Does your barn have a blanket rule?

[fjordmom]

First, the T-strap buckle coming undone. As mentioned those little rubber grommets. Cheap and easy.

As far as policy;

1. Blanketing is an extra charge ($30-$50) per month. Do the math to figure out what you think you need for an hourly wage (or what you pay your help): 10 mins/day x 30 days/month = y hours @ z$/hour. When I explained that to borders most understood. They had just been in the “oh it only takes me 2 minutes” mindset but seeing the day in day out time per month was a bit of an ah-hah, especially when multiplied by however many horses in the barn and realized that it could add up to several hours a month. I also explained that I prefer to give them the option rather than just charging everybody higher board to cover the service whether they use it or not. (Some don’t do blankets or don’t clip or are riding daily, so could do the blanket themselves.)

2. Boarder can choose at the beginning of each month if they will need blanketing service for the month (in summer some may use sheets, others not so I offer the option for it to be their choice.) Once decision is made, it stays for the whole month and can only be changed at the start of the next month.

3. Blanket fee set in #1 includes one off and one on daily (or what ever you want to do) Extra changes, extra layers, cheap blankets that cause constant additional work subject to a second (or additional) charge. You’d be surprised how many suddenly decide that getting one appropriate turnout is the better way to go than a long list of “requirements” when they are bearing the cost of all those extra blanket and sheet change demands. As long as they want to pay, no problem, I’ll happily provide the service.

4. Open front blankets with belly and hind/tail straps, waterproof and breathable are required. Brand, weight, color and the rest up to the boarder as long as it’s appropriate.

5. My barn is not heated, so horses are fine in their turnouts without need for changing. If owner deals with blankets on their own and is satisfied to do so, no extra blanket charge if I don’t have to do anything more than refasten the occasional strap that may have come undone overnight. (If it happens several times a week on a regular basis, I will bring it to owners attention to rectify or let them know that the next month the charge will be levied.)

The occasional blanket malfunction or unexpected weather change (goes from 20 degrees to 60 degrees some day in early April kind of thing) I will just chock up to customer service and handle the fix/change no charge. In the spring and fall when the weather is all over the place for a few weeks. I may talk with the owner and see what they prefer; blanket change with charge or hold off until it is truly wet or cold on a consistent basis. Our pastures do have sheds, so horses can get out of wind and wet if they choose. Usually, they are happily munching grass in the rain no matter what.

Set your policy, be fair to both boarder and yourself, be consistent and firm. Some may leave but they are the ones who are/would likely be the thorns in your side anyhow. And yes, some newbies might need initial education. Help them out with a reasonable and easy plan. Most likely they’ll get it.

[LauraKY]

[QUOTE=CHT;7846581]
I don’t want to charge for blanketing for the inside horses as I am not sure what I would do if someone didn’t want blanket service. The barn is heated, so in the cold months it might be 30 below outside, but it will still be above freezing inside…and in the summer I don’t want horses to have to wear fly sheets in the barn. I don’t offer blanket service to outside horses, but will rescue a horse as needed (I just want to minimize the need!)…maybe I should charge when it happens?

Would a hair elastic work as well as those rubber rings? Most blankets seem to come with the rings already, but good to know you can buy them.[/QUOTE]

Braiding bands work great.

[CLB15]

I was with a barn for years and stick to the style of “blanket managing” that worked so well: Blankets must be in working order, one turnout sheet (2 is better) for cool damp weather, an extra layering sheet (wool or Irish knit) as needed, and a heavy turnout blanket for the extra cold days. If your horse is clipped, they stay “dressed”. If your horse is a hairy beast, the clothes may get pulled when they’re in the closed up barn with other horses. If your horse lives outside, light, light with layer, or heavy as needed… And extras of each so they don’t get too soggy.

If someone only wants snap hardware, or buckle hardware, or t-closure hardware, they I will gladly let them buy my blankets for me! ;-D I have Rambo and amigo and Shires and a selection of store brand blankets, and on all of them, each type of hardware has given out or come undone at one time or another, so I don’t think it’s a cheap versus expensive thing. I’ve had horses who only got turned out on their own slice up their sheets, and ones go out with company that never damaged their clothes. It sucks that an owner would spend more money buying multiple cheap low-denier sheets, but maybe they already tried & wasted money buying higher denier blankets that still got shredded. If it was that bad, if say your horse will wear the clothed you provide, and if you don’t provide them I’m leaving him naked.

[onthebit]

When I give people a copy of our board contract it also has the farm rules as an attachment. Mentioned in the rules are absolutely no closed front blankets and we don’t do blankets with liner systems. Most of our retirees live outside 24/7 and both are too difficult to deal with in the pasture.

[IronwoodFarm]

I have a simple blanket rule – no blankets. Before being labeled a grinch, I only offer field board with horses out 24/7 and I do not have the labor available to supervise blanketing. When I have let boarders provide their own self-care blanketing, it has been an absolute disaster with horses getting caught in blankets and nearly flipping in their blankets. The owners simply do not understand the amount of supervision that blanketed horses need. Since all the horses have plenty of hair and are not clipped for winter work, it makes no sense to blanket. So it is no longer an option. This thread makes me know that I have made the right decision.

[BrookdaleBay]

Where I work and board, every horse has their own clear. plastic rubbermaid bin that holds all their blankets, which is housed on a shelf in the hay room. We have no blanket fee, and during weather changes, every blanket is on hand for swaps. We also keep the front closures buckled up to keep blanketing in the morning faster and easier, and the horses are quite used to this and lower their heads for us.

[sascha]

If the horse is taught to lower its head to stuff it into the neck hole (takes all of 2 days and a half a carrot each of those days) it is quicker and easier by far than farting around with buckles.

Also, having now owned 2 skinny shouldered, pointy protrusion built horses, no way in hell can some horses wear open front and have them fit comfortably. I put custom pleats in all the shoulders and sew the fronts shut on all my blankets to make them fit. Without those adjustments, they absolutely rub, annoy, and tighten improperly.

But, to each his own.

[sascha]

[QUOTE=IronwoodFarm;7849782]
I have a simple blanket rule – no blankets. Before being labeled a grinch, I only offer field board with horses out 24/7 and I do not have the labor available to supervise blanketing. When I have let boarders provide their own self-care blanketing, it has been an absolute disaster with horses getting caught in blankets and nearly flipping in their blankets. The owners simply do not understand the amount of supervision that blanketed horses need. Since all the horses have plenty of hair and are not clipped for winter work, it makes no sense to blanket. So it is no longer an option. This thread makes me know that I have made the right decision.[/QUOTE]

Clearly, your boarders don’t know how to fit blankets! Horses up here in the Great White North wear blankets 24/7 from October - April without issue. Both outdoor board horses and indoor with daily turnout horses.

If blankets are causing injury it’s because they’re cheap crap, they’re left on when horses are too hot and they attempt to get out of them, or they don’t fit right. Or any combination of those! lol

[Magics_Mom]

My boys are clipped and our barn is not heated. They do wear a stable blanket in the barn and the barn staff has to throw a sheet over the top before they go out and remove it when they come back in. All my blankets are closed fronts. I don’t like the open fronts because they can come undone and they don’t fit my horses right. My horses also have been trained to lower their heads to have blankets removed and put on. My barn doesn’t charge for blanketing unless you are asking for changes all the time. Summer and winter I have them dressed for when they go out, when night temps are below 40 and the temps are higher during the day then I ask for them to put another one over their stable blanket because it is not a turnout. They also like to open the barn doors and let all the heat out of the barn so no blanketing is not happening or lighter blanketing. Thank god I never boarded at a place the tells you what kind of blanket to buy. I buy what is good for my horse, not for the person turning them out.

[Sandy_M]

Man, I guess I’ll have to give up my Democratic registration and become Libertarian. Required blankets (brand)? Required hardware? BO has a charge for blankets on/blankets off, if requested. Minimal. No specification. Your horse, your blanket. I make arrangements with a fellow boarder who is out during the day. She unblankets my horse if weather allows. I am there in the evening and I reblanket her horse and mine. Simple. Uncomplicated. No requirements. Frankly, I’d find a new barn if a BO REQUIRED me to buy a certain type of blanket. And our BOs are conscientious. A few years ago, BO was doing a walking check, mid-day, noticed a blanketed horse shivering and determined he was ill and called the vet - so it’s not like they don’t care, but such detailed requirements? No way.

[dotneko]

LOL -when you have 30 horses all wanting to be the first one out (or in), it is below zero out, wind whipping, even the best trained ‘head lowerer’ turns out to be a giraffe. Sorry, I am 5’3" and am not going to be stepping into a dancing around 17 hand giraffe to put a blanket over his head. That moment when they are blind is pretty dangerous since it is the same moment you have to be very much in their spooking zone. I absolutely will not put one on. If the boarder wants it, the boarder has to do it.

[ElisLove]

[QUOTE=LauraKY;7847723]
Braiding bands work great.[/QUOTE]

Not where I live. In our cold temperatures they just snap.

[Beam_Me_Up]

I never boarded anywhere that specified brand or disallowed shoulder guards (don’t know if mine could survive a winter without shoulder guards). I did once board at a place where the BO’s hand arthritis flared up and she struggled with some types of hardware.

I’ve had even some $$ blanket hardware go wonky on me (Rambo, etc.), horses are destructive, so it might just be better to have a “blanket” rule about blankets being in adequate waterproof condition with working hardware, then handle it individually when a blanket breaks and discourage owners from dragging their feet on fixing/replacing.

[quietann]

My barn has a three-turnout rule: light/rainsheet, medium, and heavy. If the light has fill, they want a no-fill version, too. I am trying to convince them to allow a non-T/O layer for extra cold weather. Layering turnouts seems like a bad idea (dampness etc.), and I would rather have my horse in a close-fitting underlayer, but I could be wrong.

There is no charge for blanketing, though in the past the barn was not so strict about the kinds of blankets required. Each boarder had a whiteboard with temperatures listed and what blankets were to be used indoors and outdoors at each temperature range. Apparently that was just a bit too customized for the barn workers, because every owner has different opinions about blanketing.

In any case… mine has two rain sheets and a couple of layers tucked away in my storage area, should the medium or the heavy fail. She is not a blanket shredder, but occasionally has damaged the hardware on her blankets beyond repair.

(And per another thread, I ended up keeping the Rambos…)

[skyy]

I would like to have the rule at my barn (as I am the one that does the blanket changing) that the blankets have to FIT!!! I have one horse whose owner has the required 3 blankets, all the same brand and they’re all 6" too big. They all also have very large tail flaps. The horse cannot lift his tail properly to poop and I am so sick (already) of handling wet poop covered leg strap hardware that I could spit.

[IronwoodFarm]

[QUOTE=sascha;7849989]
Clearly, your boarders don’t know how to fit blankets! Horses up here in the Great White North wear blankets 24/7 from October - April without issue. Both outdoor board horses and indoor with daily turnout horses. [/QUOTE]

I absolutely agree with you about my boarders. The ones who wish to blanket buy ill-fitting cheap stuff. They have been clueless despite being told that the 16.2 TB and 15.1 QH do not wear the same size. I have decided to have peace this year and banned blankets. The boarders may move barns, which is fine with me as I think the wife hates field board. My horse grow coats like yaks, so blanketing is out of the question for me.

[sascha]

[QUOTE=dotneko;7850813]
LOL -when you have 30 horses all wanting to be the first one out (or in), it is below zero out, wind whipping, even the best trained ‘head lowerer’ turns out to be a giraffe. Sorry, I am 5’3" and am not going to be stepping into a dancing around 17 hand giraffe to put a blanket over his head. That moment when they are blind is pretty dangerous since it is the same moment you have to be very much in their spooking zone. I absolutely will not put one on. If the boarder wants it, the boarder has to do it.[/QUOTE]

Blind? How the heck are you putting them on? If the horses’ eyes are covered up for a time, no wonder they don’t want to put their necks down. Also, spooking zone? Every zone on a horse is a spooking zone. If you mean standing in front of them, er, no, don’t stand in front. Stand at the side like you would to bridle a horse.

If you offer the neck hole with the body of the blanket draped over your left arm, and the chest part as the part that goes over their eyes, there’s virtually no moment when they are ‘blinded’. A quick swoosh of the body of the blanket to twist it up onto the back of the horse and it’s done in one fell swoop, taking only a moment.

At any rate, whatever, some people have a bee up their butt about closed fronts. Those of us that have horses that don’t fit in open fronts have a bee up our butt about open fronts. :lol:

[Gloria]

All my blankets have front buckles but I never undo them. They are just decorations. I have found that lifting the neck hole to their heads for them just to stick their nose through much easier and less taxing for my injured shoulders than flipping the blankets over their backs and dealing with the buckles. I leave the body of the blanket dangling down while lifting the neck hole so the front buckles actually end up at the crest first. Once the blankets are hooked around their necks through the neck hole, I then tuck and adjust the whole blanket up their backs. This is the only way I can put heavy blankets on my horses.

[dotneko]

Of course there is a moment when their eyes are covered. No way around it. No matter how quick you are or how small you bunch the neck. Of course you would stand to the side. Tell me how you would put on a turtleneck sweater without having a moment when you could not see???
That moment is the exact moment when you have to step in closer to the horse.
No thanks. Couldn’t give me an over the head blanket and I won’t have my staff or me have to deal with one.

[Covergirl15]

We don’t have a blanketing fee or a specific rule per say, but where I live (in TN, so it never gets that cold) it is pretty standard for most horses (at least in the barns I’ve been at) to have at least a sheet and a medium weight blanket (both turnout), though I also have a light weight blanket that seems to get plenty of use as well. (If I’m at the barn riding then I blanket myself, but if not, I leave it up to their best judgement). Some also have a stable blanket, but there’s hardly enough room on his stall for the 3 blankets I currently have, and I feel like the turnouts can easily be used inside. Also, I think it is completely appropriate to let a boarder know if a blanket needs repaired, and know our BM would let me know (and it would not offend me in the least!)