Circumstances are changing and our barn will have a barn manager and a separate trainer for the first time in a long time. There likely won’t be enough students for daily lessons, but a few days a week and a solid show group. What arrangements have you had that worked successfully? Should we expect to pay the farm or the trainer directly? Should the farm get a cut from boarders? We haven’t had to pay that in the past. Everyone wants to work together and be fair, so we are lucky to have such a considerate group. Any advice on how farms are handling this now is appreciated.
Are you the owner of the barn or a boarder? I think it all depends on how the owner wants to set it up. Some barn owners want a cut of the trainer’s fee or charges a ‘ring fee’. Sometimes the ring fee is charged to the trainer so the trainer might offset that cost to the clients (or hopefully just include it in their lesson fee). just make sure any outside trainer is licensed.
I own a barn and have a separate trainer working here. The boarders all pay board to me. I also get a haul in fee for outside horses.
I don’t charge a separate fee to the trainer for lessons, as lessons are taken on horses I get board from and the horses aren’t used more than once a day, so there is no more wear and tear than if the owner was riding the horse.
I totally agree with gottagrey that insurance is key. My trainer’s policy lists me and my farm LLC as additional insureds. I also have a liability plus care/custody/control policy for me and the LLC. That is not the place to skimp. The boarders/students don’t have those details, though, and frankly it isn’t really their concern so if you are just a boarder, no need to worry about that.
Your barn manager/trainer should be able to answer any questions about who you pay what. I also recommend group texts of the 3 of you on any management issues, so that you all are on the same page/we all know what is going on with each horse.
Usually, the barn manager would be paid by the barn owner either hourly or salary, and the trainer would collect their own fees and then pay out to the barn owner whatever they owe. A “ring fee” to a trainer isn’t about whether or not there is additional wear and tear on the facilities. It’s about the trainer using your facility to run their business out of to make money, instead of buying their own facility. Why should they get to use your farm for free? I can think of no other industry where a business owner would get to use someone else’s building/office space/etc. without paying to use it.
This is always a very polarizing topic of discussion, I’m sure there’s several threads you can search for about it.
Whichever side of the fence you’re on, make sure you have excellent contracts and everyone has liability insurance.
For me, it is a huge convenience as I keep my own horse in training with her, and it is usually easy to hop out and ride. My real job/work schedule is erratic/often changes at the last minute (I am an attorney). I can’t be trailering out daily or committing to ride times well in advance. I can easily text and have her do a training ride if my day has gone to heck, etc. it works.
That is probably a pretty circumstance-specific thing, why programs are set up in various ways. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t beneficial to me, and preferably to us both,
you got that right! I met a friend at Starbucks to catch up as we’d not seen each other in several months. The looks we got from others “OMG they’re going to TALK!” Funny I didn’t realize that particular Starbucks was a library LOL
The majority are not buying coffee, and snacks, or even full meals? It may not be a huge sum, but it’s still paying to be able to occupy space and use their internet.
There is also a really big difference between using your own laptop while sitting quietly at a small table, and instructing other people to ride a 1200 pound animal that requires acres of land and specific types of facilities that require a lot more maintenance than that little table. Do small business owners that, say, build wood items they sell on Etsy assume they can use someone else’s wood shop for free and not have to buy their own saws/drills/etc.? Do piano teachers assume they can go to a piano store and teach students on those pianos for free, instead of buying their own piano? No.
Not to mention the difference between using the space of a large international multi-billion dollar company versus the facility of another small business owner in an industry where most barn owners operate on very thin margins.
I don’t think your logic is flawed, but I think it needs to be assessed on a case by case basis, and the BO/BM needs to careful consider their business model. In the OP’s situation, it doesn’t sound like its a boarding barn that just happens to allow outside trainers. It sounds like this is somewhat of a program - lessons, show team, etc. But the trainer isn’t there everyday, or in charge of running the barn. I’d be cautious as a barn manager to charge a fee to the trainer in this type of situation as (1) it sounds like this might be one of the perks of the barn that attract/keeps boarders and (2) usually any fee ultimately gets passed down to boarders in one way or another. The BM might find that boarders are a bit disgruntled to be paying extra for something that is essentially part the barn’s “program”/marketing.
I acknowledge that the potential counter argument is that if the trainer has that much business at one barn, perhaps they should be paying something for the privilege of a nice built in business with no overhead. That could be an outcome as well, but I would want to be weighing my options as a BO/BM - how full is my barn, how competitive is the local market, could the trainer just pick up and go elsewhere (and what impact would that have on my boarding clients), etc.
I think local custom also plays a part here. It is quite common in some areas for a fee to be charged, and not in others.
This is right – I totally understand mmeqcenter’s logic, but individual circumstance is important and there are many reasons why different arrangements exist. It is very uncommon in my market to charge a fee for this sort of thing, and it IS built into the board in many ways. My board is some of the most expensive in the area, and I can charge that because of the trainer, in part. I also don’t want half a dozen trainers coming in and out and having quarrels over ring time and jumps v. no jumps and all the reasons having one house trainer is easier than managing a rotating schedule of outside trainer access. At the same time, I used to have a hard time even getting a trainer out at all when it was just me.
There are lots of trainers who can never afford to own their own property and have to figure out some sort of rental. my “rental” is just structured as board, which isn’t that much different than renting a stall block. I prefer to retain control of the stable management. The trainer still pays for overhead – that is factored into the board for her horses, and she pays her own insurance costs, etc. She just isn’t directly paying the water bill or shavings bill, etc. Indirectly she pays her share.
At my last barn, which had several free lance trainers working out of it, each trainer had to pay a fixed fee to the owner/BM for each person they gave a lesson to. And each trainer just included that in their lesson fee, so while I paid my trainer $65 for a half hour private lesson, my trainer gave $15 to owner/BM and kept $50 for herself. Every trainer also had to show proof of insurance to the owner/BM in order to teach there.
It depends on how each individual boarding and training business is set up and what services OP uses. Cant really be specific about OPs question without knowing what the barn and program are doing now other then point out the barn/farm manager is an employee of the barn and pad by the barn, not each individual client.
OP should be getting pricing and billing details and possibly a new contract. READ it. On the ring fees…exact details are really between trainer and barn owner and they are usually included in the lesson price client pays trainer. Some barns might do it differently and it varies depending on whether trainer is a free lancer, a barn employee or owns the barn or leasing stalls and facility space.
Will advise OP if barn is bringing in a regular trainer and adding a manager? Board and fees for training services likely are going to increase.
Absolutely it’s more common to charge or not charge in different areas, and to each their own, each BO can do what they want. If a BO doesn’t want to charge a trainer, that’s completely their prerogative. My point is just that it is perfectly reasonable for a BO to charge for someone else to use their farm to make money. The whole idea of “they can’t charge my trainer to teach here, I already pay to use the arena in board” is ridiculous to me, and it was even when I was a boarder.
