Recession’s Long Tail: Economic Woes Linger for Local Equine Professionals
Lincoln, MA, July 2014: Her fiery orange silk coat in high contrast to the green grass, Coco shares a narrow strip of pasture with her buddies at Red Rail Farm, a solar-panel roofed, 19th century, red clapboard two-story horse stable shoehorned between multimillion dollar homes near the woods of historic Walden Pond.
Coco and her pasture mates are lucky to be here. In May 2014, the US Department of Agriculture reported that the national herd of horses declined by 10% between 2007 and 2012.
The chestnut mare’s coterie of caretakers who make their living from horses feel the squeeze.
“When the economy fell out, people cut back on horses, “ said Ron Hill, of Marston Mills, Massachusetts, a jovial 29 year old farrier with the comforting demeanor of someone whose livelihood depends on his ability to sweet talk nervous horses. Families that owned four or five now own two. Some people stopped owning horses completely but mainly he finds that people own less horses and spend less money on them.
Red Rail Farm charges $600 per month to house and feed a horse, about double what is was 20 years ago. At this rustic neighborhood farm, horses learn to avoid the countless chickens running underfoot. In the summer. the barn swallows that migrate every summer from Central and South America to nest in the rafters frequently leave their mark on the equine residents.
Other more formal boarding stables in nearby Concord and Sherborn charge as much as $1500 a month by offering facilities like indoor riding arenas, cross country jumping courses, and specialized horse care services. Red Rail offers none of these but the direct access to miles of conservation trails in the woods once frequented by Henry David Thoreau is both free and priceless.
Kim Johnson, Red Rail’s owner, whose wiry, surfer dude physique belies an indefatigable appetite for baked goods, is a young 65 year old with a hitch in his gait due to searing back pain inflicted by many years of caring for horses. He deliberately charges less than his competitors in order to keep a full barn. To hold down expenses he does all the work himself, cleaning stalls, growing, baling, and stacking hay, feeding and handling twelve horses, rarely taking a vacation.
When asked whether he has room for a new boarder, his jokes that he will when one of his current boarders or its owner dies. Yet on the advice of his accountant, he recently squeezed another stall into the already full stable.
Horses also require medical care from veterinarians like Dr. Meredith Boulay, of Groveland, Massachusetts. This general practitioner of the horse world makes her living driving from farm to farm in central and eastern Massachusetts checking on runny noses, stitching wounds, diagnosing illnesses, and administering immunizations and antibiotics.
The ever-moving, earnest 35 years old mother of two pre-schoolers, her long blond hair pulled into a quick bun, never owned a horse but dated a boy in high school who did. She juggles child care duty with her husband and in-laws since she still carries a mountain of student debt.
“People are buying fewer horses and when horses leave for whatever reason — death, relocation, a sale — they aren’t being replaced,” said Boulay whose business has suffered.
Her average number of weekly appointments has declined and her emergency calls are fewer. One of her biggest sources of income, the medical examination of horses for buyers prior to a purchase is way down, Boulay said, as she examined Coco’s back for signs of pain from her saddle.
Soothing the wary horse as she injects one of her many annual vaccines, she chats with Hill about Coco’s hooves and agrees to a new style of shoe. Each relies on the other for business referrals.
“Usually spring and early summer are flush with new customers,” said Hill as he squats under the horse while supporting its back leg. “But not this year.” For one thing, the veterinarians on whom he relies for referrals have less customers to refer.
Once he takes on a new customer, unlike Boulay, Hill can count on seeing it every four to six weeks charging on average $250 for shoeing it. With his bearded baby face, camouflage ball cap, and cargo shorts, you wouldn’t guess that he pulls in a healthy six figure annual income shoeing 12 to 14 horses a day. And, since no formal education or licensing is required in his profession, Hill is unburdened of student debt.
It could be worse. The population decline, brought on by the recession, has not been so precipitous in Massachusetts as in other more horse intensive states like Texas and Kentucky, according to Gary Keough, State Statistician in the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, New England Field Office.
Animal chiropractor, Jennifer Chong, 35, a Harvard educated attorney, who chucked a lucrative legal career to work on horses and dogs, agrees with Keough. She recently relocated her practice from the West Coast. Conditions there were much worse with people trying to give away once valuable horses and not being able to afford chiropractic treatment for themselves let alone their horses.
Worse yet, she cited a recent article that projected the annual slide in US horse ownership wouldn’t end until 2017.
As a statistician, Keough was reluctant to speculate whether the contraction would continue. But as a horse owner he had a definite opinion.
“Over the past 50 years I have seen horses come and go. If the economy turns around, someone is going to want to have a horse. All you need is another good movie about Flicka or Misty of Chincoteague.”
