There are a number of benefits for raising horses - they can be ridden or trained and sold for riding, they can be used to "work" cattle or for other working jobs.

Additionally, there are other products that horses are used for. For example, pregnant mare urine (as gross as it sounds), is one of the predominant sources of insulin to treat diabetes.

You can always count on the hay cubes to be square at the other end.

personal enjoyment.

And Jen, pregnant mare's urine (PMU) was used for its hormones to create hormone pills for women. It is now largely being phased out in favour of synthetic hormones.

Probably most horses in the U.S. today are used for some sort of riding (I think I heard that Horse & Rider or Western Horseman had a article listing statistics for what the different breeds were being used for): working, showing, pleasure riding or racing.

I'm really excited to see more people taking an interest in the working harness horses, such as the drafts. Horses can't compete in speed with a tractor, but then again most horse-drawn equipment hasn't been improved since the 1930s. Horses are much less destructive in some uses, such as logging, and they don't release anything other than "natural" emissions. And, as one farmer put it, horses have advantages over tractors….you've never seen a John Deere tractor give birth to another John Deere, have you?