Who we are
Stargrazers is a small family business in rural Beaver County, run by Anne, Dane, and their two little girls. Anne has worked with horses for years, including the management of a retirement boarding ranch in BC, which started her passion of caring for older or injured horses. Dane is a welder and plumber and alltogether very handy person! He will build and fix anything necessary to keep the place in tip top shape. The kids were born in 2023 and 2025 and undoubtedly will be a great asset to the operation! The older is our head groom while the little one is currently employed as mascot.
Our mission is to provide a wonderful retirement for horses who have done their jobs and now deserve to rest and be horses! Or maybe horses who are not sound for regular work at all. In any case they will be taken care of in every respect while able to roam free and be happy!
What the place has to offer and how we operate
Our 40 acre property offers the perfect combination of grazeable pasture and sheltering woodlands for your horse to roam through. We like to offer a natural setup for the horses to be horses! They can drink water from the fresh water fed ponds and find shelter in the woods. Of course we also offer access to clean fresh water from our well as well as man-built shelter. Our 37 acres of fenced horse pastures can be separated into smaller areas to allow rotational grazing as well as keeping herds separated as necessary. Else they have all that land to roam free! In the winter time horses will be fed round bales out of slow feeders (no more than 5 horses to a feeder).
New horses will be kept in our front pasture for a day or three until they have met everyone over the fence. We also have a dry pens for sick and injured horses or horses that need to be kept separate for any other reason.
The herd will be called up to the front pasture every morning for health checks and additional feedings for those who require such. If the grass is too rich in the spring time they will spend the day up there and be let out again for the night. “Easy keepers” might spend most summer days up front and rejoin the herd for the night.
We limit numbers of horses to avoid over-grazing of the land. So this will never be a crowded place but only house a few select boarders. Somewheres down the road we might opt to providing hay year-round in order to save the grass if we do take in a few more boarders. This however will be discussed with existing boarders ahead of time.
Should your horse ever be under the weather, help is only 20 Minutes away as we are that close to the West Wind Veterinary Hospital, who have amazing equine vets on call around the clock! We will also have these vets out here once a year for annual check-ups, vaccinations and dental work. This way all horses conveniently get done the same day and we can all save on vet commuting costs! You can opt out of this and haul to your own vet if you like. Annual vaccines and deworming are however mandatory to keep everyone else healthy.
Our go-to farriers are very competent Tricia Willsher and Juliana Minty, who will be taking care of your horses trims. Again you have the option to use your own farrier of course but these two sure come recommended by us!
This place is family run, which means Stargrazers is also our home. We ask all boarders to respect that fact but it also means that you and your horses will be part of the family and you will be treated as such! We keep the place in tip-top shape as we do our home. If you see anything amiss please let us know immediately and we will get on it!
Access
We are easily accessible on paved roads only a 40 Minute drive from Edmonton, 30 Minutes from Sherwood Park. Our driveway offers a convenient turn-around loop for trailers.
Riding
We specialize in retirement boarding but if you do want to go on the occasional ride you are welcome to use the trails we have in the back woods of our property. Anne sure would love company to ride with!
Other than that we have the Blackfoot Provincial Park as well as the Ministik Bird Sanctuary within easy trailering distance. Both offer endless miles of trails. If your horse is fairly fit, the closest access to the Ministik is about 3km down the road! And of course there is always endless ditch riding available right outside our gates.
There is also a lovely indoor arena just a few trailer minutes down the road that allows haul-ins.
There will be a round pen on our property in the future as well as an obstacle/play area!