Horses
How Much Does It Cost To Maintain A Pet Horse?
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It is always an exciting idea to get a horse on your own. However, before you make such a decision, you must have all the relevant information you need about the costs or the expenses involved in raising a horse. Once you have got a fair estimate and feel that you are ready to incur the necessary expenses, you can think of investing in buying a horse.
Here is how much it costs to maintain a pet horse.
Basic costs
If you are keeping your horse on a property that you own, you will save up on rental costs and that, in turn, will reflect well on your overall maintenance costs. Though you can save some money by buying cheaper quality food material or hay, it is recommended to feed your horse with good quality food to keep it healthy and strong.
If you are procuring one-half bale for your horse’s every day dietary requirements, you have to shell out around $3.00 on a regular basis. To keep your horse in fine shape, you have to provide it with supplements apart from good quality fodder. For $0.17, you can buy supplements for a day. It is also recommended to provide it with a certain amount of concentrate every day. That would cost you around $1.00.
If you want to stock up supplements for a month, you have to invest around $30.00. To provide it with salt blocks, you would need to spend around $0.04 a day. Deworming is the process in which you remove the eggs which it has shed into its surroundings. It is advisable to carry out this process once every three months. This process costs around $0.20 for a day.
Boarding
Boarding refers to putting your horse in a stable and paying weekly or monthly rent. The cost of boarding varies depending on the size or location of the stable and other factors. On average, you could have to spend around $100 a month as your horse’s boarding expenses. This would be the amount that you have to incur for the pasture board which offers no internal stabling. Then, there are additional expenses for the kind of care or treatment your horse would get inside the stable. You have the option to opt for a self-care boarding facility wherein the cost of boarding is relatively cheaper.
Medical bills
When you get a horse, one of the first things you must do is make a monthly or yearly budget which has most of the probable expenses listed. However, there are certain unexpected expenses that might crop up from time to time. For instance, your pet might fall sick at times and you would have to take him to a veterinary doctor. Medical bills disrupt your budget considerably and it is always a good idea to keep your budget a little flexible so that you can deal with the additional or unexpected expenses as and when they come up. You also have to provide your horse with annual vaccinations for different kinds of diseases. That must be accounted for in your budget too.