Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Owning over 200 of any animal can be a burdensome task for any one individual. The feeding, the housing, the medical care are all a huge undertaking, let alone making sure each animal gets the attention it deserves.

Luckily for Joyce Davis, her corral of horses only requires the occasional touch up or repaint.

You may have spotted Davis’s house on your way to Westwood Middle and Elementary Schools or Encounter Life Church or just on a casual stroll through Manchester.

It’s the one at the end of Wiley Street whose perimeter is adorned with a plethora of painted ponies.

Davis says she’s always loved collecting horses and began growing her collection when she came into contact with a man who was in the process of cleaning out his house to sell.

“I started out with just a few and as I got to multiplying them, I found a man that had some hanging in a tree,” she recalled. “I asked him if he wanted to sell them, and he sold them to me. He had them in a big old tree hanging from string.”

She acquired around 14 or 15 horses that day and immediately started brainstorming on what to do with her collection.

“I got to thinking ‘What am I going to do with these?’ and I started putting them around the house,” Davis explained. “Then people saw that I was lining them up around the house and would stop by and sell me a horse or I’d go shopping and then come back and find one laying on the porch, and I’d find a place for them.”

Davis was quick to give the number 220 when asked how many items she had in her massive, manufactured menagerie.

They line her property all the way around. She has a display of them on a trellis at the front of her house facing Wiley Street and even has one stationed on the top of her house that was added when she had her roof replaced.

She adds hair onto them and paints them different colors, even occasionally taking suggestions from passersby.

“Somebody came by here and shouted ‘Make ‘em rainbow!’ and I said ‘Okay!’ said Davis. “I make them any color.”

While Davis finds a lot of joy in her collection, she also says that she enjoys sharing that joy with the city where she’s lived for 32 years.

“I just love horses and people drive by here and they video and tag them. I don’t care; they can take all the pictures they want to,” she said with a smile. “The kids come by here going slow and they love them. Everybody loves my horses, and I just love making Manchester happy.”

Despite her affection for her collection, Davis says she is terrified of live horses after a traumatic incident when she was younger, starting at her grandfather’s house a mile and a half away from her dad’s.

“When I was little, my daddy picked me up and put me on Papaw’s horse. That horse took off with me and ran all the way to the barn a half a mile away, and Daddy was in the car behind him trying to catch him,” she recalled. “Whenever he got to the barn, he stopped. I never would get on a horse after that.”

“That’s my story,” she added. “I’m scared to death of a horse, and now I just love my horses.”

Horses aren’t the only things that Davis enjoys collecting. When you step through her front door, the first thing you see is a wall full of cuckoo clocks. It doesn’t take long after a slight glare hits you from above for you to look up and notice her entire ceiling is covered in old CDs.

She’s got a parrot named Polly who will occasionally tell you “Bye bye’ but is in no way rushing you to leave. She has a younger dog who gets excited when you come in the house and a 16-year-old 1lb 8oz dog named Priscilla who, according to Davis, was completely blind until she took her to get baptized and now, she can see.

Davis’s late husband worked for 24 years at the Jack Daniels distillery. She’s since found a companion who moved to Manchester from Florida three years ago.

“I don’t reckon he’s going to go back,” she said. “He’s lonesome, and I’m lonesome. It gives me somebody to talk to.”

While she hopes that people find joy in seeing her horses displayed and encourages them to stop and take pictures, Davis also doesn’t mind when the community adds to her collection.

“If they got any horses, bring them my way. I’ll find a place to put them.”