By Carol Badaracco Padgett

Among the sunshine, rural backroads and forest-lined fields, and nestled all throughout the suburbs of the City in the Trees, a key player in Georgia’s powerful business lineup is standing on four legs. 

Horses — some 75,000 of them, according to the Georgia Equine Commission. 

Equine business professionals in horse-strong states like California, Texas, Kentucky and neighboring Florida are paying attention. 

The equestrian business has a $2.5 billion annual impact on the state’s economy, according to reports from the Georgia Agricultural Commodity Commission for Equine.

The equine sector contributes a significant portion of Georgia’s agricultural value, and consistently ranks in or near the state’s top 10 commodities — outpacing peaches.

From the trainer’s mouth

Twenty minutes outside of Athens, Georgia, in Jackson County, Jefferson River Road lolls along, sporting one horse farm after another. Among them is Inyazura Farms LLC, a 600-acre, full-service equestrian center managed by trainer Melissa Kidd.

“The owner is an immigration lawyer who grew up riding in South Africa where his dad had race horses,” Kidd said. “He bought the property in increments as they became available, adding to the one piece he started with, which was originally a sheep farm. Now, we are on both sides of the road.”

Today, more than 500 acres of Inyazura Farms consist of horse trails and the rest of the property holds two large barns, riding rings and an expanse of pasture space. Training offered at the facility includes ring lessons, trail lessons, cross country (XC) lessons, and lessons for fox hunting, which is a passion of the farm’s owner.

Before managing Inyazura, Kidd grew up in New York, working at a sale barn at a young age, and then riding and competing professionally. Eventually, she moved to Florida to work as a professional trainer. Then she and her husband settled in Georgia in 2022.

From her experienced vantage, Kidd finds Georgia to be an equine industry-friendly state with an ideal climate and geography for navigating the sport. And she also sees the Peach State’s industry growing firsthand.

“A lot of people are leaving the winter weather of the north. Where they used to go to Florida, now they don’t want the overpopulation and the heat there,” she said. 

“You definitely have some days of cold here, some days of hot, but you don’t have the long stretches of it,” Kidd noted. “I think the one weather season we struggle with the most is the rainy season because the Georgia clay gets so sticky.”

Aside from near-ideal weather, Georgia offers reasonable travel times to the most popular horse shows that competitors, boarders and lesson students frequent in the area – especially in the world of hunter-jumper which is a popular equestrian discipline focused on jumping. 

“We’re in easy driving distance of Aiken, South Carolina, a huge horse area which is only two and a half hours away and makes [an ideal] weekend horse show,” Kidd said. 

In addition, the World Equestrian Center (WEC) in Ocala, Florida, the largest equestrian complex in the country, is a very do-able five-hour drive from Inyazura.

Colleges, universities and equestrian sport and science

Like most industries in Georgia, equestrian has a strong presence and partnership with higher education. 

Some examples include the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia, and its 180-acre Ronald C. Waranch Equestrian Center north of Savannah in Hardeeville, South Carolina. The facility is the home base for SCAD’s equestrian studies program and a championship-winning team that competes at the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association (IHSA) level. 

SCAD offers a B.A. in Equestrian Studies that draws on science, business, art and hands-on riding. The art component of SCAD’s studies includes coursework in show-jumping course design and equestrian facilities design.

The University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens’ College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences offers an Equine Science and Management major with undergraduate research opportunities in biomechanics and gait analysis. Coursework includes horse production and management, anatomy and nutrition.

UGA also has a College of Veterinary Medicine that produces licensed veterinarians through its Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree, with master’s, PhD and residency programs.  

Extension services offer resources for horse owners and youth development programs. For her work managing Inyazura Farms, Kidd noted, “Being just outside Athens, we have access to UGA which is enormously beneficial for us.”

The university is also known for its NCAA Division 1 equestrian team that draws in top student athletes from around the country and internationally, at times. Its 2025-26 roster includes riders from California, New York, Hawaii, Texas and Florida, according to University of Georgia Athletics. (In March 2026, the team competed in the SEC Equestrian Championship in Auburn, Alabama, against Texas A&M, who took home the championship title.)

Berry College in Rome, Georgia, known for its 27,000+-acre campus that covers fields, forests and lakes is another equine powerhouse. Its Animal Science department offers coursework and hands-on learning in equine science (pre-vet), health and horse systems and management. Areas of student research include nutrition and exercise physiology.

In addition, Berry’s Gunby Equine Center is the home turf for its equestrian team that competes in the National Collegiate Equestrian Association (NCEA) – as an affiliate member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) – as well as the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association (IHSA).

Through the efforts of these and other equestrian educational programs in Georgia, the industry provides untold livelihoods for large animal veterinarians, farriers (professionals who maintain hoof health and apply shoes), stable owners and managers, trainers like Kidd, and other positions at numerous eventing venues and businesses that support all things equine.

As horses graze the countryside

The equestrian industry in the United States contributes a total economic impact of $177 billion annually, according to the American Horse Council, with the equine sector contributing 2.2 million jobs, directly and indirectly.

Georgia, clearly, is a strong and growing player within that sector — where even the wild horse population on Cumberland Island lends the state a worldwide equine allure.

Looking back to the world stage in 1996, the Olympics drew in the sport’s elite competitors to the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, Georgia. Where today, the 1,400-acre venue holds year-round horse shows and sporting events that continue to draw riders from around the world.

For Kidd, as she manages Inyazura and experiences Georgia’s ongoing growth in the equestrian sector, she finds she’s in the right place at the right time. And she is joined by some 1,200 others in the state who make a total labor income impact of over $53 million, according to a 2022 report from WABE.

“I think the infiltration from north and south is bringing a lot of people to Georgia [who] want to be close enough to get to the horse shows,” Kidd noted. “And I feel like the hunter-jumper world is growing considerably right here … where there’s still land that allows people to have the large farms.”