So Amy wrote a post that included how cheap it was for her to keep her ponies at home.
Made me remember that I recently went through the costs for the yearly bare essentials of keeping a horse in my little part of the world, Western Sydney.
Agistment:$80/week (this gets you a large grassed yard with decent fencing and depending on the situation, normally either half or no care - so DIY mostly).
Feed: $30 a weekHooves: $50 every 5 weeks (trim because I'm a barefoot person)Teeth: $150 by vet dentist with sedation once a yearVaccinations: $300 a year
So bare essentials = $6,690 a year. $557.50 a month for one horse. That's 9.1% of the average full time Australian income (a quick google puts this at $72,800 per year including tax. To be honest, in Western Sydney it would be about $10k less than this).
This makes me wonder - how much does it cost to keep a horse in your neck of the woods? Just agistment (or board or wheatever you Americans call it :P), feed, hooves, teeth and vaccinations. Also, how much of the average wage is this?
5 comments:
It varies wildly across the country and according to how you board - I've paid between $60/mo for self-care board and $505 for full care board, depending on where I lived. (I've done pasture board too, where they live out on grass with a run-in shelter and hay provided - I think that's like agistment? $50-200/mo.)
I live in one of the most expensive parts of the country, but we also have equally high wages. My county's per capita income in 2011 was about 35k/yr, and the median household income was 70k/yr.
I board at a mid-price full-care barn for $505 a month, just increased last month from 475 - the drought + hay farmers exporting to China has made our hay prices skyrocket. The rest of my costs are a lot like yours: trims would be $80 every 6 weeks if I didn't DIY, about $200 for sedation + teeth, about $300 for vaccinations, plus I threw in another $100/yr for absolute basics like salt blocks and dewormer and whatever. I got $7360 a year, or $613 a month.
If I wanted to board 30 miles further east, I could cut my board cost to $250-300 a month, but I'd pay more in gas and drive-time. It's very, very expensive to board here, but literally everything is very, very expensive here. I've sort of gotten numb to it, but I definitely miss $200/mo full care in Reno.
Wowza, I thought it was expensive here...
I didn't think of adding the median income. Indiana medan income is $47,529.
I thought it would be good to see the costs as a percentage of the average wage, seeing as wages are such a variable thing! What sounds cheap to me may still be almost 10% of the average income so really it's the same cost overall.
Although, Amy, your basic costs are only 3% but as you said, you are in the situation that it is unusually cheap for you to keep your ponies in the way in which they have become accustomed (lol).
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