I used to board three horses at Tesoro Farms and the only reason I was able to move them to a new facility and leave amicably was because I took every ounce of self restraint to not call the owners out on their lack of knowledge about horses. I actually knew Tim, Jen, and Gracee before I boarded with them and thought I could trust them, but I also knew from boarding with them back in 2018 that they were brand new to horses at that time and were easily influenced by "uneducated" professionals within the industry.
I had a gelding and a mare with a 6 month old filly at her side boarded there from October 7th 2023 to December 31st 2023. I moved them there from AZ and was able to visit the property once before we moved, but when I came to visit and had set a time to meet Jen, she couldn't bother to even show up. Then a few weeks after arriving, I realized her and her staff were only feeding each horse one flake of Alfalfa twice daily. Two flakes total. For anyone not aware, that's an extremely low amount of food. Horses should be consuming 1.5-2% of their body weight daily (that's 15 to 20 pounds for the average 1000 pound horse), but one flake of an average Alfalfa bale is 4-6 pounds, meaning they're consuming 8-12 pounds daily. Including my lactating mare who should have been on double that, easily. So on top of paying their ridiculously high board fees, I was also bringing in about $200-$250 worth of hay per month that I purchased on my own and drove out there daily (30+ minute drive for me) to feed them the additional hay. They didn't drop too much weight, but every horse on the property either has a slow metabolism or had zero muscle mass, including their performance horses.
As someone who's been a professional within the horse industry for 5+ years with a bachelor's degree in equine science, a certificate in Equine Psychology, and various course completion focusing on biomechanics and behavior modification, in addition to being a rider of 20+ years, I can say with confidence that not only does Jen take advantage of those new to horses who don't know any better, but she does bully them into agreeing with her and allowing her and her staff to do whatever they want.
The stall that my mare and foal were in was constantly muddy because the property was built so that run off water went straight to that stall (I was unaware of this before moving there) and they didn't care that both girls had thrush and white line disease or that the filly had slipped and fallen a couple of times because of the mud. They also worked on the shade structures while the horses were in the stall and I found multiple screws in my horses' stalls. There were several occasions where I found littered trash in the stalls too.
If you want your horse fed lunch, it's extra. Blanketed? Extra. Bedding? Extra. Turn out? You'll have to pay another boarder because they won't. On top of $540 per horse in a poorly maintained ~12x40 open half-covered pipe stall. Jen told me the neighbors were constantly calling animal control on them and complained she wasn't doing anything wrong. When animal control did show up, she just flirted with the officers until they decided the animals were fine and left. There's also extremely limited parking on the property (there's 38 horses on a 1.8 acre property in addition to the arena, small turn-out space, 30' round pen, and trailer parking) and parking on the street meant walking about 100 yards to the back of the property for me. Plenty of tack rooms, but they did not provide saddle stands or hooks which I thought was weird and although they boast about having someone do a 10pm walk through by the resident living in the ADU, he often turned around before even getting to my horses (and we won't even talk about his major character flaws I found out about after moving my horses, thankfully).
Let's see, what else...I often wasn't able to turn out my horses for more than 15 minutes a day because owners were fighting for turn-out use (again, 38 horses to 1.8 acres, which is illegal in most other states for good reason), the automatic waters leaked and made the stalls even more attractive to flies, stalls were only cleaned 6 days a week so I had to clean them on Sundays, the majority of horses on the property had vices (cribbing, weaving, pawing, food aggression, etc) from poor management practices, they were sleep deprived from the ground being so hard, there was dog poop everywhere, my muck rake got stolen, and there were blankets left on horses when it was sunny and 65 degrees out. Oh, and when I tried to ask Jen a question, she snapped at me for not texting her "barn manager" Mon-Fri, who I'd never seen on the property more than twice the entire time I boarded there. Yes, I saved all of my text messages too and won't be posting them either in case there is legal action taken.
I've boarded horses at 5 barns in CA and 5 barns in AZ (two of which I was the barn manager) and this was one of the worst experiences read more