Bedding Use Conundrum

[keysfins]

Board is usually paid in advance, as in due Nov 1st for the month of November. Would you be billing for the previous month’s bedding costs?

In addition to some horses needing/using more bedding in a normal day, what if you have a horse on stall rest? That horse will likely require more bedding because it is in the stall 24/7. And then, you probably have horses moving out and new horses moving in, if you accommodate 50 horses. How will you charge if you don’t know what resources each horse will use in advance? What a headache to do individual billing.

Just raise board for all. Doing the “nickel and dime” method will likely result in resentment, gossip (how much is Jane paying? Why is Sue paying less?) and a poor “barn culture”.

Full disclosure: I have a horse who pees a ton, and requires the bagged pellets, but eats less hay than the average horse in the barn. (Both these things are because of a medical issue.) I pay the same in board as the little pony and the 17.3hh yuuuuge Warmblood. Any board increases are for all clients, not “as needed” for an individual horse.

[beowulf]

I mean this with the utmost respect, but I think your math is wrong; 30-48 bags of shavings a month? What?

Who is mucking these stalls? Are you stripping every day? How big are these stalls? Are the horses living in these stalls? Are you picking them out at every six hour intervals?

I’d like to see or watch whoever is picking these stalls - my betting is they are taking WAY too much material out.

I used to be a BM and we had one guy that was so piggy we stripped his stall every day. Even then, he only used ~10 bags of shavings a month. If he was exceptionally neat we left the tidy matter in the stall, otherwise we took it all out. The other horses, no stripping, were probably 6-8 bags a month, with at least four inch bedding.

Something is not right, either your math, or how much you are taking out.

Some ways to minimize the cost of bedding:

• Keep horses turned out longer - 12-16 hrs is best.
• Hang hay nets to minimize hay/bedding wastage
• Bed DEEP
• Schedule ‘6 hour’ interval stall picks for those in stalls or on stall rest: The barn I managed, we mucked at 7 AM, picked at 12PM, picked at 4PM, and then picked at night check at 10PM. We kept a back corner swept out and put the poo/pee in the corner for night check picking. Our 12/4/11 stall picks would take me about 10m to do a 20 stall barn. At 7AM myself and workers would remove the corner pile and muck the rest of the stall. VERY easy, takes no time.
• Go through ‘Stall Pick 101’ with all workers; watch them pick a stall, note how much material they are pulling out. Are they sifting completely? How much is being removed per stall? Is it mostly poop? Or is it 90% shavings?

For the heavy urinators, a trick: scoop wet pile, and ‘flip’ over so that the pee is rightside up. Take top layer off - viola, clean shavings underneath! This trick is especially useful if you have one that will heavily sod the same place. Most people just scoop out the entire spot.

Doing the above should make a big difference in your bedding consumption.

Do not raise your board first without a thorough introspective look at your (workers) management. Make sure you are not taking out more matter than you need; sift poo from shavings; keep things ergonomic and economic. The worst thing you can do is raise board/prices over what is a management issue and not actually a cost issue.

[poltroon]

I think trying to charge more per horse is just too complicated. You will have to justify it, you’ll have extra billing calculations, and you will create tensions that don’t exist now. You also will have to decide which horses are ‘messy’ and you won’t know that when a horse moves in.

I think if you did want to do a thing like this, it would work better for you to charge extra for horses that eat more, because those horses tend to be larger, they’ll probably poop more, have a high correlation to your messy horses, and I think the difference in what the horse eats may be easier for everyone to follow, understand, justify. But that said, I still think you’re probably creating more hassle for yourself than is best.

You might consider different ways to manage the bedding also. For example, having stalls picked out more often may or may not be a savings for the horsekeeping you’re after; consider also if additional ventilation, so the bedding can dry faster, may help. More initial bedding may help.

[Miss_Motivation]

Great responses, thanks to everyone for your thoughtful replies.

I am definitely planning a board increase across the board- it’s long overdue- but my general question is do other barns treat very high bedding consumers the way they treat very high feed consumers: with a surcharge for those few horses that far, far exceed the consumption of a measured average of all the other horses kept under the same conditions.

Yes, my math is correct on shavings use. We use 55 cu yards of shavings every 6-7 days (depending on the ambient temperature) for approximately 50 horses. Stalls are cleaned every morning (7 days) and picked out every afternoon. Bedding is turned over- our staff is pretty good and they are careful with the bedding. Disposed bedding is visibly soiled or wet. And lots of just poop in the manure pile.

Important to note that these horses are in suburban California and inside 20 or more hours a day. They are out of their stalls when ridden, or when turned out for an hour or so per day. So our stalls get a ton more abuse than stalls where horses have reasonable turnout.

Most of these horses eat alfalfa too which definitely seems to produce more urine output. And it’s generally hot, so they drink a lot of water and also don’t get any water from grazing on moist grass- grazing isn’t something we have.

I didn’t invent west coast housekeeping this way, it’s not ideal but it’s what happens here. I wish I had huge paddocks for them all to play in! The amazing thing is how well most horses adapt. People who move out here are sometimes aghasted at how our horses live… but it works pretty well.

Stalls are all matted and are bedded to 4-6" of shavings as standard. I’m not in love with mats (giant mats, two per stall, wall to wall, with interlocking fingers down the one seam) because there’s nowhere for the pee to go, but without mats, you have deep pits that have to be refilled frequently (much labor) and that reek.

Mats are the lesser of the evils to me: what all the horses really need is a lot more room, but the cushioning and level floor that mats provide is my choice over decomposed granite that is constantly being pawed/eroded/removed and absorbs pee but also retains the odor. We also break a fair number of manure forks on the mats when their teeth get tweaked in a seam… the things you learn, right?

We noted every load of shavings put in every stall, each day they were bedded, so there is no doubt about what is being provided, on each day, for each horse. There’s a clipboard filled out, and it’s remarkably consistent, week to week, what each horse needs.

Oddly, big horses aren’t necessary the big eaters or bedding users… that’s why my averages, bumped up by about 25%, strike me as a fair way to consider a range between light and heavy consumers. The outliers quickly become obvious.

So nice discussing poop with such a helpful and knowledgable group… thanks! : )

[clanter]

[QUOTE=BeeHoney;8920545]
I think it is problematic to do a different rate based on bedding. First of all, there is increased work to keep track of the bedding each horse actually uses each month…[/QUOTE]

simple way would number the stalls then write stalls number on each bag dumped

but if we are down to counting shavings bags there are bigger problems

[Miss_Motivation]

Each stall is numbered, and the amount of shavings added in is noted. We have bulk shavings so our unit is a 13 cu fit wheelbarrow load. All stalls get some quantity of either full or half loads added 2 or 3 times a week.

For many years I just accepted that overall bedding consumption was fair across the horses, although I never did this with feed. Now that we’ve done a quite precise bedding study, the few super-high bedding use horses are apparent. 90% or more fit easily within our average, and our allowance accommodates another few.

Also, our ranch hands switch which barns they clean each week, so they can’t complain that their barn is harder than someone else’s to clean. It might be- but next week they get the easier group of horses. Surprisingly, bedding consumption didn’t seem to vary even when the cleaner changed, on a week by week basis.

Kind of obsessed about this, aren’t I? But i love my barn, and my owners, and ‘my’ horses, and I have to get serious about making the barn self-sustaining. I can’t subsidize these horses any longer. I have cashed retirement savings three times this year to make the barn bills; I can’t do that any more.

[FreshAir]

You are so right that you cannot subsidize these owners anymore (not horses, the owners). It is an expensive hobby for everyone. Owners should recognize that it is a low margin - no margin business and because of that, they are being subsidized. You are clearly a very thoughtful barn owner, if they don’t recognize that you need to earn a living (not break even), then they need to board some place else.

[Miss_Motivation]

Thanks FreshAir, that was… a breath of fresh air.

We have a very nice place, it’s clean and my staff is good, although with recent changes in the economy and minimum wage changes, we’ve had some turnover I wish never happened.

I pay my employees legally and pay worker’s comp (32%) on them. Those burdens add a total cost to me of 45 cents to every dollar my employees earn.

Being honest and legal is tough in the boarding business. Just as the horses deserve good care, so do the employees… it all ads up to a costly undertaking and sometimes people forget that I’m not actually operating a charity.

[gumtree]

Nobody has asked so I will. What do you charge for board? What is the average cost of board for a similar setup? What are you fixed cost per horse? The basics are feed, hay, payroll, etc. If you are charging say $20 per day per horse and your fixed costs are $19 IMO the ends don’t justify the means. Either have to figure out how to cut costs without cutting corners that will piss off your clients or raise the board. Cutting costs by doing more of the labor yourself is not a good way of going about things. I see too many people doing this and they soon burn out.

You don’t give any background information, location or a link to your home page so it would be “anomalous details”. Much easier to give advice based on numbers than vague information.

[Miss_Motivation]

Hi Gum,

I’m not going to put up more details at this point, just collecting food for thought before I make some changes which I need to tell my clients about in person before I do it here. : )

However, you asked me a really good question! I am currently 23% lower than the other boarding option in our area, which is a similar facility. My contemplated price increase, which is a 9.5% increase, will still put us 13% under that nearby barn.

Geez, doing the math makes the situation pretty clear, doesn’t it? :no:

Both barns are operationally full (meaning we have a stall from time to time as someone moves in or out, but pretty much 100% occupancy) and are similar. There is a good demand for boarding in our area, so we really don’t compete with each other, just offer two nice boarding options in the same area. A number of nearby stables have closed or gone private recently as well.

If you want to drive for an extra half-hour each way, you can certainly pay less. I always think we’ve offered fair value, and I (obviously) agonize about raising prices.

This all ties in with many posts I’re read here about boarding being a falsely-priced business, and I agree. Many boarding operations are doing business on legacy farms that don’t have (giant) mortgages, and/or are an adjunct to farming, ranching, training, or other businesses. Many barns are operated, like mine, as a second business with some sort of ‘real job’ supporting them.

After doing this for a decade now, I’d say all those things play into making a lot of boarding priced to break even at best. That was my goal, because I will have land appreciation to eventually offset operating losses.

But what boarders don’t realize is if their barn owner is subsidizing the business, struggling, or looking at land appreciation to eventually make it worthwhile… that doesn’t bode well for a long-term place to keep your horse!

The business has been fun most of the time- buying a stable i loved since I was a kid, and fixing up up nicely, has been satisfying. But it’s wearing, and discouraging when I started out with a lame business plan, that of breaking even. Other circumstances in my life have changed, and I need to re-evaluate everything.

At night when I walk through the barns and pet the noses that volunteer for a word and a scratch, or when I peek over my computer in my home office and see people riding and having fun in the big arena… it’s all worth it.

When someone flushes paper towels down the toilet-again- and I’m at work at that ‘real job’ and have to pay the plumber $100 to come fix it… it’s not worth it.

Just love the resource of COTH- I learn so much from you all!

[fordtraktor]

I agree with Beowulf that is a lot of bedding. I would take a close look at that. I bed deep and have horses on stall rest sometimes and even the stall rest ones don’t go through NEARLY the amount of bedding you are describing. It seems off.

That said gumtree’s points are very good as well. You can’t subsidize other people’s hobbies or even “work for free” which it seems like your model is. think you should seriously consider “catching up” to your competitor barn and not plan to be more than a tenth below the price.

The problem with a break even business plan is also that crap happens on farms. You need a little cushion in there so you can build savings/a cushion to deal with those issues when they happen. Those more long-term costs are still costs and need to be amortized over time.

[clanter]

[QUOTE=Miss Motivation;8920944]
I have cashed retirement savings three times this year to make the barn bills; I can’t do that any more.[/QUOTE]

are you operating as a sole proprietorship or is the business a LLC or a C or Sub S corp? … just trying to grasp just what you have done regarding these loans to the operation

[Cat_Tap]

The only time I have charged extra for bedding is if a horse is on stall rest. My horses are out dawn to dusk in the winter and inside during hot afternoons in the summer. I currently have a horse on stall rest with deep bedding and have to soak his hay. Since the other horses are still on grass I bill accordingly for the extra bedding and hay needed for the horse on stall rest.

[Lucassb]

Let me just say that as a boarder, a good amount of bedding is one of the first things I look for in a quality facility. (It’s also one of the first things to have corners cut when things start going south, in my experience.) So I think you are very wise to maintain the standards you have, particularly in the situation you describe, where the horses are in those stalls for 20 hours a day. Good for you.

I would strenuously agree that you should just factor the total expense into your board increase and raise the rate for everyone to the amount that is appropriate for your time and effort. Otherwise you are going to get into an unending round of discussions about how much bedding is in this one’s stall or that one, uncomfortable conversations with owners who might say, “well then, just put X in Poopsie’s stall, and if it’s icky, it’s icky…I don’t want to pay more,” which is going to be painful to deal with.

I also wouldn’t want to be so far “below market” compared to the other local facility. You don’t have to raise the rate in one fell swoop, but I’d start implementing regular, modest increases - ideally predictable ones for your boarders. There is no reason to subsidize your customers’ luxury hobby!

[clanter]

[QUOTE=Miss Motivation;8918302]
(wheelbarrow load is 13 cu ft, measured with bagged shavings of known amount) [/QUOTE]

the bagged shaving are normally compressed whereas the wheelbarrow is loose load

but back to there are only two boarding facilities in your area and you are priced well below the other one… even though both are always fully boarded?

[bt1]

Ummm so would you charge the tidy neat nicks less?? How do you think the boarders will react… The easy vs hard hard keepers should pretty much average out. Really charge pretty much one flat (increased from what you charge now) rate or go ala cart and calculate each and every horse’s ise of everything(grain, hay, bedding, extra labor).

[hosspuller]

OP: I take it after reading the thread, you’re living your “dream” good for you. BUT …

“Cashing in your retirement savings” to subsidize 50 head of luxury ? You are not being fair to yourself… or your boarders. You’ll need your retirement savings at some future point. AND your boarders need a place to board. If your barn closes, they’re stuck. Operating a barn at a small profit to cover the eventual disaster cost or clogged toilet is a admirable goal.

It will benefit all if you figure an incremental schedule of board increases over time to at least match the local rates. Keep this schedule to yourself. As your prices increase, some boarders will leave. (this is well known economic theory)

Adjust your schedule of increases to the occupancy of the barn. You don’t want everybody to leave at once without finding replacement boarders if you raise rates too fast.

If you wish to subsidize some riders… offer them a “scholarship board” of limited time and amount. They will appreciate it more. And you always can award them another scholarship at your choosing.

[danacat]

I didn’t read every word of every post here, so I apologize if I’m redundant.

The clean horses save on bedding, right? So that offsets the dirty horses who need/waste more bedding. Might average out in cost IF you have an equal amount of both types – and/or have more cleanies than dirties.

If you have more dirties, it really saves on bedding if you pick out their stalls a few times a day in between the ‘once a day’ full cleaning.

I personally can never walk by a stall that has a glaring poop pile or two – I always keep the muck basket handy and pitch out those piles. Only takes a few seconds and makes the full cleaning a lot easier.

[trubandloki]

@ArabDiva;8920591

Did anybody else read this and think, “Whoa, that’s a lot of bedding”?

That was my first thought too.

@clanter;8922891

the bagged shaving are normally compressed whereas the wheelbarrow is loose load

I think this is where the confusion about the actual measurement amount comes in. A compressed bag does not take up the same amount of room in the wheel barrow as loose bulk bedding does.

I am OK with barns charging extra for extra things. I think charging more for your base bedding (not a horse with special needs) is not going to work. What will you do when the horse owner says ‘no thank you, Dobbin will just go with the base bedding amount, I am not paying for extra’? Will you then let Dobbin have a messy stall?

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=trubandloki;8927792]
That was my first thought too.

I think this is where the confusion about the actual measurement amount comes in. A compressed bag does not take up the same amount of room in the wheel barrow as loose bulk bedding does.[/QUOTE]

Not to mention I do think that you would need 2-3 wheelbarrow loads of ‘loose’ to get the same amount compressed. JMO.

I am still convinced the math is off. There is no way a horse in a 12x12 stall is using 30-48 shavings bags worth a month unless it is being stripped daily. Even then.