Horses & Hospitality is one of my favorite events to attend every year! It is hosted by Visit Horse Country in conjunction with Keeneland to educate those of us in the hospitality world about all that the horse farms have to offer here!
It starts off with a delicious breakfast, some games, vendor booths followed by an update on Horse Country/Keeneland and Lexington! Amplify was there and had a virtual reality headset (my first time) with horse races on it, as if you were riding the horse. So fun! My horse won and Candice’s came in fourth!
Hallie, the ED for Visit Horse Country and Kara Heissenbuttel, Director of Communications at Keeneland shared some numbers that were extremely fascinating!
Keeneland Racing by numbers:
-250,000+ fans EACH spring & fall
-Tickets have been sold to all 50 states
-55% of visitors are from outside of Lexington
-300M Economic Impact
Keeneland Sales by numbers:
-6,000 horses sell at Keeneland each year
-682 MILLION gross sales in 2024 (horse sales, not racing/betting)
-50 countries represented at Keeneland sales
-1.16 BILLION economic impact
Following breakfast, networking and some education we then got the opportunity to head out to an actual horse farm tour. I have toured several farms now including: Winstar, Godolphin and Land’s End, so I decided I would tour Hagyard Equine Medical Institute. It was absolutely incredible. We were there about 2 hours and it felt like 30 minutes and for my attention span, that’s huge! When I share the things below that I learned with you, please know I do not know horse terminology.
We learned immediately that the horses (or other animals) are “patients” and they have HIPPA laws just like humans, so you can’t just snap photos on the property, hence why there are no up close photos on the blog!
The tour at Hagyard starts at the full retail and compounding on-site Pharmacy, where they have 8 pharmacists on staff, full time. I was immediately like woah, this is going to be way bigger than I anticipated. The Hagyard campus is now 110 acres and is the second oldest business in Lexington, dating back to 1876 with around 400 employees. While it is corporate owned now, a 5th generation Hagyard is still involved in the business.
Hagyard handles over 90 percent of the importation and movement of Thoroughbreds internationally to and from more than 100 countries via its ETA (Efficient, Timely, and Accurate) department. They helped get the USA horses to the Olympics this past year! How cool is that? The horses do fly on Air Horse One and often veterinarians accompany them on their transport. Things like this have never crossed my mind before.
They see roughly 6,000-6,500 horses a year, do surgery 6 days a week with 7 surgeons on staff. The most surgeries they’ve done in one day is 122. They do have an equine ophthalmologist on staff, she is one of 5 in the United States.
On site you will find the largest MRI available, hence why the Cincinnati Zoo will bring their animals down often to use it. Our tour guide, Sidney, said it wasn’t uncommon to see a zebra, donkey or random animal on the property. I was really crossing my fingers for one.
We learned there are over 100 blood types in horses. They have 9 blood donor horses on campus. The horse will get 6 weeks off after giving blood. We got to see the surgery center, the different types of hospital beds, how they move the horses, etc. Essentially the entire surgery process. After seeing the surgery center we visited (these are my normal person terms) recovery stalls/barn, neurology stalls, ICU and more. You can visit their facebook page to see some of these things!
It was fascinating to even see the cleaning of the stalls. They strive very hard to have little waste. Once the horses get moved the straw and water used to clean it will be swept from the stall directly into the floor. It’s then all shipped to mushroom farms.
Our tour finished by seeing the Hyperbaric Chamber. This is 1 of 4 in Kentucky. This is one thing I was semi familiar with because my dog’s rehab vet had one, but obviously this one was a much larger scale. They are used for infections, wounds, cellulitis, etc.
I can’t say enough good things about our tour at Hagyard and my previous horse farm tours. If you have guests coming in from out of town for your wedding, family reunion or anything, please share Visit Horse Country with them and be sure they see this exciting part of Kentucky!
