UA sees opportunity to grow equine, race-track programs at donated 88-acre farm

Kacee Richardson’s days start in the barns of the University of Arizona Al-Marah Equine Center in northeast Tucson. She takes care of the horses, about 90 of them, before moving on to her students, roughly 40 of them, teaching three classes until the afternoons.

Her breaks are spent enjoying the breeze and watching the rainclouds form over the Santa Catalina Mountains.

“You can really see the depth of the mountains when the storms are rolling in,” said Richardson, the manager of the equine center. “It’s pretty cool.”

For Richardson, this has been her routine since the school moved its equine center from the Campus Agriculture Center on North Campbell Avenue to the 88-acre facility at 4101 N. Bear Canyon Road, a labyrinth of stables, pastures, paddocks, show barns and indoor and outdoor arenas.

The property was a gift from the late philanthropist Bazy Tankersley, a noted Arabian horse breeder and owner, newspaper publisher and giver to several Tucson organizations. She opted to bequeath the farm, where she raised and bred horses, to the UA’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences upon her death.

The transfer of the property started two years after Tankersley died in 2013 in order to give the farm a chance to wind down its operation. The center received official word that it would receive permission to move last spring.

Richardson and the horses headed to Al-Marah, located 11 miles northeast of the UA’s main campus, this summer. She’s already found the facility more suitable than the Campus Agricultural Center, where the barns weren’t designed for horses, the horses had to share space with other animals, and classes were regularly canceled because of space.

“It’s a dedicated horse facility, so we can really make use of all of the space here for the program to grow and the students can get a really good idea of how horse farms work,” Richardson said.

Five classes are scheduled to be taught there this year for a pair of programs at the university — the school’s equine program, and the prestigious Race Track Industry Program, which has produced a number of notable alumni, including two-time Triple Crown-winning trainer Bob Baffert.

The latter program, which has roughly 30 students and yields a job rate of close to 100 percent in the horse racing industry, has potential for “tremendous growth,” said program director Wendy Davis.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

She said there are a number of classes, including breeding and handling, on the books that the UA hasn’t been able to offer.

“We weren’t able to really have many students in those classes,” Davis said. “The per-semester numbers were restrictive because of facilities. You couldn’t do two classes at one time because our neck of the woods was so small.

“Now we have the opportunity to say, ‘We can have a class of 10 over there, and a class of 10 over here’ and it would be perfectly doable.”

To help teach those classes, the UA received another gift from the Tankersley family trust, which leased 25 Arabian horses to the UA to be used for teaching purposes, a number that includes 22 broodmares and three stallions. The foals become property of the university.

The goal is to have the students be involved in the breeding, training and selling process, learning about how to make breeding decisions and how to show a horse.

“We can be very, very unique and offer something that no other university could offer now that we have the room to do it,” Davis said, adding that the neighbors have been excited that the Arabian horses are back on the farm.

There have been some kinks to work out on the farm, namely the distance from campus and setting up the operation. But Richardson said it’s fun to go through the process with the students because it teaches them how to start an equine center.

Her operation only takes up about 25 percent of the farm to teach classes. But she’s hoping to see more taken up soon.

“Our dream this whole time, ever since we first had the property donated and worked out the lease to broodmare, was to have a start-to-finish program,” Richardson said. “I can teach them in a class all day long, but until they go out and do it ... it gives them a real-life opportunity to learn a piece of pie.”