Anon takes the horsepill

750 a year? Wtf is this retard smoking. Cost for land, hay storage, water, vet, and farrier. Human time cost to feed them twice a day, get rid of or spread the shit. Blanket, saddle, bridle. You're looking at a few thousand a year minus the time sink.
- This article says 8 to 11k yearly. https://horserookie.com/average-horse-cost-by-state/
  While cost of owning a car is between 3k and 9k yearly according to https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/.
  I would have thought that a horse would be much more expensive, like 10 times a car cost.
  
  Interesting, I recall a colleague in UK mention that it was costing her up to 20k a year. That was her max but not always/everywhere - would have been almost 30k USD at the time, so it sounds considerably cheaper in US but obviously a lot more land available and affordable
  
  Had em in a poverty state 20 years ago 🤷
  
  That link about car cost is from 2021, pretty sure inflation had a significant impact on that in the last few years too, not to mention car companies getting rid of lower end options for a while now.
  
  cost of owning a car is between 3k and 9k yearly
  Maybe if you drive a fancy new car, but an older, reliable car can be much cheaper. For example, I drive a Toyota Prius that I've had for 10 years, and I paid $10k for it (approximately, and cash, so no financing). I've driven about 100k miles, spent about $3k on repairs, and have spent about $500/year on insurance. So an estimate for total costs is:
  gas - $7.8k (~45mpg @ $3.5/gallon)
  insurance - $5k
  repairs - $3k
  depreciation - $7k (assuming $3k value if I sold)
  taxes and fees - $2k (~$100/year registration + emissions cost)
  regular maintenance - $500? (I change my own oil, so $20/oil change every 5k miles, plus spark plugs, headlights, etc)
  tires - $1200 (changed them twice for ~$500-600 each time)
  Total cost over 10 years is $27000, or about $2.7k/year.
  So that $3k/year low end figure is actually a little high for me, and I ended up rounding most of these things up. I'm guessing a cheap EV could come out even cheaper.
  So if you're cheap like me when it comes to cars, owning a horse could be about 10x the cost of a car.
- Almost all of those problems are solved by your local park.
  Vet costs can be reduced by the skillfull application of healing stones.
  
  horse sick? get a new one
- Yep. Once upon a time, you had to be very wealthy to own a car.
  Now it's horses.
  
  Cars are still the most significant expense in most people's lives after shelter and certainly the most significant in terms of cost per actual time used.
  
  I doubt that owning horses has ever been cheap either.
- Indeed. This was obviously written by an anon who knows nothing about horses.
  And that’s an optimistic estimate you’re giving. It assumes that your horse doesn’t have any issues that need tending to if you’re not a complete asshole or animal abuser.
- Yeah but horse
  
  Important argument many fail to consider
- He said to keep it alive, nit to actually care for it in any meaningful way.

Zero emissions? I know people find it ha ha funny, but farts legitimately contain methane and other green house gassses.
Cows for example are a large contributor of GHG
- plus if we had as many horses as we did cars we would be living in a horse shit apocalypse.
  
  Compress into brick, then build tower. Now you also have tower.
  
  Yep before the automobile streets were covered in horseshit.
- This is complete bs.
  Tldr: cows in sheds eating corn is the problem, cows eating natural grass actually sequester more carbon than an empty field.
  Long answer: Photosynthesis can only get carbon from the atmosphere. This carbon is then turned into plant material in grass. This grass is then eaten by the cow. A small portion of this grass will be converted into methane and other byproducts in the cow's digestive tracks. Some will be turned to energy for the cow and a vast majority will be shit out as raw unprocessed material. This raw unprocessed material, i.e. cow shit, this will last in the environment sequestering more carbon for longer time than just grass sitting there by itself. A grazed paddock will grow more grass than a non-grazed paddock because the cows are eating the fucking grass. i.e. more carbon from the environment is getting sequestered in the grass and the cow shit.
  The only reason that cows get such a bad wrap is that variouse other factors are being counted that really shouldnt be under cows. Deforestation to grow plants to feed livestock, the transportation of meat, livestock feed etc etc.
  A properly managed grass fed beef (like what we have here in australia) actually has a net negative effect on ghg. The factory farmed beef eating corn in a shed thats never seen a blade of grass is whats actually causing the ghg seen in the reports.
  We have already seen this narrarive been used to strongarm small farmers grazing cattle while the multinational farms get away with fucking the environment cos they can afford the cost of beurocracy.
  We are all just 3 warm meals away from anarchy thats something we should do well to remember.
  Ps. Its not "cow flatulence" its "enteric fermentation" (burps) cow farts just makes a better headline.
  Edit: formatting
  
  I think you should've put TL;DR in the beginning, otherwise it looked like you're arguing cows don't fart, when you were actually about net effect.
  I never thought about it from this side, but it makes sense, and seems like another way big corporations fuck the world up.
  
  I can't believe my eyes, someone that isn't spouting the usual bullshit about cows and GHG on Lemmy.
  I'll be gobsmacked.
- If you think a horse has the environmental impact of an automobile, I have a bridge to sell you
  Horses aren't cows
  
  Source on point 2 ?
  
  I mean you're not wrong but no matter how small an impact it's still not ZERO emissions, so the guy you're replying to is technically correct.
  
  Look at how much calories a horse needs per day, and then look at how much CO2 gets emitted to produce said food. Even the amount of CO2 a horse exhales per day is already significant.
  
  If you think a horse has the environmental impact of an automobile
  At what point reading my comment did you come up with this?
- Ok, no cow riding.

Horses can't be beat in the post-apocalypse for speed, but for most other things you probably want a donkey or mule. Far sturdier, easier to handle, can eat anything, and has no regard for wolves.
- As long as there's roads or smooth paths left, an ordinary person can do 200 km in a day on a bicycle. A quick search tells me that specifically trained horses can do 160 km in an endurance race. Sure a horse would probably be the fastest in a sprint, but a bicycle has the best travel speed.
  
  All roads are gonna be blocked by defunct cars. If we're more than 5-10 years into the post-apocalypse, the roads are gonna be a series of craters. Still, a mountain bike will beat a horse in terms of utility. I wonder how the two compare in terms of repair-ability.
- I've never really interacted with them, but from what I've read, they have no regard for much of anything.
  
  And why would they

I feel hay and grass may end up more expensive than anon thinks... For grass, you need a big place where your horse can graze. Anon either is such a big landowner or intends to rent such land, but it won't be cheap. Then the hay for when the horse is kept indoors... Gotta be a lot of hay. And the means of bringing and storing the hay may be of non-negligible price. Then there are vet bills, because horses can get sick or injured...
I knew someone who owned horses long ago. Well, more like someone whose parents owned horses since we were kids. They even had a coach that these horses could pull. But they didn't use it as a means of transportation unless just doing a simple roundtrip for leisure, and there's a simple reason for that: You can't leave your horse for hours on a parking spot. You can tie it up somewhere maybe, but not for a long time, there aren't many places fit for leaving horses nowadays.
- Lexington, KY has a ton of horse hitching posts/ bike rack posts. That may be because they maintain a fairly decent mounted police division.
- there’s a simple reason for that: You can’t leave your horse for hours on a parking spot. You can tie it up somewhere maybe, but not for a long time, there aren’t many places fit for leaving horses nowadays.
  This is why you just need to move somewhere with a significant Amish population first. Like, significant enough that local infrastructure plans around them.

From what little I know about horses, almost all your time is spent trying to make sure they don't kill themselves. I can leave my vechile outside in the cold for weeks at a time and not have to think about it.
- if you tie it up outside and leave it there and it dies it didn't kill itself
- That makes horses relatable. I can't relate to being a non-sentient bundle of metal and glass and stuff, but I can relate to freezing to death and killing myself.
  Horses win.
  
  I regret I have but one upvote to give.
  
  And, when it's no longer useful, you can eat your horse.
- Gotta get a work horse!
- Fuck, that's depressing.
  
  I mean it's not because they want to die. We're just talking about an animal that can die if it gets indigestion(the most common cause of death in domestic horses is colic). Some biological engineering points when it comes to horses are frankly quite bizarre when you compare them to ruminants.

$750 a year to maintain health
Lol
- $750/month if you have to stable it.
- Yeah, this might be 750 dollars worth of bottom of the barrel, wholesale, oats needed to give the average horse enough calories to survive.

0 emissions
FYI: Horses fart and methane is a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide.
- Humans also fart methane, is that a reason not to ride them?
  
  No.
  
  If your ride consents to that, just pug the hole.
- they um also breathe
  
  Not through the mouth though.
- I'm also intrigued by the "costs $1000 and $750/year to maintain" claim, as the horse people I know spend closer to 20x that.

I'd feel bad about leaving them tied to a tree while I'm at work, so I'd probably just go with a bike which is fueled by snacks and doesn't even shit!
!micromobility@lemmy.world ftw
- a bike which is fueled by snacks and doesn't even shit!
  Well the actual motor that powers the bicycle does shit, though.
  
  Yeah, but I was gonna anyway.
- The increase in fuel you need for the physical exertion of riding a bike increase your waste output tho.
  
  But there's also the byproduct of making you swole and potentially making exercise your new hobby, which then further increases your energy consumption and waste output...
  
  Yeah, it gets you in shape: Triple bonus!
- You even get a wide variety of fuel options for your bicycle. I rode one to work every day for a few years, and my fuel of choice was oatmeal, which is healthy, cheap, and delicious (esp. w/ berries and honey).
  Unfortunately, I changed jobs and cycling is no longer practical, but riding a horse is even less practical (can't really tie them to the parking garage in the city...). Maybe I'll get an e-bike and get back in the saddle.

False - you can get a DUI on a horse (in some states).

That is a shockingly cheap horse.
- Ignoring lack of parking, slow travel and waste disposal, it's more like 3-6k if you already live on a farm. 5-10k if you board it with someone, and you'll likely need a car to get you to the stables.
  A bicycle however...
  
  Believe it or not, riding a horse while drunk is also an offense in many places.
  
  Except you can't drink and ride a bike in many areas. I doubt most cops would enforce it though.
- US government will let you adopt a horse or mule per year for super cheap as long as you can care for them and can pick them up
  My wife and I are considering a mule for tasks around our acre and it's less than getting most other animals
  
  That’s all well and good, but I’ve spent years around horses and owners…long enough to know that I’d never want one, at least not one you’d actually intend to use for any sort of riding if I had a choice.
  Animals that can be cranky, bite, kick, needs farriers, training, vet bills, meds, food, tack, trailer, shelter, stable, or barn, land to keep the horse healthy and not too confined, constant work for cleanup mucking stalls…
  Every tike you want to go somewhere you hope the horse is agreeable, feet are ok, saddle it up when it maybe doesn’t want to go, get there at a leisurely walk (can’t gallop or trot the whole time), bring food and hope there’s water for the animal….etc. etc.
  $1750 is not horse money. Not by a long shot. Not in the context of this hypothetical argument where one might trade a horse for a car. How many bags of groceries does one bring home on a horse? Oh, now we have to buy a wagon?
  There’s a reason people traded these magical animals for cars.

These prices are ridiculously incorrect, but we can dream and strive to build a horsepilled world.
- My in-laws have some horses on their little hobby farm. They grow and bale their own hay which gives them an excuse to play with their antique tractors and makes it affordable enough to keep the "hay burners" around. I agree the prices anon provides are pretty rediculously low

You will get an OWI if you ride a horse drunk.
Source: I know a guy who trained his horse to ride from the bar to his house on its own. Cops still pulled him over because he was sleeping on the horse.
- Dumbest shit ever. I literally have a designated driver under me!
- OWI?
  
  Operating? While Intoxicated
- I'm pretty sure it depends on the state and whether or not that state considers a horse to be a vehicle/device. Alabama, for example, I believe does not consider a horse to be either, while I think California does. There's this story that sometimes gets submitted to TIL-type communities where a man from Louisiana was decided to be ineligible for a DUI charge after doing exactly that, but he was still given a court summons for "disturbing the peace by intoxication".
  
  In sweden there were some cases where people lost their driving license because they ... Walked home drunk so yes it do depends a lot. Guess drunk horse riding there is not legal.

Where the fuck you store it though? A shitty car you can park anywhere, a horse is gonna take some space. Especially for us poor fucks where the temperature drops below freezing for part of the year. Car just maybe not gonna start today, a horse might not start ever again.
- Consider horse a room mate. Finally someone to talk to.
  
  Yup, and sometimes they talk back.

Where is this guy getting a horse for $1,000 from?
- I mean if you want any old horse and can transport it you can often get them for free. They're like pianos
  
  does a horse not transport itself ?
  
  you can often get them for free
  The maintenance cost of a "free" horse is anything but

Lmao $750 a year 😭
- Yeah those prices might have been accurate about a century ago.

What constitutes reliable is a matter of opinion I suppose, but the first concrete statement of fact:
0 emissions
Wrong, right out of the gate.
- Yeah, don't spend too much time anywhere near a horse and maybe you can think that. You can even ride one for a bit and probably not notice. But as soon as you need to muck out stalls and get a whiff of horse fart right in your face, you'll change your tune.

The lowest emission vehicle you can own is an electric bike.*
Will cost 1–4k and way less than $750 annually in maintenance. Can get a road-only one or one capable of going off-road. Does not require insurance or licensing. Can't legally drink and ride, but you're very unlikely to get caught if you do, and unlike drink driving the risk is overwhelmingly only to yourself.
Keeps you fit and healthy by being active in your daily life.
yes, lower even than an analogue bike, because the electric motor is more carbon efficient than human muscle power which requires eating more.
- yes, lower even than an analogue bike, because the electric motor is more carbon efficient than human muscle power which requires eating more.
  Everytime I saw this claim, it ended up being bullshit. What's your source?
  
  What’s your source?
  A bull.
  
  It's been a while, but I believe this video was where I heard it. From memory (I'm out right now and can't rewatch to verify) it was specifically the per-kilometre carbon emissions, not taking into account manufacturing costs.
  Obviously there's some fuziness depending on your diet and the power source used for charging. A vegan who would be charging in a coal-powered grid is going to look better, relatively speaking, for an analogue bike than someone who eats multiple kilos of red meat every week who has solar panels.
- Can't legally drink and ride
  On a scale of 1 to YEEEEE-HAAAAWWWWW, I rate that as a yeeeee-NAAWW.

I know it's a joke. If I was taking it seriously: I don't want to spend several hours getting to a job that's already say, an hour's commute. And then storing the horse at the job and then several hours back.
- I remember growing up there was this Amish person who worked at one of the yokel gas stations. They would ride their horse to work and hitch it up for their shift, and then ride it home. It's doable!
  
  That horse must have been bored af tied up to the same spot all day, bet he didn't have any shelter for inclement weather either.
  
  I'm going to park my horse in the office then, good point
- Then don't? Not horses fault.

Faster travel > everything else
- trebuchet > car
  
  Searching trebuchet launch velocities, I'm getting 30-70m/s (67-157mph, 110-250km/hr), so a decently fast car might actually have trebuchets beat here
- We talking bandwidth or latency?

I don’t think the horse pill means what anon thinks it means…
- Joe Rogan ruined horsepill posts

Horse poop everywhere.
- Surprisingly one of the more tolerable smelling fecal matter on the planet.
- Fun fact, before cars came around it used to be a job to clean up the horse poop from roads. The job faded away as cars grew in popularity.
  
  so now what happens if you got a horse and it shits on the road?

I'm just here to appreciate horseface gigachad, nei-ei-ei-ei-eighhhhh 😆

Also the cost of fixing a horse is a new horse
- Well, plus the bullet.
- If you do it right, it's just a knife, some bandage stuff, and a tranquilizer.

0 emissions? Methane from cattle is a large contributer to climate change. If we had as much horses as we have cars, the amount of methane would be too much to handle.
- Cars run on gas, horses run on grass.
  Livestock contribute by land use (deforestation, crops for feed, pasture), water consumption, and the fossil fuel used in logistics processes (farm equipment, transport, electricity, etc...)
  But anyways, animal farts come from preexisting carbon in the biosphere. Car farts come from extracting previously sequestered carbon. So without extractive processes, and with ethical land use/management, the atmospheric methane wouldn't have a significant impact.
  Also you fart too. So there's that...
  
  But anyways, animal farts come from preexisting carbon in the biosphere. Car farts come from extracting previously sequestered carbon. So without extractive processes, and with ethical land use/management, the atmospheric methane wouldn't have a significant impact.
  Methane is 81x worse that CO2 over 20 Years, so if it came from atmospheric carbon it's only 80x as bad.
  
  Also you fart too. So there's that...
  So you're saying to solve climate change we need to remove the humans? You might be on to something there.

Fuck your Honda Civic, I've a horse outside
https://youtu.be/ljPFZrRD3J8
- Wow that was a blast from the past! Still a bit of a banger too!
- I legit love this song and music video and only came to the comments to make sure it was posted in here.
  
  I hadn't heard it, so thank you and @GBU_28@lemm.ee.

I think this shows a kind of intellectual impairment.

I kinda doubt you are allowed to ride a horse drunk
- In North Carolina it's illegal.
- Depends where you ride, iirc
  
  Yes, mostly it's not allowed as either laws include them specifically or bizarrely they are treated as motor vehicles. There are places that don't mind though. Pretty much everywhere except Montana, in the US, it is illegal to drive a horse and cart drunk. In the UK it's illegal to be in charge of cattle on a road drunk. Very inclusive.
  
  In the Netherlands you're just not allowed to participate in traffic while drunk, so technically you're not even allowed to bike. No one gives a shit about that one though.

Car shits smoke. Horse shits ... well ... Shit!!

If you need more convincing https://youtu.be/ljPFZrRD3J8?si=bgJHowZxESRcEFle