Dealing w/ boarders VENT - Boarder won't stop using baby oil in her feed can lid...

[CHT]

You might find it easier to secure hay, AND to find someone who will unload/stack it all for you if you were buying a larger quantity (for all your boarders and your own horses). I pay an extra $0.50 per bale to have it unloaded and stacked at it is worth every penny. A good hay supplier will help you ensure you have enough hay for the year, even if it means they have to call around to help you out.

So I agree, that it may be worth changing your policy and rates so that you can cover the cost of hay and of a new hay storage building.

As for the oil thing? She sounds stubbornly attached to her solution to the pests…I would give her notice that after such and such a day you won’t be feeding her horse grain if she continues with the oil on her garbage can.

[Ambitious_Kate]

[QUOTE=SMF11;7718512]
Wait, if you are doing all the labor (are you?) what’s the benefit of this arrangement?

Why not just charge more and offer full board?[/QUOTE]

If you are doing any of the work, you might as well do all of it and do it right, for your own sake. Give them notice that you will be charging full board, give them a choice of 3 grains, provide all turnout and hay, have them bag up any additional feeds or suppplements, feed those in the AM feeding only (to save your brain cells) if they aren’t there and made up, they don’t get fed, period, don’t allow bug control by boarders (except fly spray on their horses) do it yourself. If its expensive, add it into the board.

I would not allow the baby oil thing in any manner whatsoever. It would be a rule in my barn that everything is clean and dry, period. Anything else attracts pests. All feed should be in bungie corded metal bins, and not accessed by the boarders. If any boarder smears any substance on the barn walls, ceilings, floors or furnishings, they clean it up immediately before another boarder or person can come along and get gooped up with it, period, and that included manure in the aisle, your horses’ feet parings from the farier, any medicines dropped, any grain dropped, the entire place you used swept, mopped up, cleaned and tidied before you leave it, no excuses or explainations otherwise you are gone.

OK< JUst read how you don’t want to do it yourself. I still don’t get that. Its just as easy to do it for 6 as for 3, but whatever.

You are obsessing too much about the baby oil thing.

TELL her to knock it off like yesterday and if you see a bottle of baby oil in the barn you are throwing it out. Tell her that if you see anything gooped up and smeared with baby oil or any other messy substance, you are throwing THAT out, and that includes her grain bins, if she spills baby oil or anything else on them. Tell her to keep them clean, dry and tightly covered so nothing can get in them, or else she can keep her grain in her car and feed from there whenever she comes but if you find any nasty oily furnishings in the barn again, they are going in the dumpster.

Personally, I would tell her If she does it again, she’s gone. Period. What ever you do, don’t try to understand why she’s doing it, just tell her you can’t have it in YOUR barn. Period. if she argues, just say these words. “KNOCK IT OFF! Now. Get it? I am not having that stuff in my barn, period. If I see it again, you’re gone.”

If she argues, remind her “I don’t have to explain, its my barn, I don’t want it here, Knock it off, and I am not going to say it again.” If she aruges or does it again, ask her to leave. Give her notice. Walk away. Quit talking about it. If it comes up again with anyone else, just say “Its taken care of.” Quit tip toeing around people making you crazy.

[RxCate]

[QUOTE=trubandloki;7718604]
It might be worth it to take the time to send out a text when a boarder is getting low on things. I realize this is more work for you but in the long run it will save you frustration. “Sparkle dust is getting low on grain” “Dobbin is down to one bale of hay”, etc.[/QUOTE]

This ^^ It’ll be annoying and the only problem is they may, in turn, rely on you as a crutch to remind them to buy their feed. BUT it may solve the issue of running out of feed. You could up your board to cover this new service by say $10. Then you won’t have all the book keeping involved in jotting down a charge every time otherwise.

It’s an option.

Otherwise you’ve gotta put your foot down and hold them more accountable. Do your feed stores offer automatic delivery? That could help too.

[Chachie]

um hold on a sec…
I know that you are just venting but you need to be very careful about what you are writing. You just publicly admitted to neglect.
While I understand that your boarders are self care only boarders who are required to supply their own feed and hay, you ultimately are the one responsible for the care of the horses on YOUR property. It will not matter one bit to any LE officer if the owner hasn’t brought you any feed or hay, because that horse is on YOUR property YOU are the one who will be held responsible if something happens because that horse was not fed. Regardless of who is supposed to supply the feed and hay, you are ultimately the one who is responsible because you are the property owner/barn manager.
These horses are on your property, regardless of if they belong to someone else or not, they are your responsibility. Your contract will be of little assistance if word gets out that you are refusing to feed a boarder’s horse because its owner did not supply it food. That excuse will not stand up in court ever.
So while I understand that you do not want to upset a horse’s system by supplying grain or hay when the owner runs out, you are knowingly doing more damage by not feeding the horse than you would by throwing in a flake or 2 of hay that you charge $25 for giving out of your own stash.
If a horse colics on your property and someone finds out it happened because you refused to give them any of your feed or hay because the owner didn’t bring any, I would expect a lawsuit, hefty vet bills for a horse that isn’t yours and a visit from law enforcement, and an empty barn.
You are really setting yourself up to get into some serious trouble, and honestly, you would get into more trouble than the horse owner, who will undoubtedly come up with an emergency happened excuse. No one will be on your side if they hear that you had feed and hay but refused to feed a horse on your property because the owner did not come with any. And since, it is your property and you are in charge of feeding, you will not be able to give any justifiable excuse because YOU ARE IN CHARGE which means YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.
So I would immediately inform your boarders that if you do not have the supplies necessary to feed their horses, you will:
a.) buy the necessary things at 3 times the amount they would purchase it (ie a bag of grain is $16 if they buy it and if you have no choice to buy it you will charge them $48 for a bag of their grain and a $5 bale of hay will be $15)
b.) terminate their contract immediately if this happens more than once and they will have 24 hours to remove their horse and property or you will call animal control on the owner

As a barn owner myself, and having worked on several neglect cases, including when my own horses were starved by my old barn owner, I urge you to get yourself in order ASAP before something happens. I know you have been in business with long term boarders for several years but it takes one incident to ruin a barn and you are setting yourself up to have just that happen.

[Seeker_11]

The replies were great… and like I said I merely came here to vent.

My other half is deploying soon and we both agreed that if this nonsense didn’t stop that we’d be just as content closing the barn and asking every to leave. Problems solved.

Heinz 57 - I don’t see the issue with the amount of hay storage if you don’t even have a vehicle to pick up hay to begin with??? (I’m confused) In order to board here you have to be able to go pick up your hay. That is known up front.

I’m telling you, the boarders I have 1. Would not go through loading and then unloading 20-30 something bales of hay at a single go and 2. Probably wouldn’t make the effort to go find hay from a farmer or go get it from the farmers property. They all buy from the feed stores. Even those with horse trailers don’t bulk buy and store it (even though they don’t haul anywhere and their trailers just sit).

And like I said, all of the horses out here are 14 - 15 handers averaging 900 to maybe, MAYBE 1000 pounds. The 1.5% of their body weight daily in hay is about what they’ll clean up on any given spring / fall day (slightly more in the winter, way less in the summer). For a 14.2h, 900 pound beastie that averages to about 15 pounds a day in the spring and fall, way less than that in the summer, and about 18 pounds in the winter. Obviously if you had a horse that needed to eat 50 pounds of hay per day you’d not board here to begin with. :yes: And that isn’t an issue here. No horse here, not even in winter, is eating 50 pounds of hay a day. The owners would freak out if I were cracking open a bale a day and tossing it to their horses. :eek:

And I really do appreciate you all offering ‘solutions’. But the solution of going full board will simply NOT WORK for me at this time. I am here by myself. I have sold off one of our personal horses and am attempting to sell the other so I can only have ONE HORSE while my SO is deployed for these next 14 months. I am fully comfortable with getting up before work to physically feed and turn out horses, and then repeat when I get home from work. I’d rather close the barn for the next year than pile on more responsibility on my plate.

But just so we can put the ‘full care board solution’ to rest, the reasons I don’t do full care stall boarding:

[LIST=1]

The going rate around here for barns like mine (ie non show barns) is about $350 monthly. $200 of that just goes to the actual cost of 20 bales of coastal hay at $6.00 a bale and 4 bags of higher end grain (Because if I won't feed it to my horse why would I feed it to someone else's horse? And that is just around 6 pounds of grain daily). Take $75 for stall cleaning labor. That leaves $150 to take horse in and out, and physically dump their feed and hay twice daily.

D*mn, I am getting $150 for self care board and all I do is feed twice daily, turn out and bring in. It makes NO SENSE for me to do full care board with what the going rate is around here.

Little demand. We are too far from the city and many people would rather keep their horse at home in this area vs spend what I'd want to charge to be happy providing full care stall boarding.

If I’m going to pay insurance and keep this place ‘in business’ I’d rather have it full with self care @ $150 a month than half full with full care boarders at $350 a month.

The responsibility and liability of bulk purchasing grain and hay. Then add the responsibility and liability of keeping everyone's horse at their perceived 'ideal weight'. If horses are kept by their owner at their 'preferred weight' (and it is some where between an upper 4 and a lower 8 on the Henneke scale), I don't care. I also don't want to keep up everyone's supplements. If someone wants their horse on 4 things daily, I don't want to have an opinion on it. I just don't want that burden. I just want to grab baggies and go, because as I've illustrated, there is no additional profit in full care board. :yes:

Hay Storage. I don't have the space to store hay where I'd benefit from making all my boarders go to full care, and ordering large loads of hay. My insurance co doesn't want me keeping 125 bales in my barn. And honestly I don't want that much cash tied up in hay. Esp if I only own one horse myself.

Time - cleaning stalls, physically getting feed and hay, more added book keeping (buying feed and hay, paying someone etc).

The stipulation of boarders having to pull co-op duty on occasion. I do NOT want to get into a situation where I have to hire people on occasion, either if I need to go out of town or if I get injured/sick. Hiring someone occasionally would be more stressful to me than telling the boarders that a condition to boarding here is that you are here on self/partial care and that you occasionally participate in co-op duties when I go out of town or if I have an emergency. [/LIST]

[o0rxkxrox0o]

[QUOTE=partlycloudy;7718435]
Self care just never works…[/QUOTE]

I’ve done self care since I got my horse. My barn owner loves me and has no complaints (she’s told me this). Majority of the time? Maybe not. Not certainly not never.

[Seeker_11]

Now, what I could get on board with is sending out a letter like this:

Dear Boarders,

Due to your busy life styles and hectic schedules I’m going to up the board an additional $10 a month for each person with the service of sending email/text alerts when you get down to having 3-4 days worth of grain or hay left for your horse.

Signed,

Your awesome barn owner. :lol:

[vxf111]

Make the penalty far more significant so it HURTS when the feed/hay is out and so that YOU feel adequately compensated for the hassle.

[Chachie]

Ok I have been typing and retyping this very carefully so I can make sure that I get my point across clearly.
You need to be very careful and really rethink your boarding situation. Even though you have a self-care barn, you are ultimately the one held responsible for what goes on in your barn on your property, and since you are the one feeding the boarders, you are responsible for making sure that they have their feed and hay.
You stated that when an owner does not supply their grain and hay, and it runs out, the horse does not get fed. I hope that you realize that you just publicly admitted to neglect.
Yes, it is neglect because that horse is on your property and you assumed the responsibility of making sure it was fed by doing the feeding yourself. So you have absolutely no leg to stand on if you should be brought into court because absolutely no one will tolerate your statement that it is the owners responsibility to buy the feed and hay for you to feed it.
This is along the same lines of if a horse is abandoned at your farm; you are still responsible for feeding it. It is a living breathing thing that requires at minimum a certain amount of feed stuffs to survive and if you are not supplying those basic necessities, especially because you are refusing to for whatever reasons beyond what is medically deemed, you will be charged with animal neglect and possible cruelty.
The last thing that you need is for someone’s horse to get ill and possibly die when you refused to feed it because the owner did not supply feed or hay. You will have at the very least, an empty barn but more likely a bad reputation, vet bills for someone else’s horse and quite possibly a lawsuit resulting in you having animal neglect charges haunting you that could make it possible for you to not even by near a horse, much less own one.
Perhaps you think I may be a bit over dramatic but I am stating the worst case scenario possibilities. These are things we discuss here on COTH frequently and who knows just how often charges are brought up in the real world against BO/BMs? It happens a lot.
I even brought charges against my former BO for starving the horses at a farm where I boarded and worked on shutting down another farm for neglect. In my career, I worked with several ACOs and LE agencies on neglect/starvation cases. Believe me when I say that you do not want this type of thing following you.
Truthfully, OP, you are doing more damage to a horse’s system by refusing to give it at least hay because the owner ran out than you would if you offered it hay from your stash at $25/2 flakes. This is something you really need to think about because in the end, if anything happens and an investigation ensues, you will be held more responsible than the owner because you knowingly with held food for a non medical reason therefor causing intentional harm.
So here is my suggestion to you:
a.) Inform your boarders that there will be a change in policy. If the boarder does not have enough food for their horse, you will gladly supply their horse ONE bag of their grain and ONE bale of hay from your supply and the boarder will be charged THREE times the purchase price for your labor, gas, and effort. (i.e one bag of the grain they feed let’s say is $16 when you go to pick it up so you would charge $48 for it because you took time out of your day, spent your gas, hauled it in the barn and bagged it as required. One bale of hay cost you $6 delivered so you would charge $18 to give their horse from your supply. Charge accordingly to what you actually spent. I know my grain is $30 a bag. I would make damned sure I would not get charged $90 a bag for it, not even once!) By doing this, you cover your butt legally by making sure that their horse gets fed and you scare them into making sure that they have their horse’s feed there. Make sure you will let them know that their feed is getting low so you aren’t making it hard on them if you inform them that hey, tomorrow you won’t have any feed or hay. You have to make sure you give them sufficient time to get it and nag them until the do! No horse should have to go without food because of their owner.
b.) Make it known that everyone must have grain and hay in the barn for the next month by XX date. NO exceptions.
c.) If a boarder has more than one incident that you had to buy their feed or hay within a 6 month period, then the owner will have 24 hours to remove the horse and belongings from the property or legal action, including a call to animal control will take place.

This is your barn and these horses are your responsibility, regardless of what the owners do. You need to take charge of your barn and make things happen before something bad happens to you.

[PoohLP]

Raise the fee for running out of grain so it actually hurts. To keep from being left in the position of feeding nothing, tell them that if they out of hay, you will provide one bale of the hay you use at double the cost of buying it from the feed store. That gives them an out, albeit a painful one, if something unavoidable comes up, but is painful enough that they will avoid it if they can.

Buy a new can for baby oil person and charge her the cost plus a surcharge for the inconvenience (half the cost maybe?) . Tell her every time you find baby oil on it, you will repeat as baby oil does not clean up easily. She’ll either cool it or leave once she has spent 100 on trash cans.

[HungarianHippo]

Letters and emails are never, ever as effective in persuading people to change their behavior vs talking to them in person or on the phone. Especially for Ms Oiler-- you’ve already done the written thing. Get her on the phone.

And since you have only a handful of boarders, I’d find the time to make phone call to each to say that the hay/grain supply is an increasing problem. It’s a problem because of your schedule and horse health. On the call, explicitly ask for their commitment to manage their supply closely, and that you are implementing a new fee structure to reinforce this important requirement.
THEN followup with an email confirming the new policy (whatever fee you decide on).

[SMF11]

[QUOTE=vxf111;7719020]
Make the penalty far more significant so it HURTS when the feed/hay is out and so that YOU feel adequately compensated for the hassle.[/QUOTE]

I agree with this. Many people have said to charge to cover your costs, but that’s not the point. The point is you don’t want to be doing this. I like the solution of keeping grain/hay available for those who run out, but charging them more along the lines of $20 per incident*. The whole point is to get them to not have ANY incidents where they run out.

If you were to announce such a policy, you might also say that if someone has an emergency you would waive the $20 fee or something.

Make it hurt! And make it a little better for you if someone runs out.

I like this because it doesn’t penalize anyone who’s responsible.

*and by incident I mean meal. Or if you want to be a bit nicer, day.

[Seeker_11]

Chachie - damn, calm down. Where did I EVER WRITE that I’m having an issue with boarders run out of FEED AND HAY - TOGETHER? And that the horses GET NOTHING?!? I specifically said if they run out of grain I’ll give them more hay and if they have no hay they get their grain and their normal turn out. Sheeese Louise.

We do have pasture here, for about 9 months out of the year, ya know. I hardly think missing one day of hay or one day of grain from late spring to early fall is going to put a horse into ‘critical distress’ (ie the neglect you talk about). Unlike the 10 pounds of grain someone in this thread said they fed their horse daily, most horses here only get a max of 6 pounds of grain in the middle of winter! Right now most are only getting 3 pounds of grain daily!!!

And I’m sorry, if I have boarders that feed their horse timothy because they do not want their horses on coastal hay… I am not going to give their horse coastal hay and risk an impaction colic and then be hit with a big ass vet bill.

If a boarder has more than one incident that you had to buy their feed or hay within a 6 month period, then the owner will have 24 hours to remove the horse and belongings from the property or legal action, including a call to animal control will take place.

I hope that you realize that you just publicly admitted to neglect.
Yes, it is neglect because that horse is on your property and you assumed the responsibility of making sure it was fed by doing the feeding yourself. So you have absolutely no leg to stand on if you should be brought into court because absolutely no one will tolerate your statement that it is the owners responsibility to buy the feed and hay for you to feed it.

This is along the same lines of if a horse is abandoned at your farm; you are still responsible for feeding it. It is a living breathing thing that requires at minimum a certain amount of feed stuffs to survive and if you are not supplying those basic necessities

OMG. Honestly. If someone ran out of feed yesterday and I called AC out here today, they’d look at every horse here, they would look at the grass, and leave.

I had a boarder here several years ago who WOULD NOT feed her thin, aging TB a senior feed and insisted that 2 cups of corn oil over a scoop of $5.00 a bag ‘Generic Grain’ was acceptable. I called AC out here, and they just came out and he smiled and said “The horse has food, every other horse here looks good, and you have grass. Nothing we can do. Perhaps you can try to educate her?”. I documented with AC, I attempted to educate her in the second month she was here, she didn’t take to it, so I had her move out. Problem solved.

Jesus. I used to do my county’s Animal Control website. I’m not a complete idiot and I know the people at my county’s AC.

Damn, can’t even start a ‘I just need to vent’ thread with out someone getting all ‘IT’S THE END OF DAYS’ crazy.

Thanks for turning the thread into something it wasn’t, Chachie . Just, don’t even take this post down ‘that’ road, please.

[o0rxkxrox0o]

For what it’s worth, I never thought you were implying that you’d starve a horse rather than feed your hay/grain. You seem far too invested to truly neglect them (from what I can tell here).

I understand the need to vent My only real suggestion was to charge per day they are out of hay or grain, mainly as an inconvenience to the boarder to maybe make them think about what they’re responsible for in the future. $1 probably just doesn’t really hit them in the pocketbook.

[partlycloudy]

I’ll rephrase it…self-care rarely works.

[enjoytheride]

I’ve seen horse owners not only do some pretty stupid things but assume that because they’re paying for board they’re paying for pretty much anything they want.

Tell your oil boarder that she either stops putting oil in her feed can or she arrives every day to feed her own horse. Stand Firm and if she doesn’t arrive to feed her own horse evict her.

As an example I know of someone who would put oily conditioner in their horse’s mane on a daily basis. In a dry mane and not rinsing it out. It made the mane thick, sticky, and disgusting. The massage therapist complained about it and when the barn manager told the owner the owner was pretty much indifferent. She was being paid to massage the horse, not complain about the mane. When the barn manager said, either don’t put conditioner in the horse’s mane before the therapist comes out or don’t get her massaged the tune changed.

It’s a lack of courtesy to your fellow people around you and people like that don’t change because they are causing other people problems, they change when it causes them a problem.

You want it to hurt when they aren’t doing the right thing and not encourage them to let you do more and more as long as they pay.

[RegentLion]

[QUOTE=Seeker_11;7718967]
Now, what I could get on board with is sending out a letter like this:

Dear Boarders,

Due to your busy life styles and hectic schedules I’m going to up the board an additional $10 a month for each person with the service of sending email/text alerts when you get down to having 3-4 days worth of grain or hay left for your horse.

Signed,

Your awesome barn owner. :lol:[/QUOTE]

I’d rephrase it:

"Dear Boarders,

Recently we’ve had a problem with horses running out of grain/hay and it not being replaced for several days. In order to rectify this problem, I will be texting/emailing you when your horse’s grain or hay is low. If at any time a horse is out of grain or hay, each day the horse is out of feed will incur a charge of $10 per day. i know you are all busy and hopefully this will help you all plan better."

Then if it continues to be a problem, give boarders individually a written warning… “Susie, this is the second time your horse has run out of feed. Please be aware if it happens again I will need to ask you to leave.”

[Heinz_57]

@Seeker_11;7719160

[B]
We do have pasture here, for about 9 months out of the year, ya know. I hardly think missing one day of hay or one day of grain from late spring to early fall is going to put a horse into ‘critical distress’ (ie the neglect you talk about). Unlike the 10 pounds of grain someone in this thread said they fed their horse daily, most horses here only get a max of 6 pounds of grain in the middle of winter! Right now most are only getting 3 pounds of grain daily!!!

That was me, and since it kind of sounds like you’re picking on me for how much I feed to boost yourself up here, how’s about a little back story? MY horse is a teenaged, big-boned 17.3 and he’s a race-bred TB. On a skinny day, he weighs in around 1400lb. He’ll be at the vet school on the scale on Friday, I’d be happy to get you an exact number then, although he’s still recovering the weight he lost while out on a trial lease. He gets 10lb of grain (TC Senior, just so we’re clear) a day because he is HUGE, he has a high metabolism, and because he doesn’t do well on really high protein hay. So he’s out there right now (lives out 24/7, what a horrible life!) with his medium-hole hay net that holds 3 flakes shy of a 100lb bale (so around 85-90lb) of nice looking local grass hay. I filled it up this morning, it’ll be empty tomorrow night. Yes, he is quite expensive but I assure you he is quite happy.

I suggested more hay storage because if you can only buy 6 bales at a time (two weeks worth, by your standards) and don’t own a truck - you’re borrowing one every two weeks, which has to be difficult and a PIA for both borrower and borrowee. More storage = less borrowing, because you can buy more at one time. They might also BE more inclined to buy local and buy it by the ton if it saves them significant money. Maybe they are running out because they can’t afford it?

[Ghazzu]

Just tell her you’re not going to touch the lid if there’s oil on it.

[Ruth0552]

So do they do stalls or do you?

Is there a demand for self-care boarding where you are? Can you make it a 3 strikes you’re out (literally) policy?

That is just looney tunes. I am horrible at estimating amounts and if I am low on grain or know I am going to run out, then I GO TO THE STORE.

Could you arrange for group delivery of hay/grain billed separately every 2 weeks?