What does it cost to truly Help Horses through Rescue?
Fuel is around .45 cents a loaded mile, with vehicle and trailer maintenance, oil changes, tires and such adding additional costs over time.
Most horses are more than 50 miles round trip from our facility.
At our rescue, the intake costs for a horse without significant medical concerns initially is $600. This is a discounted cost to the rescue for recommended care.
This intake covers bloodwork, coggins, vaccines, dental float, microchip, lameness exam, wellness and dewormer.
Farrier costs are $40-$90 for basic trims or front shoes.
It is rare a horse comes in and doesn’t need all of the above.
Extra testing that is often needed may be
X-rays,
Ultrasounds,
Bloodwork for cushings, lymes or metabolic issues,
Spinal tap for EPM.
Euthanasia, in addition to diagnostics to determine need, will run $250 plus disposal costs of around $150.
Once a horse is safe, vetted and doing well,
the regular costs kick in.
This varies horse to horse, of course, from Throughbreds v/ metabolic ponies.
We have bulk grain delivered at $2,300 for 3.5 tons. Specialized feeds for seniors and foals are additional costs and much higher. Most bags we use average $28 delivered. We use Alfalfa pellets and chopped alfalfa hay at $23-28 a bag.
We use a few supplements, like DAC oil at $130+ a pail, and vitamin E powder at $80 per container.
We feed a mix of round bales at $50 each and square bales at $7.50 each.
Stalled horses need bedding, and for us, that is horse safe sawdust at $200+ a load.
Miscellaneous costs are added in for stall cleaning help, caretaker feeding shifts, electric, water and insurance.
Farrier costs are repeated every 4-8 weeks at $40-90.
Routine monthly care costs average around $500 per horse at the main facility.
No horse has arrived to us that doesn’t need training. Even in rare instances where a horse is well behaved, a month long refresher and evaluation is vital.
Training is valued at $1,000-$1,500 per month. While this is usually donated by trainers to us, and the trainer sets an adoption fee, it is still a value added investment into the horse by our team of trainers.
HOP sends a horse to trainers when sound, healthy and evaluated with all care updated. HOP tends to cover veterinarian costs and farrier costs, at minimum, for foster training horses.
Many rescues do pay for training monthly.
Most horses will need 4 months of training, some needing a year or more, before they are truly adoptable to the average home.
It depends. It does not serve a nonprofit or any horse to be devalued. Nonprofits operate on funding, and funding is hard to come by.
That said, adoption of horses that come in is the goal for most rescues.
It is an incentive as a nonprofit to offer motivations to apply, go through screening and enter into a contractual agreement.
One of the encouraging reasons to adopt is a lower fee associated with adoption compared to a sale with the same care/training/vetting background, especially paired with a good safenet and honestly about the horse.
It is reasonable for a rescue to ask for this, if an owner is looking for help, and it isn’t an emergency due to extreme financial crisis where the horse is suffering.
Donors aren’t usually inclined to give to horses that aren’t in dire circumstances and condition.
But these horses still take up significant resources and are kept safe by coming to a good rescue. So they should be helped. The owner should help with this when they can.
No. They are not. Horses take donated funding to maintain. They cost the organization at intake, daily, monthly and yearly.
They receive a long term safe net to come back to Safety that costs money.
They are not a donation when turned over to a rescue.
The more you know
