It is time for ATR to find its permanent home.
After the Races has been renting farms since its inception in late 2010. While we grew into each subsequent property, we have certainly outgrown our ability to rent. It's time that ATR built or bought its own facility to serve a greater number of horses. We are looking for people who share in our dream that every racehorse will have a safe place to transition, and would like to help us make it a reality.
Our Dream Facility
Our dream farm will be at least 50 acres, with enough space to accommodate at least 15 horses actively in rehabilitation and 30 additional horses in various stages of let down and retraining. It would remain in either Chester or Cecil County (PA/MD) to stay in proximity to the many racetracks in our area as well as to maintain our current staff, veterinarian, and volunteer base.
Room to Run
A big part of rehabilitating racehorses mentally is the ability for them to be turned out in groups on good pastures. We would want to create enough large pastures to accommodate up to 6 group turnouts as well as a few smaller paddocks for singles or pairs, while maintaining the ability to utilize rotational grazing to optimize available forage.
A Safe Space to Rest and Recover
Our dream facility would have a separate barn dedicated to rehabilitation where up to 15 horses can rest comfortably in a quiet environment with all necessary amenities in close proximity. This would include hospital paddocks, a covered exercise machine, and possibly even a water treadmill or other state of the art rehabilitative equipment.
Responsible Retraining
A trained horse is the easiest horse to place and the horse with the highest retention rate in its new home. Our dream farm would have a 30 stall training barn for horses that are in training and available for adoption. Nearby would be a round pen, an indoor arena so we can keep them going year round (we currently lose 3-4 months of riding a year due to weather), an outdoor arena, and at safe hacking path around the farm.
