I think you are mixing “mucking” with groom duties. Pay for a straight-out mucker is a solid 8.00 -10.00 per hour - but once they have to put their hands on any horse, then you need to hire a groom whom you can trust to make correct decisions for the health and well being of your horse, so at a minimum you need to be in the 15.00-18.00 an hour range (and some bennies). We have always divided duties. We have hired pure muckers who do nothing but clean and bed the stalls and grooms who have some mucking duties on some days but are focused on the horse care. It allows us to put a little less time on the higher paid worker but maintain good horse care but allows some flexibility with days off and tasks. Just about anyone willing to show up can learn to muck, not everyone can feed, turn out and have the common sense required to care for a horse safely.
Trixie, you left “They have to work for the Krazee” off your list :yes:
Just to clear up some misconceptions
This is not a high end barn , it offers minimal care , (feeding and turning out )
Here are the exact morning duties ONLY, their are different people for afternoon.
8:00 AM : Feed with buckets that have already been made up for each horse 5 minutes
8:05: Remake Feed buckets for night Feed. 5 min
8:10: Turn out horses 10 minutes ( 7 of them just walk out of their stalls into their pasture , don’t even have to put a halter on them, The rest of the paddocks are with in 25 to 100 ft of the barn.
8:20 : Muck and re bed, put hay in and dump water buckets , 17 stalls at present time takes 2 hours ( with TWO people doing them) Thats 4 man hours to do 17 stalls
10:20: Sweep barn floor and feed cats 10 minutes
10:30 : Spread manure 20 to 30 min
11:00: check water troughs clean and fill if needed (20 minutes) ( rotational basis for cleaning them)
total time it takes baring any unforseen circumstances 3 1/2 hours , again with two people ( 7 man hours)
Time alloted and paid from Barn owner for doing this work is between 4 and 5 hours each for two people
This is the entire job discription , they are not required to groom , They are required to a least look down at the horses legs to see if there are any cuts as they turn them out , but it’s the trainer who takes care of any injuries .
Buckets are only scrubed once a week . They are not even required to answer the phone : and if they ride, they have horses available to them and can join in on Sunday Schooling At no cost to them . This job is on the books so Workmans comp is carried:
So 17 horses between 2 people for morning chores are given up to 10 man hours combined to do this job
Thats it : Perhaps some of the confusion was do to many of you thinking this was a high end show barn , and that these were grooms. Not the case. Thank you for those who responded with useful advice.
[QUOTE=MIKES MCS;7251792]
Those who don’t have barns or business’s seemed to think a a boarding facility who charges $400.00 per month will keep its boarders if they double that in order to pay a stall mucker a livable wage that exceeds there own, I can guarantee that barn will not stay in business long in this area . [/QUOTE]
IME, this is why it’s not possible to make money offering stall board at $400 per month.
At that price point, if you have paid labor at all, I can’t see how it is possible to keep from losing money on board. And if you don’t have paid labor, you are working too hard for a very marginal return.
A “business” may be profitable despite this, if there are other revenue streams such as lessons and sales, but taking stall board alone and making money on it is really difficult, even when bringing in more board money per horse for a higher level of service, because to provide it, your labor will have to have commensurate skills which in turn will cost you more to provide.
I’m not clear, from reading the OP’s posts whether the goal is to increase retention of help, or to attract help to the job in the first place. Increasing wages and/or benefits could be considered to improve retention of the help you already have, keeping in mind that it’s time consuming to keep breaking in new staff.
Your ability to attract new people to the job will to a large extent depend on the prevailing wages in your area not only for barn jobs but for other types of work as well.
According to the work description above, Mike, if you are paying your help $10 per hour, it works out to $4.41 per horse per day.
Which, not accounting for the wages being on the books, means that the monthly cost per horse for just the two people is $132.30.
[QUOTE=MIKES MCS;7251792]
Some of you have gotten pretty combative over this issue, I am not talking about a full time job here I am talking a partime job, PARTIME 20 to 25 hours per week Since when did offereing part time Jobs become so evil ?? Many people who work part time are only looking to supplement a household income NOT Be the sole provider for a family. So why so many angry responses ???[/QUOTE]
To answer this question: Because working part time doesn’t mean you get to do a half-a$$ed job for the, say, 4 hours you are there.
IMO, a job is a job no matter how long it takes. It should be paid the same whether the person is working 40 hours a week or 20.
And the employee having another source of income (like a bread-winning spouse) is none of the employer’s business… unless you think the SO should be underwriting your labor costs.
In addition, I don’t think having 2 or 3 part time jobs is a joy. So while each part time employer can imagine that she’s not responsible for providing much-- say, some pocket money and a way to get out of the house-- the reality might be that the money earned is necessary to paying for the basics like food and fuel.
Come to think of it, this “hey, it’s a part time job so the same job should be paid less” reeks a little bit of the arguments that used to be made about paying women less. Somehow a woman doing a job wasn’t about work and fair pay because she was presumed to have a husband doing that.
However, IIRC, Mikes MCS is up in Michigan not near a major city (not that Detroit would be much of a boost these days) where the business is quite seasonal, as is the available labor force. $400/450 is about the going rate for decent basic board services-I pay 450 for very similar for retiree with 4x yearly worming, light basic grooming as needed (not daily), blanketing (no hourly changes, just on off or weight change in AM/PM) schedule-hold for vet and farrier. Gal that owns it works so has somebody in from 8 to 12 M-F, sometimes a weekend day for major projects. I could have found something for as low as 350 but much farther out, as it is its 45min each way.
Unless near a big city, rates are pretty similar in the neighboring states. Fancy show barns are about double that.
But I bet there are FFA or school kids in Ag programs dying for something like this that don’t mind the cold, can lift a feed sack, start the tractor and come insured so they don’t sue the crap out of you.
I have always had the assumption that when something is “less” that it should cost “more,” for instance, food in smaller packages costs more per unit price.
So if I want good part time help, I should be prepared to offer more money per hour if I have a smaller number of hours to offer.
When full time people are put on a salary, it’s usually because if they were paid by the hour, it would be too expensive. The trade off is stability and a steady amount of money.
But in fairness, many salaried jobs also offer overtime wages.
[QUOTE=findeight;7252684]
However, IIRC, Mikes MCS is up in Michigan not near a major city (not that Detroit would be much of a boost these days) where the business is quite seasonal, as is the available labor force. $400/450 is about the going rate for decent basic board services-I pay 450 for very similar for retiree with 4x yearly worming, light basic grooming as needed (not daily), blanketing (no hourly changes, just on off or weight change in AM/PM) schedule-hold for vet and farrier. I could have gone as low as 350 with more add ons.
Unless near a big city, rates are pretty similar in the neighboring states. Fancy show barns are about double that.
But I bet there are FFA or school kids in Ag programs dying for something like this that don’t mind the cold, can lift a feed sack, start the tractor and come insured so they don’t sue the crap out of you.[/QUOTE]
Which, failing having programs like that to supply [free/discounted] labor, isn’t to say you can actually make money at those prices.
Sort of like…“it costs me this much to put a foal on the ground, and raise it till age 3, so it must be worth $ab,cde.fg.” Not necessarily so.
But if the local pool of boarders wont pay for it? You can’t raise the board. Break even on board is if you are lucky.
As a BO if you can’t afford to pay a living wage you can’t afford the help and should do the work yourself. If you don’t have the time to do the work yourself and you can’t afford the help then you probably should get out of that line of work.
[QUOTE=Snowfox;7252715]
As a BO if you can’t afford to pay a living wage you can’t afford the help and should do the work yourself. If you don’t have the time to do the work yourself and you can’t afford the help then you probably should get out of that line of work.[/QUOTE]
that’s ridiculous. Not every job needs to pay a living wage…and I’m still not sure minimum wage should be a living wage. People take part time jobs for a lot of reasons…sometimes it’s because it is all they can get and they will add another part time job on top to live. Sometimes it’s because that is all the want to work. That’s not to say the rate should be less than if the job was fulltime, but you simply cannot use such a broad brush to make judgments.
OP is having a hard time keeping employees. There are a lot of factors involved, pay just being one of them. In fact, employee engagement is not as linked with pay rate as you might think. It’s a factor, but throwing more money at non-engaged employees usually does nothing to fix the situation.
As someone who works full-time and has a small (12 stall barn, a third are borders and the rest are my show ponies) that requires part time help, I find this thread interesting and enlightening. My barn requires about 3 hours of work in the morning and one in the afternoon. I usually have two people working to cover these hours in different ways and I cover in any holes in the evenings and weekends.
I have plenty of stories about crazy barn help, crappy workers and more. I also have many people that have worked for me successfully. I have found that the working off board definitely does not work. I pay $9 an hour and put a cap on the amount of hours the job should take. I usually keep help for anywhere from 6 months to one that has been with me for over three years.
My workers and I are completely okay with this turnover rate because neither they or I expect a job mucking stalls and turning out to support them.
I will add that one of the best hires we ever had (as stall-cleaner) was the wife of another local trainer. She stayed home with the kids; once they were all in school, she was happy to find a part-time job that allowed her to be home by the time they got off the school bus. She was quick, efficient, and very horse-savvy.
The downside was that she called off sick every time one of her three kids had to stay home. Which was completely understandable, but it put quite a strain on the barn with nobody to fill in at the last moment. :eek:
I have always had the assumption that when something is “less” that it should cost “more,” for instance, food in smaller packages costs more per unit price.
So if I want good part time help, I should be prepared to offer more money per hour if I have a smaller number of hours to offer.
When full time people are put on a salary, it’s usually because if they were paid by the hour, it would be too expensive. The trade off is stability and a steady amount of money.
Very well said.
It may be true that not every job has to pay a living wage, but it needs to be worthwhile for the employee to show up.
Show of hands… how many of you are going to drive anywhere to work for 4 hours for $40 doing manual labor?
[QUOTE=RugBug;7252761]
Not every job needs to pay a living wage…and I’m still not sure minimum wage should be a living wage. [/QUOTE]
What?
What use, then, is minimum wage?
IMO, paying people less than minimum wage/a living is about redistributing costs. They get paid somewhere, some time, by some person. Maybe that’s someone’s parent, spouse or perhaps tax payers and people with medical insurance policies who help subsidize medical care for the indigent and/or defaulting.
FWIW, I have said of–evah that we HOs weren’t paying enough for board if horse-keeping depended on under-paying labor. If we paid what it cost to keep horses (or to pick lettuce for that matter), someone like might very well be priced out. As it is, I can’t find a barn in my area that would do care the way I’d like. That’s mainly because most folks can’t/won’t pay what that costs so the BO conforms to market conditions.
Yessirreebob, the oldies with high standards (for horses and for employees) might be leaving the building.
If you don’t pay a living wage, then you believe in a slave class. A class of people who have no chance of upward mobility, who are stuck with poor schools because of not being able to afford to live somewhere with high property tax, & not able to afford health care. Basically a group of people to be used in a subhuman way as cheap labor.
BUT THEY GET TO WORK WITH HORSES!!!111111111111111111111111111
Paying less than a “living wage” doesn’t mean a “slave” class exists! Slaves (which still exist today in some cultures) are PROPERTY, not people who have entered into a agreement to work for substandard wages.
Statistics show that MOST people paid minimum wage or just above are NOT living in destitution as their wages are supplemental to other jobs or other household members. Over 80% of minimum wage earners have their own car, cell phone and TV with cable/satellite service. Many are young people starting out in the workforce. Those who are literally trying to exist off only min wage are eligible for enough in benefits (rent assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, assistance with power bills etc) with a value of over $15k+ per annum. In many cases they are people who suffer as a result of choices they have made regarding, drugs, alcohol, refusal to attend school and become literate.
Employers pay what the market bears. Low paying jobs are always going to have high turnover as they are rungs on a ladder which we want to encourage people to climb. Unless there are perks (chance to ride the horses, free food in a restaurant, hours that are flexible for a mom etc) are good enough to offset the low wages people will leave.
Wow as the original poster , all I can say is this topic has morphed into something of a Three eyed monster. Slave Labor ??? Interesting!
