Farms Fit for a King or Queen

If you think you are living well, then think again.  Some of the nation's top thoroughbreds live pretty high on the hog and the price tag, board, is also in the stratosphere. You can view a great Wall Street Journal article that appeared over the weekend on this topic here.


Remember Zenyatta, the incredible filly that beat the boys? She is now living out her retirement as a broodmare at Lane's End Farm in Lexington, KY to the tune of $25,000 a year.  There are 18 stallions at Lane's End on a 3,000-acre farm that has hosted Queen Elizabeth among others.  At Lane's End, each horse has its own night paddock from 3 1/2 to 5 acres and fences are built with no right angles to prevent horses from crashing into the corners.  Each horse has his or her name engraved on a brass nameplate above their stall with their parents' name also include. Prodigy is everything isn't it?

 (Zenyatta at Lane's End, from the Zenyatta Facebook site)

At near-by WinStar Farm you can board your famous stallion for $29,200 a year.  The newly-built 36,000-square foot stallion barn is state-of-the-art.  Super Saver lives here.  Remember him?  He won the 2010 Kentucky Derby and is living out his years enjoying the high life. 

WinStar residents have large stalls with Big Ass Fans (no I am not making this up).  These extra large fans were designed for horse barns and keep the area cool, deterring birds and nasty insects.  And each horse is fed a grains-and-molasses mix twice a day.  There are 18 stallions here.

Remember Big Brown?

He lives at Three Chimneys.  Board for this big bad brown boy?  $26,000 a year. There are 11 stallions here scattered across a number of smaller barns.  Horses have a "corner office" so that there are two windows for each horse.  I love his life. He has a large corner office in a two-stall barn. Each day he walks a few feet (on crushed brick) to his breeding shed.  He spends his nights out in his private paddock of 2 acres and is brought in each morning, given a shower before he makes his way to the breeding shed.  And of course, his barn is eco-friendly, the exterior logs are reclaimed wood from an Indiana church.

Some people, I mean horses, have all the luck.  What a great lifestyle.  Maybe they have earned it.