Oh yes I would never rent out my horse unless it was someone I knew and trusted. There is a lot right next to us owned by our landlord, we just have to ask him if her would rent out the lot to us, or let us use it.
Yup, we have some money set aside for this stuff too. I am going to see if either of the vets in our town can also do the farrier and dental deals along with annual visits and vaccines. The hay is pretty cheap here too. It is $25 per big round bale. And we found some cheap yet good quality feed, I am not sure if we will be giving the horse feed, they were made to eat grass! But we might if the grass quality isn't good enough. That was one of my questions. If the lot has good grass, and the horse is turned out pretty much all day, would we still need to feed grain and hay as well? Thanks for going into detail!
Yes, horses are very expensive. I found this channel on youtube, called Becky's Homestead, I love her. I believe she just gives her horses, mules, and donkey, crimped oats, hay, and she only feeds grain as a treat and to mix the wormer, D.E, in. She said she has owned horses for 20 years, has never had a sick one! That will definitely save money! I want to save money, but I definitely do not want to be skimping on feed or health/ vet deals.
As far as grazing goes: just how big is that lot next door to you? If you say, "40 acres" then yeah, you could just graze the horse in there for a lot of the year, and be fine. However... a horse can dry-lot a piece of ground pretty quick. So if your piece of ground is more like, 1 acre, well, the horse will go through that, eat all the best parts, and not touch the weeds. Pretty soon, all you will have is weeds in there. Any horse pasture benefits from being mowed, because the weeds have a hard time competing with the grass and mowing favors grass, but if it's not big enough, you are going to run out of grass. There is no rule of thumb here, I have no idea what part of the country you are in or what the ground there is like, how much rainfall etc. Here, I have to irrigate.
Now, I DO have 40 acres. But I still have to pull the horses off every now and then and give the grass a chance to grow back (i.e. rotational grazing). We mow what we can (some parts are too rough) but guess what, I still have to fill my barn with hay every year. I feed hay every single day of the year to at least one group of horses or another (most of mine are minis). Don't rely too heavily on that grass. As for those cheap big bales? Again, I have no idea where you live or what is in them, but around here, those would be hay for cattle, and cattle can get by with stuff a horse just can not eat. Plus let me tell you, they are about impossible to use for feeding a small amount twice a day with. I've done it, I'm not just guessing. Do you have a tractor to pick them up and move them? Do you have a place to store big bales like that?
I know it sounds ridiculous but you do have to think about stuff like that. Small bales might cost more, but holy cow, they are SO much easier to move and store. I'm not guessing about that either; we are currently in the process of putting up 400 bales of hay in the barn. And... you DO have a barn for storing hay, right?
