Boarders - would you pay 10-15% more for a facility that was somewhat "high tech"?

[BunnyHugger]

As usual, great feedback! Boarders’ preference for onsite personnel never occurred to me (but I’m in total agreement), however I do think maintaining a nice facility is a full time job and would expect to provide availability of knowledgeable “staff” by default. At the moment, I work from home 2 days/week, at the office 3/week. The preferred version of my business plan involves my SO leaving his current job and becoming the full time BM. This information-gathering is part of me exploring how practical that would be - after you take the materials, insurance, utilities out of the board check, how much would he really be making per hour? Yes, we would have my income, but he will need to feel he’s - I don’t know how to put it - bringing in income as well, I guess.
In case it matters, he grew up farming, spent many summers working on a horse farm in exchange for living quarters and is very comfortable with handling livestock. His interests are trail riding and he can’t get his head around how on earth a 20m circle has any relevance whatsoever to riding. Oh, and he can fix freaking anything, lol.

Aside from that, x-halt-salute, thank you for that reality check. I was brainstorming with my own instructor in mind (she’d be all over that). Directing cameras does sound like making an instructor work an awful lot harder at providing the service they’re actually interested in.

And the points about hovering horse-moms… I’ll have to think hard about that. As you all point out, that could be a crazy can of worms! Possibly because of the “natural board” aspect, the feed and turnout would be understood to be a little bit looser than a structured “stalls/turnout” management style. I say that with the understanding that I haven’t explained how I envision farm management. If I rambled about every detail I stew over, you’re eyes would glaze over, lol.

[J-Lu]

Hi OP,

To add to the mix, I have always boarded and would find no value in watching my horse eat hay or graze. I would be uncomfortable being filmed while grooming my horse. I would not want to pay for internet access to your trainer unless I specifically wanted to train with your trainer (a true BNT?). There is too much to be gained from real-time instruction; there are already BNTs I can send a video to. My current barn has internet access and I don’t use it except to update my Soloshot. It doesn’t cost much to put a router in the barn - they do it to support the home theater in their barn.We don’t pay for that, either, they use it for their family.

Perhaps have your potential business more of a boutique horse care business if your husband is so comfortable around horses? Holding for the farrier with a personal report? Holding for the vet with a personal update? Dealing with specific requests about blanketing/sheeting? Hosing off in heat? Picking feet daily? These are all more useful offerings to me than the ability to watch my horse munch hay or graze all day.

ETA: I know from experience that full-time people don’t need to be available for me. They usually can’t add much more about my horse than I already know.

[Bogie]

@soloudinhere

Things I would pay more for:

• option to feed whatever grain I want, not just the one type and brand you like and everything else at my cost
• guaranteed high quality hay, like you get it from a reliable source and not whoever locally has hay when you run out
• access to therapies like ActivoMed
• high speed internet

i already have a pixio so I probably wouldn’t care about that enough to pay for it. But reliable internet so that I could take work calls from the barn would be very useful to me.

This. I’d pay for better quality care and it would be nice to have high speed internet. Many people who I know who have horses in full training also would like to have daily updates on their horse and what was done with them that day. Most people don’t get that.