While many people might raise horses throughout the state, Scotland County Farm Bureau Member Autry Lowry has a little higher stake in his collection.

For Lowry, horses are his passion, especially racing thoroughbreds. He began training horses to compete in races starting back in 1996 near Shreveport, La. Then in 2004, Lowry moved to North Carolina to raise horses at his farm in Laurinburg and train them at a special facility near Wilmington.

Lowry explains that it takes about six months to train a horse for racing, a process called “to leg them up.” The racehorses sometimes swim in ponds to strengthen their muscles before going on several rounds at a dirt or turf track.

“You don’t know what you’ve got until you put them in the gate and see how fast they can run,” Lowry says. “Just because you’re bred to a big-name stallion, that doesn’t mean it’s going to run like that big-name stallion.”

Lowry currently has a horse training to compete in races in West Virginia later this year. He’s visited the winner’s circle previously during his time in Louisiana.

“There’s nothing like it, especially with one that you’ve raised,” Lowry says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a $5,000 race or a $100,000 race; the high is just unbelievable when you can take one to the winner’s circle. It doesn’t matter what the caliber of horse, it’s about being able to take that picture in the winner’s circle.”

While not every horse is going to be a winner, Lowry stressed that’s what fuels his passion.

“Once you go to those tracks and have one win or get close, it just gets in your blood,” Lowry says. “We just say, ‘We’ll get ’em the next time.’ Sometimes the best horse doesn’t always win, just like in any athletic competition. On any day, any horse can be beaten.”

Welcoming Visitors at Holly View Farm

The pace isn’t at racing level at Holly View Farm in Transylvania County, but that doesn’t mean things are slow for Farm Bureau Member Tracie Taylor Gant. In fact, activities have picked up tremendously since Gant and her family turned a beef cattle operation into a horse boarding facility and campground a few years ago.

The opening of DuPont State Forest between Brevard and Hendersonville has brought Gant plenty of business from people who bring their horses to ride the trails at the 10,000-acre park. Gant indicated that she’s welcomed visitors from as far away as Montana and South Dakota.

“It was a part of the industry we sort of stumbled into when people started to contact us for somewhere to put their horses,” says Gant, who also is a member of the Transylvania County Farm Bureau Board of Directors. “It has really started to grow over the last three or four years. It is kind of amazing. You don’t realize until you get into this part of the industry how big it is.”

Gant has expanded the campground area and is in the process of building new stables, too. She describes what she does now as “agri-tourism.”

For someone who has had a horse since age 4, Gant now says, “I have really found the place where I work the best.”

Learning the Trade at Martin Community College

Working with horses is what the equine program at Martin Community College in Williamston seeks to train students to do. The program is the only one of its kind in the North Carolina Community College System. It prepares students to enter the industry for positions ranging from ride trainer to barn supervisor to breeding manager.

Program Director Tami Thurston emphasized how much more affordable the training at Martin Community College is as compared with other schools. At Martin, Thurston indicated costs can be about $2,000 per year, while other places it can run  close to $40,000 annually.

“And since we’re smaller than most equine schools, the students get more thorough, in-depth experience,” Thurston says. “I feel like we can take a lot more time with individual students. It’s just a great bargain.”