Photo credit: Eleanor Green

Figure 1. Locations of respondents’ horses.

Most of the survey respondents’ 15,137 horses (93.6%) were located in Texas (Figure 1). The vast majority were maintained/boarded at the respondents’ residences, farms, or other places of business, while 7.8% were boarded elsewhere within the state and 6.4% were lodged outside the state. Only 4.2% were boarded out of state in 2005.
Most Texas horses maintained out of state are located in Louisiana and Oklahoma, but respondents’ horses also reside in several other U.S. states as well as the countries of Canada and Dubai. Figure 2 displays the distribution of respondents’ horses in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

Figure 2. Locations of respondents’ horses within Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

Respondents’ horses were most likely to be found within populated metropolitan corridors, and several counties had no survey respondents (Figure 2). The 2012 Census of Agriculture tabulated a somewhat different distribution of horses on Texas farms (Figure 3).

Only 396,000 horses are found on farms, but this metric does provide a different perspective on the Texas horse ownership and distribution, which is notably difficult to measure precisely because horses are owned by a wide array of businesses and there is no requirement to register horses with any entity in the state.

Figure 3. Locations of Texas horses located on farms based on 2012 Census of Agriculture data.