HAVERHILL — On Jan. 1, just after the board of directors of Tomten Farm and Sanctuary celebrated the 12-year anniversary of the Haverhill nonprofit for unwanted, unadoptable and unaffordable animals, the organization’s founder got a text.
“Can you take a stallion with a body condition of two?” said the message from Jenifer Straub, the founder of Dorset (Vt.) Equine Rescue, to Jenifer Vickery, Tomten’s founder. On the Henneke Body Condition Scoring test, a veterinary evaluation of a horse’s weight ranked from one to nine, the 22-year-old Standardbred had scored two, just above emaciation.
Vickery called Straub.
“Tell me about the stallion.”
The United States Trotting Association’s records of the stallion who raced from New Zealand to New York show over $250,000 in career earnings and a racing name, Days of Courage, he’s no longer called.
Vickery met him for the first time at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Saratoga Springs, where he had arrived with overgrown hooves and teeth, overexposed ribs, hips and spine. He spent 13 days there recovering, stabilizing.
Within just a couple days of nutritional and veterinary support, his heart rate returned to normal.
“Here’s a horse with a little bit of care responding very quickly,” Vickery said. “It really reinforces the years of neglect.”
The Rescue
A few days before 2026, the first call came from Little Brook Farm in New York, a horse rescue and sanctuary, to friends at Dorset Equine Rescue for much needed support on a surrender call that initially went to Little Brook, which quickly turned into a rescue of four stallions, seven mares and a brown cow.
Word spread fast along the northeastern grapevine of rescue people and soon joining the operation were the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or NHSPCA; the Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals and Tomten Farm and Sanctuary.
Dorset Equine Rescue, about an hour’s drive across state lines to the site of the rescue in Rensselaer County, New York, led the on-the-ground response with the help of the NHSPCA.
“I knew the situation was dire,” said Straub.
In a barn strangled by cobwebs, the stall gates inside were frozen shut. The years of manure the four stallions and the cow inside were standing on measured as high as 5 feet.
“This was the winter. Can you imagine the summertime?” Straub said of the manure, which would likely draw thousands of flies, buzzing and biting.
It took the Dorset crew of six staff members plus the two from NHSPCA an hour to build a hay bale ramp to reach the first horse and another hour to coax him to come down it.
“He could’ve spooked. He could’ve jumped over the top. He could’ve broken a leg,” Straub said. “It was like a celebration to have him get down safely.”
To free the next horse, they had to call the fire department, which used the jaws of life to remove a frozen stall wall.
Ultimately, Dorset coordinated care and next steps for nine horses, covering initial veterinary care at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital for eight, and later welcoming four to their farm.
Dorset estimates expenses will exceed $25,000.
The NHSPCA, Little Brook Farm and the Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals also welcomed animals from the Rensselaer property.
A vet tech from Rood and Riddle offered her barn to three other mares that were rescued.
One of the firefighters even offered his barn to the brown cow.
“I know this might sound corny or cliche, but people came together to save his life,” said Vickery, who took in the oldest, most medically fragile of the horses, who she is calling the Forgotten Stallion.
Upper Valley arrival
In a trip that took four hours of frequent stops to check on him, the Forgotten Stallion finally arrived at Tomten in the Upper Valley, where an in-and-out stall of shavings, space and hay was waiting for him on Jan. 12.
“He was so excited (his first night at Tomten) to be out here,” she said. “He was trying his best to kind of trot a few steps across and he was whinnying at all the other horses.”
The space of the nearly 100-acre sanctuary is what sold Vickery when she moved the nonprofit she founded in 2014 in Bolton, Mass. to Haverhill in 2016.
“It’s gonna give the pigs room to wallow and root and roam, the horses room to gallop, the cows room to graze, the sheep and goats room to kind of browse,” she thought when she first saw the property, after having looked at over 50 farms.
Tomten, which has a full-time staff member, a part-time team member and six dedicated volunteers, currently is home to more than a hundred rescues, all permanently there for sanctuary.
The name she chose for the nonprofit was on her mind long before she traded her ribbons of the show riding circuit for rescue of animals in need.
The Tomten is a creature in a poem by Viktor Rydberg that lives on a farm and looks after the animals and humans while they are sleeping.
Her mother read her the story while she was growing up.
“I think it’s just magical,” she said.
Community support
The magic wouldn’t be possible, she said, without the generosity of the community. Funding varies from year to year. Tomten officially achieved 501(c)(3) status in 2016.
“There is never enough to do as much as we would like, but we are so grateful for every single gift,” she said.
The Dobbin Fund, Tomten’s senior horse program, made it possible to rehome and rehabilitate the Forgotten Stallion.
The Dobbin Fund consists “of anywhere between $4,000 to $10,000 towards a horse and it allows us to ask supporters in the community if they can match these funds,” she said.
Basic startup care for the Forgotten Stallion is estimated to cost $75 per day.
“This horse could easily be a $15,000 first year of recovery,” she said.
Winter at Tomten is another major financial challenge, often more than tripling the cost of the warmer seasons, she said. The largest drivers are hay, bedding and electricity.
The animals, she explained, require substantially more hay to maintain body heat, “typically double to triple their warm-weather intake.”
Bedding in the winter also increases dramatically, as much as three to four times. And Tomten relies heavily on heated water tubs and buckets throughout the farm to ensure constant access to unfrozen water.
Harder than fundraising and colder than winter is having to say no to an animal they don’t have room for.
“I used to keep track,” she said. “Now, I just can’t keep track of the amount of times I say no because it becomes incredibly disheartening. One of our philosophies here is, ‘How can we be more, do more and give more?’ ”
Vickery said she put all her savings into the sanctuary.
“I try really hard to focus on the yeses,” she said.
And as the recent New York rescue goes to show, there are plenty of numbers in the network of rescue people for Vickery to give out.
“I try to focus on the wins,” she said.
The Forgotten Stallion has gained weight, over 50 pounds and counting, since being rescued.
A new name is being chosen.
“Everybody on Facebook will vote,” Vickery said of the naming process for the stallion.
So far, there have been over 600 comments suggesting names from “Sylvester Stallion” to Maori monikers honoring his Kiwi origins.
“That’s how he’ll get his name,” Vickery said. “Through the care of people.”
To submit a name suggestion, visit Tomten’s Facebook page.