. Drugs, devices,

and abusive training techniquesare used when the characteristic,such as the “big lick” and the quar-ter horse’s automaton-like show-ring movement, proved impossibleto develop through genetics.

Racehorses Although six registries conductsome sort of racing program fortheir breeds, Thoroughbreds, Stan-dardbreds, and Quarter Horses arehistorically the pari-mutuel con-tenders. Appaloosas, Paints, andArabians do most of their runningat small venues, such as county fairsin the West. Internationally and inthis country, Thoroughbreds, origi-nating four hundred years ago inEngland, are the prestige runners,whose Triple Crown races—at theleast, the Kentucky Derby—mostAmericans would recognize. Har-ness racing (Standardbreds were sonamed because they had to trot orpace to a certain time standard tobe entered into the registry regard-less of their parentage) grew out ofthis country’s democratic, agricul-tural heritage, which continuesstrongest in the Midwest, and Quar-ter Horse racing, though originallycontested on East Coast mainstreets in Colonial times, evolved inthe West with cowboys pitting theirstock horses against each other insprint races.

When men and their horsesgather, it seems, racing is inevitable.Betting is, too, and throughout thetwentieth century, horseracing wasthe one legal outlet for the bettingurge, at least in states that allowedpari-mutuel meets. Until the 1980s,horseracing was the most popularsport of all in terms of attendance.Only at the end of the century didstate governments begin permittingother forms of legalized gamblingand, by then, too, broadcasting wasoffering a ceaseless parade of faster-moving spectator sports for every-man’s entertainment. Racing hasbeen in decline for about twentyyears. Since 1990 Thoroughbredraces run annually in North America


(approximately 90 percent of themin the United States; 10 percent inCanada) declined steadily, from79,971 to 57,495 in 2005, and thenumber of North American Thor-oughbreds starting in races thosesame years went from 89,716 to72,780 (The Jockey Club 2006).Steeplechasing, in which Thorough-breds race over jumps on longercross-country courses, has actuallyenjoyed some growth during thissame period, probably because ofthe festival-like ambiance cultivatedin the country settings. The thirty-nine steeplechase events run intwelve states in 2006, during prima-rily spring and fall seasons, paidout a total of $4.5 million in purses(NSA 2006). Quarter Horse racing,mostly run in the West, has also suf-fered substantial declines in racesand starters since 1990, but therecent trend is somewhat upward(AQHA 2004). Harness racing hasbeen in free fall for years, as wit-nessed by the deep membershipdrop in the U.S. Trotting Association(USTA), the Standardbred registryto which breeders, owners, trainersand drivers must belong (Table 13).

The horses of the racing world areexceptional athletes when bred well,trained intelligently, and managedcarefully. They are also subjectto stress-related illnesses, such asulcers, from their unnaturallifestyle, and to stress injuries whennot well trained or if there’s a mis-step during the all-out gallop. Theprime years for a runner are agesthree to five. Most stallions with out-standing race records in their three-year-old campaigns are retired tostud immediately afterward. Insur-ing such animals against a fatal orlife-threatening injury, such as thatsuffered by Kentucky Derby winnerBarbaro during the 2006 PreaknessStakes (Bloodhorse.com 2006), isextremely expensive and the loss ofbreeding income from such anoccurrence makes the risk too greatto bear. The everyday runners whofill the lower-level “claiming” and“allowance” categories of races

week after week just keep on goingfor as long as they bring in an occa-sional check. After that, they mayrecycle into the recreational or showworld. With fewer races beingoffered, U.S. Thoroughbreds ran, onaverage, only 6.5 races in 2005 (TheJockey Club 2006). Racing appearsto be nearing its finish line, at leastas the prestige sport of the eques-trian world.

What Becomes of U.S. Horses? U.S. horses are as mobile as thecountry’s human population. Aswith the majority of people, horsesrarely grow up and die where theywere born or even in their home-town. Unlike much of the pet pop-ulation, which moves into humanhomes at weaning t ime andremains with the same peoplethroughout the rest of their lives,horses tend to go through a seriesof owners. The serial ownership ofhorses occurs not just becausethey are produced and dealt in asvaluable commodities. Once theyget into the equestrian pipeline,multiple factors cause them tomove from owner to owner:

• The animals’ size and manage-ment requirements restrictwhere they can l ive. Eventhough a great many horse-people do arrange the rest oftheir lives around the keepingof horses, not all owners cantake the animals along whenthey must relocate.

• As owners’ interests change,horses are traded in for newmodels or dispersed when thehobby/business is abandoned.This happens commonly withyouth involvement, indulged bynonparticipating parents forthe interest span or depend-ency of the child, then dissolvedupon college attendance orindependent living.

• Personal or financial pressuresforce owners to give up some

or all of their horses againsttheir wishes.

• The animals become physicallyincapacitated and no longer fit for the intended purpose, or they are too unruly or dan-gerous for the current ownersto handle.

• Their special caretaking needsbecome a burden, particularlywith the aged or those withchronic health conditions.

The NAHMS survey gathereddata on the comings and goings ofthe resident populations of com-mercial, work/ranch, and recre-ational establishments studied andfound that in the previous year, just13.4 percent of the animals perma-nently left those operations (USDA1998). Table 14 ranks the destina-tions of the departed animals bypercentage of the surveyed popula-tion and converts the percentagesto head counts based on a currentnational population of 10 million.Table 15 does the same for the rea-sons the respondents gave for dis-persing the animals.

In the years since the study wasdone, dispersal patterns have prob-ably remained consistent. Eco-nomic forces have not been suffi-ciently negative to cause owners toliquidate or trim their herds forfinancial reasons. The most likelychange in these percentages wouldbe an increase in the number ofhorses sold privately for businessprofit to accommodate the rise inregistered foal production since1997. Assuming the study resultsare a true reflection of the largerworld, today’s horses change own-ership, aside from commercialtransactions, almost four timesmore frequently because of owners’personal problems or, considerablyless significantly, for financial rea-sons, than because of the horses’shortcomings. That only 10 per-cent of horses changed ownershipbecause of temperamental difficul-ties, physical problems, and old agecombined must mean either thatthe country’s equine population is


just about perfect or the country’sowners are pretty willing to stickwith their horses for worse as wellas better. The latter is the likelierexplanation, given the volume ofequine business attended to in uni-versity veterinary clinics in 2005.As reported to Veterinary MedicalDatabases (VMDB), a central data-base for clinical data contributedvoluntarily by the nation’s 27 vet-erinary schools, 16,441 horses re-ceived diagnosis/treatment at sixinstitutions in 2005 (D. Folks-Huber, personal communication,March 24, 2006). If the visitationrate applied across all schools, thatwould be 75,600 equine medicalvisits for generally expensive and/or more heroic healthcare meas-ures than most horses ever require.

Horses who are sold in this coun-try have had three possible destina-tions:

• new residences, the majorityin noncommercial operations,

• slaughter in three U.S. plants(which were closed in 2007) forhuman consumption overseas;

• export to other countries,some as performance or breed-ing stock, but the majorityfor slaughter either in Canadaor Mexico.

Reports from USDA, the over-sight agency for both animalimports/exports and slaughter in-spection, indicate that approxi-mately 10,000 purebred breedinganimals are exported each year, buta much greater number—approxi-mately 1 percent of the U.S. equinepopulation in recent years—leavesthe country intended for humanconsumption. In 2004, 111,500horses met this fate, 60 percentexported as horse meat and therest live to neighboring countriesfor slaughter there (Table 16).

Without reliable national equinepopulation counts through previ-ous decades, it is difficult to deter-mine earlier slaughter percentageswith any accuracy, but it is safe toassume that a much greater per-centage of U.S. horses was sold to


Table 14Destination of Permanently RemovedEquidae on Surveyed Operations, by Percentage and Equivalent Countin Today’s National Population*

Destination Percentage 2006 Number

1. Sold to private party 55.0 737,000

2. Moved to another facility 17.5 234,500

3. Sold at public auction 13.3 178,220

4. Removed for other reasons 9.7 129,980

5. Given away to private party 2.5 33,500

6. Donated to charity/research 1.1 14,740

7. Sent direct to slaughter/ 0.8 10,720slaughter buyer

8. Stolen 0.1 1,340

*Based on 13.4 percent permanently relocated in ten million population.


Table 15Reasons for Permanent Removal ofEquidae from Resident Operations,by Percentage and Equivalent Countin Today’s National Population*

Reasons Percentage 2006 Number

1. Business profit 52.0 696,800

2. Situation change (e.g., owner, children moved, owner illness) 34.9 467,660

3. Temperament problem 4.5 60,300

4. Aged 3.3 44,220

5. Too expensive to keep 2.6 34,840

6. Lameness/injury 1.2 16,080

7. Problem with horse not otherwise listed 0.9 12,060

8. Reproduction problem 0.6 8,040

*Based on 13.4 percent permanently relocated in ten million population.


slaughter for human consumptionat the end of the 1980s and early1990s than is the case in the cur-rent decade. That was a peakperiod in exports of metric ton-nage of horse meat (1 metric tonequals 2,205 pounds, and horsesaverage 400 pounds of dressedmeat , meaning 1 MT equa l sapproximately 5.5 live horses) andfor live nonpurebred animals aswell (Table 16).

Following the reduction ofslaughter capability in this countrythrough the closing of plants in Tex-as and Illinois, live shipments forslaughter, presumably all to Mex-ico and Canada (ocean-going ship-ment for slaughter horses isbanned and air freight for live ani-mals would be prohibitively expen-sive) have increased. Yet export num-bers had been quite variable as of2006 throughout the previous thirtyyears, reaching the lowest count of

10,284 head in 1984, with a portionof them exported as breeding andperformance stock, after 66,886live horses had been exported justthree years before (USDA 2006a;FAO 2006). In the first quarter of2006, almost 1,300 live slaughter-bound horses entered Mexico fromNew Mexico and Texas (USDA2006b), projecting a total of 5,200by year’s end. Canada, with fourhorse-slaughtering plants, wasexpected to process at least fivetimes that number of U.S. animalsimported live (Dudley 2006),though previous years’ total exportswould indicate well more than25,000 U.S. horses are processedin that country (USDA 2006a;FAO 2006).

The bulk of the U.S. horsesremaining within the country areold, by equine standards, when theydie. The NAHMS study found thatthe death rate of horses resident on

the surveyed operations duringthree twelve-month periods was 2to 2.5 percent. Adding some statis-tical wiggle room with a “confi-dence interval,” the study deter-mined that in any given year, 1.5 to3 percent of American horses dieeither of natural causes or euthana-sia in the following order of likeli-hood (USDA 1998):

• age twenty or or older, • between birth and 6 months, • between five and twenty years

of age, • between six months and five

years of age. As with the human population,

the very old and the very young aremost at risk for fatal health condi-tions. Foal deaths mostly wentunexplained at the earliest stages,with a host of genetic and perinatalcomplications that could provefatal. During the suckling stage,however, respiratory conditions


Table 16Twenty-Year High- and Low-Point Periods, U.S. Horses Sold to Slaughter

Peak Metric Tons Equivalent Live Exports TotalYears, High Horse Meat Number Horses for Slaughter* Horses

1990 55,373 304,551 73,686 378,237

1991 48,284 265,562 81,994 347,556

1989 59,000 313,482 29,350 342,832

1988 51,864 285,252 18,063 303,315

Total 1,371,940

Peak Metric Tons Equivalent Live Exports TotalYears, Low Horse Meat Number Horses for Slaughter** Horses

2002 8,094 44,517 38,540 83,057

2003 8,861 48,735 42,932 92,667

2001 11,940 65,670 35,993 101,663

2004 12,085 66,467 45,039 111,506

Total 388,893

*Slaughter exports calculated by subtracting 10,000 from total exports reported as the approximate number of performance and breeding animals included.**Actual numbers, USDA (2006a).

(often called “foal pneumonia”)were the most common cause ofdeath, followed by injury/wounds/trauma and leg/hoof problems.The elderly population contributedthe single greatest cause of deathafflicting the entire population—“old age” at 22 percent—but thenext most common mortal condi-tions were colic (18 percent) andinjury/wounds/trauma (14 per-cent), which affect horses of allages. According to this study, 64percent of the horses dying of oldage were euthanized, most com-monly because of weight loss andthe inability to ambulate, while theremainder died on their own with-

out human intervention. Whenapplied to current estimated popu-lation of 10 million, the study’smortality figures would translateto between 150,000 and 300,000“at home” deaths annually, thepreponderance of which would beat age twenty or over.

The equine digestive tract andlocomotion systems are the biggestproblems during the lives and in thedeaths of U.S. horses, according tothe NHMS survey (Table 17). Bothsystems are subject to managementpractices far removed from thespecies’ innate biology, which ispredicated on near-continuousgrazing and moderately strenuous

movement and rarely duplicated inmodern domestication and use.

How Are U.S.Horses Faring?Look hard enough in any commu-nity in the country, and you can findindividual horses, ponies, or asses indistress of one sort or another. Youmay not have to look very hard at allin some places, but the nationwideindicators disclosed in this exami-nation reveal the resources andcapabilities for providing our equinepopulation with better-than-ade-quate care. The equine species’fence-straddling situation—halflivestock, half companion animal—has produced a mix of benefits notavailable to the “either-or” species.Horses are commercially valuableenough to earn agricultural-re-search funding from governmentsources that aren’t available topurely pet species. At the sametime, the emotional attachmentsformed between many owners (andnot just recreational owners exclu-sively) and their horses assure agreater sensitivity to equine well-being than generally develops be-tween livestock keepers and theiranimals. The larger American cul-ture is also more inclined to holdhorses in higher regard than thefood species and invest them withsomewhat more gravitas than thelap-pet set.

Basic Management and HandlingHorses today are well-served bytheir half-and-half status only whenthey’re maintained true to theirnature, as neither feed animal norpet. Some of the original nutri-tional research performed onhorses in their new role as recre-ational creatures in the 1960schose the same goals for feedingprograms that applied to feedercattle: grow ’em big, and grow ’emfast, getting the most inches andpounds added on in the shortest


Table 17Prevalence of Equine Health Conditions by Percentage of Operations Affected*

Conditions Affecting Conditions AffectingFoals Under Equidae Six MonthsSix Months, and Older,

Percentage Operations Percentage AllWith Foals Operations Surveyed

Digestive/Diet-related problems:

Colic 2.7 13.6

Diarrhea/Other digestive 13.4 2.8

Overweight/Obese 1.2 4.5

Chronic weight loss 0.7 2.7

Total Digestive 18.0 23.6

Injury/wounds/trauma 12.7 17.9

Leg/hoof problems 2.8 16.0

Respiratory problems 3.6 6.3

Eye problems 1.3 7.4

Skin problems 1.5 6.0

Reproductive problems 1.8 3.2

Behavioral problems 0.1 1.7

Neurological problems 0.3 1.6

Generalized infection 0.6 1.1

*Adapted from USDA (1998).

time for the fewest dollars spent(Ensminger 1969). When you’reaiming to get a young steer to mar-ket, that approach seems to haveno consequence because the steerwon’t live long enough to gothrough all the stages set up by thenutritional program. With younghorses, particularly easy gainerslike quarter horses and superath-letes like Thoroughbreds, theresults are ruinous. Most immedi-ate are serious digestive upsets,such as ulcers and colic, but also,according to recent biologicallybased behavioral studies, the life-long compulsive oral behaviorcalled “cribbing.” Worst of all,overfed youngsters often sufferdevelopmental bone diseases,sometimes requiring euthanasiabecause the condition is notreversible and the animals willnever be sound and comfortablefor as long as they live. Horse own-ers are still learning the hard wayabout this nutritional truth. “Pet-fed” horses get too much of toomany good things provided by too-loving owners and suffer obesityand all the attendant problems(except for heart disease) thathuman beings experience. Horseshave the additional difficulty of notbeing able to take excess weight offtheir feet by sitting down, and theirsoundness and mobility, the mostessential ingredients in equinewell-being, are compromised.

Feeding and nutritional problemsare just one manifestation of a clus-ter of common conditions that canbe labeled diseases of modernexcess. An excess of horses crowdedinto a small area increases para-sitism, infectious-disease outbreaks,injuries, and stress symptoms. Theexcess isolation experienced byhorses kept solo out of their owners’ignorance or excess transportationfor excess participation in competi-tive events can sicken and possiblykill horses. As witnessed by the goodsurvival rate of U.S. horses, however,the ever-adaptable equine speciesappears to have adjusted well

enough even to care that isn’talways in its biological best interest.

These animals have also beensubject to a genuine revolution inhandling and training, which isparticularly interesting because itarose among Western horse han-dlers, primarily associated with“breaking” horses in a tradition ofanimal handling based on domina-tion, intimidation, and outrightfear. In the past twenty years, a cot-tage industry of “horse tamers,”able to connect with, gentle, andclimb aboard an unhandled horsein a few hours, using no equipmentother than body language and pos-sibly some simple props makes therounds of the country teachingordinary horse owners how to “joinup” (Dorrance 1994; Roberts1997; Miller, Lamb, and Downs2005). A lot of what sells is the the-ater, but for horses, the recogni-tion and development of communi-cation techniques derived fromtheir own “language” has madetraining a lot more understandableand easier.

Health Care With twenty-seven U.S. universityveterinary clinics and numerous pri-vately owned equine hospitals oper-ating in the country, plus severalthousand practitioners specializingin the species, diagnosis and treat-ment practically as sophisticated asthose of their human counterpartsare available for horses everywhere,if their owners care to seek themout and pay for them. U.S. horsesdon’t die en masse from plagues,thanks to research attention paid toequine diseases, primarily thosealso affecting human beings andthose with significant economicimplications, and strict monitoringof animal health status. Equineinfectious anemia (EIA), a blood-borne disease with some similarityto AIDS in its mechanism andresilience, caused several large fataloutbreaks in the United States inthe middle of the twentieth century.With the advent of a screening

tool—the Coggins test (so namedfor its developer and now requiredfor all equidae being transported toevents, sales, and across stateslines)—national and state agricul-ture departments could identifyand isolate or destroy carriers as theonly means to eliminate the incur-able disease from the horse popula-tion. In 1972 the infection rate,mostly inapparent carriers, was 3percent of the horse population; in2004, only 333 samples from2,013,376 horses were positive, aninfection rate of .017 percent(Cordes and Issle 1996; USDA2006c). The destruction of seem-ingly healthy positive reactors wasand is a hardship and aberration tothe people who care for the individ-ual animals, but elimination of aonce intractable killer and waster ofhorses may result in a greater good.It’s unlikely that such medicalmeasures could ever be taken toeradicate the similar felineleukemia, for instance, partlybecause USDA funding does notapply to companion species butmostly because pet owners wouldnot allow test-and-destroy practices.

A more positive approach tohorse health occurs when new dis-ease threats receive rapid responsesin prevention. When Potomac horsefever, a severe diarrheal conditionwith often fatal secondary effects,was first recognized in central Mary-land about twenty-five years ago,the veterinary establishment sawonly variations of already namedconditions. Only with great pres-sure from frightened and frustratedhorse owners did the scientific com-munity begin to study the diseasefor cause and treatment. The causeis still not entirely understood, butthe infection was eventually recog-nized to be a national problem, anda vaccine was developed severalyears after the outbreaks began.The most recent “new” equinethreat, West Nile virus, arrived byairline via a mosquito “hitchhiking”from south Europe in 1999. Devel-opment of an equine vaccine began


almost as soon as the regulatorycommunity recognized the threatto both horse and human, and thefatality rate dropped considerably inhorses beginning in 2004. The dif-ference in response had much to dowith the zoonotic capabilities of theWest Nile virus, but also can beattributed to commercial and recre-ational horse owners having be-come a block of educated con-sumers who demand responsivehealth care for their investmentsand their recreational partners.

Disaster Management The Mississippi’s Great Flood of 1993, the West Coast’s perpet-ual wildfire dangers, HurricaneAndrew’s devastation of southFlorida in 1992—natural disasteris always looming somewhere inthis country.

Andrew was the first time a killertropical storm threatened a largerecreational horse population. Thelessons learned at the time in pro-tecting, identifying, and reunitinganimals and owners initiated com-munity and veterinary efforts todevelop coherent disaster plans formanaging the domestic animal pop-ulation along with the human popu-lation. When the megastorms Kat-rina, Rita, and Wilma hit in 2005,equine organizations, including theAmerican Association of EquinePractitioners (AAEP) and breedassociations, provided assistance,and rescue and animal-protectionorganizations from other areasmoved in to stricken areas to assist.The National Conference on Ani-mals in Disasters, held in the Wash-ington, D.C., area in June 2006,included a session on large-animalissues in disasters (The HumaneSociety of the United States 2006)for horse and livestock owners/responders.

Horse owners who care to learnhave every opportunity to becomeexpert in all horse-care and manage-ment areas, and many amateurs dojust that. USDA’s agricultural exten-sion service, working within the

Land Grant university system, is thelongest running educational institu-tion regarding large-animal hus-bandry. More recently, equine veteri-narians and their professionalorganization, the AAEP, have incor-porated formal healthcare and man-agement programs into their prac-tices along with the standardhorse-side discussions. Equestrianmagazines are generally a source ofreliable medical and managementinformation, but the Internet is nowa primary information and advice-seeking resource for horse owners,as well as a sale barn, stable-aislechat site, and equestrian soapbox.The following sites offer a samplingof opportunities for electronic com-munity and commerce available toriders and owners.

http://chronicleforums.com/Forum/

http://source.bloodhorse.com/thehorse/

http://www.equisearch.comhttp://www.horseweb.com/http://ww.netequine.com/

horses-for-sale.

Humane Treatment The ready accessibility of equineinformation and equestrian com-munication provided by the Inter-net is, in fact, probably the primarymotivating force in a groundswellof action taken on behalf of horsesand their welfare. Twenty yearsago, only two national equine-wel-fare efforts had been organized:one to oppose soring of TennesseeWalking show horses and the otherto protect wild horses and burros.Today, a few more equine-protec-tion groups operate on a nationallevel, but the real revolution is theappearance, since the mid-’90s, ofhundreds of mostly small, inde-pendent efforts focused on whatare often called “unwanted horses”within their region. These organi-zations, approximately 300 ofwhich have attained Internal Rev-enue Service (IRS) tax-exempt sta-tus, as listed on IRS Publication

78, attack the problem of “unwant-edness” in several ways:

• taking in equidae, throughlegal action and/or ownerrelinquishment, and placingthem in new, permanent pri-vate homes

• taking in equidae by the samemechanisms and placing themin permanent sanctuaries

• purchasing animals in thepipeline for slaughter, at eitherauction or another stop in thesupply chain, and resellingthem to good homes at cost

• serving as brokers, of sorts,between owners/trainers withhorses, mostly from the trackbut sometimes specific breeds,to dispose of and potential buy-ers, leaving the transaction tocontinue between those parties.

In the grand scheme of things,400 grass-roots efforts interveningin cases of ten or twenty unwantedhorses annually can’t make much ofa dent in the number of slaughter-bound animals, for instance, letalone all of the neglected and mis-used horses in the country. Rescueefforts can improve the quality of lifefor animals in their immediate vicin-ity, but the burnout rate has to behigh. From the web site descrip-tions, many of these efforts begin aspersonal missions, with no long-term sources of income to pay forrescued horses’ basic needs monthin and month out. Ryerss Farm forAged Equines, the country’s longestrunning large-animal sanctuary, hasan endowment to maintain the facil-ity but still charges a lump sum ofseveral thousand dollars for horsesto enter the facility, then solicitsdonations for the continued upkeepbased on expenses of $15 a-day(Ryerss Farm 2006). For concernedbut not rich rescuers to rely onuncertain volunteer labor, donatedsupplies, and cash donations whiletending to ill, starved, difficult ani-mals, with more needy ones alwaysin the pipeline is a stressful life thatmost people cannot withstand indef-initely, no matter how strong their


will to help. Additionally, the mereexistence of Good Samaritans in anarea tends to encourage less respon-sible animal owners to dump theirproblems for the rescue to manage.

Results of a small, informal sur-vey of these grass-roots rescuesshowed a very similar set of motiva-tions behind the dispersal ofhorses to rescues as applied for thedispersal of horses in general,described in the NAHMS survey.Horses came to rescues not neces-sarily because they were treatedcruelly, or at least intentionally so.They were generally not irreparablydamaged goods, either physicallyor mentally. The weak links weremostly on the human side: igno-rance of proper care, personal andfinancial difficulties, or failure toproperly train the animals. Goodintentions and love of horses with-out accompanying managementcapabilities are as likely to movehorses into rescue facilities as ispure commercial greed.

The larger issue is balancing thepressures of horse ownership, bothcommercial and recreational, thatarise from keeping a large speciesin a shrinking and increasinglycostly world.

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