Lesson barns disappearing, or my imagination?

[Alterration]

I’m almost positive you’re joking…

But…for those in the room who may not get it - If a business makes $0, while there’s no liability to the IRS, there’s also no income to live on or pay staff.

Plus, the more lessons a horse does the earlier they break down and thus the increase in vet bills.

And the same salary I worked for when I was a trainer (I think I took home maybe $10 a lesson?) does not a living wage make. So now we are asking trainers to be on public assistance which they usually can’t get because they are considered able-bodied and then we wonder why they want to push clients to have their own horses and show.

[Angela_Freda]

@Alterration

I’m almost positive you’re joking…

But…for those in the room who may not get it - If a business makes $0, while there’s no liability to the IRS, there’s also no income to live on or pay staff.

Plus, the more lessons a horse does the earlier they break down and thus the increase in vet bills.

And the same salary I worked for when I was a trainer (I think I took home maybe $10 a lesson?) does not a living wage make. So now we are asking trainers to be on public assistance which they usually can’t get because they are considered able-bodied
Assistance is based on income. So if you make below an amount you can get food stamps, for example. Not sure where abled bodied comes in

and then we wonder why they want to push clients to have their own horses and show.

But aren’t the incomes from boarding, training, lessons, leases, if they make hay, etc… combined creating the businesses entire income?
So yes lessons may not make anything or much, but the other streams of income add to it also.

Lessons where I am are not $50, more like $75 and up. And stall cleaners don’t make $17 here either. $15, if they’re lucky. Board runs $1800 and up and requires lessons/training rides.
The last couple places I worked grew their own hay.
There are other ways the costs come down and the income increases.
That income is what taxes and write offs are based on.

So no, I’m not joking.

[Alterration]

Boarding makes negative dollars and is often a loss leader.

Leasing is good when you can get it but you have the same problem with the horse expenses.

I know a few barns that have enough land to make selling hay an income stream but they are far far outside of the city, making boarding margins slimmer.

Training is where it’s at, but most lesson barns of the type we are talking about - the starter ones - don’t have the skills or the horses (in terms of who sends them) to do it.

And the same trainer cannot be simultaneously training up downers, making hay, producing lease horses, taking clients to show, cleaning stalls, and maintaining a property.

Those are all separate jobs requiring paid labor to do it. And stall cleaners are now running ~$17/hour alone.

[Angela_Freda]

I’ll add, in my experience the barns running at the greatest loss were the ones where the barn mostly held horses owned by management or barn owners
When you have twenty stalls filled but only five boarders, but none of those other 15 horses are lesson/lease horses… the loss is your own fault.

[fivestrideline]

@Alterration

And the same trainer cannot be simultaneously training up downers, making hay, producing lease horses, taking clients to show, cleaning stalls, and maintaining a property.

One can try, for a bit, but that’s burnout city if you can even find enough hours to do half that.

Speaking as someone who would love to teach kiddos how to ride and groom and lunge and wrap, the math of Lesson Horses just doesn’t math until you scale the business WAY up - past the point where your average person may want to do it. So, no young rider lesson program for me, despite the skill and desire.

[fivestrideline]

@Angela_Freda

I’ll add, in my experience the barns running at the greatest loss were the ones where the barn mostly held horses owned by management/barn owners

Sure, but I’ve seen the exact same problem with programs running a lesson string and some lease horses - the costs to keep a horse in work (and what about when that horse retires?) are just too high vs the price people are willing to pay for lessons. The benefit of the small, local shows (if any) focused programs? Group lessons and trail rides and barn days where you learn all the fun care stuff. That gets complicated and lower on the priority list when boarding and lesson horses are losing you money and you need everyone to BUY and SHOW

[Alterration]

Yep, so then people whine because lesson programs dump unused horses at auction.

I’m not advocating for that btw, just saying that practices which were once acceptable or normal are no longer considered so.

By the way, you don’t get to count your own horses or their keeping as a write off unless you plan to sell them or use them for lessons.

[Alterration]

Assistance in some states requires validation of need.

My 21 year old kid can’t get it because the state thinks he could make more, never mind that there aren’t jobs where he lives to get them.

So yes - assistance is often based on “need” and that need isn’t there unless you have children or a disability.

The social safety net isn’t as safe as people think it is.

[Alterration]

Yep.

Heck just boarding alone and doing all the work myself had me evicting my boarders right quick. People have no concept if they haven’t done it. Zero.

Oh, and those extra horses barns accumulate? Every barn owner running a lesson program that I have met ends up with extra horses when boarders abandon them, they don’t work out as lesson or sale horses etc. Very rarely are they initially pets.

And again, sure, they could dump them at auction (they are rarely worth selling on the open market even after going through the lien process) but these are horses they have cared for dutifully, sometimes for years, before the owners peace out so they can have an extra vacation.

I know there are some barns doing ok, but those barns usually have an aggressive show program and the name and price tag to go with it.

[Angela_Freda]

But at least lesson horses and leased horses bring in some income
Ones show horses or their daughters do not
And if the owners aren’t adding in their own board, well, it’s easy to see when it dies pretty quickly.

[ShouldersBack]

Horses are expensive and people can’t afford it. Middle class is/has been shrinking while the cost of everything has gone up. Even if your kiddo wanted to learn to ride, a lot of families can’t afford it. Barns don’t do the “clean stalls for lessons” thing for a variety of reasons and most horse owners have little interest in sharing their horse with a new rider, also for a variety of reasons. So unless you’re in the upper income levels ($150k+ annual, minimum), you probably just can’t afford the lessons even if you wanted them.

I’m in a HCOL coastal city and there are plenty of barns - there are just no lesson barns and the ones that exist have waiting lists. Folks who can shell out $1800/month for board, another $1k for training, and another $35k for the horse are doing just fine and have plenty of options.

[quietann]

I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that lesson horses worked a lot harder when I was a teen. Most where I took lessons did 1 to 3 lessons 5 days a.week, often a long trail ride on Sundays, and had Mondays off. These were group lessons with a fair amount of jumping, albeit mostly 2’6" and under. Most lived on alfalfa hay only, and were shod in front or barefoot.

[Bogey2]

I started going out of the lesson business about 4 yrs. ago as my lesson horses retired or passed. I just could not afford to own so many horses in my area. Between taxes, insurance, hay prices etc. I was concerned about the future.

[Angela_Freda]

I think success likely involves having lots of pots at a simmer at once.
Lessons are least profitable because the horses care is on the barn
Boarding, and requiring lessons from boarders, or boarders who train with you, go to shows,… That’s where you make more, because the horse is the responsibility of the owner not the BO.

When the BO is top heavy with their own horses using stalls and consumables,… That’s not sustainable.

When the BO, BM and other primaries in the business can’t or won’t get their hands dirty when staff isn’t available (out sick, injured, or just quit and there’s no one to hire) and 1/3 of the staff is stuck doing the work of three… that’s not sustainable.
.

[fivestrideline]

@Amberley

l. If you don’t run a business like a business? you won’t make money

Sure, and this kind of goes without saying.

However, part of the conversation is about the smaller, less showing focused barns that people tell new riders on here to find all the time. “You don’t need an A show program, you need a lesson barn focused on the basics! Something that just does a few local shows and has lesson horses. You don’t need to buy or lease right now!!” is a SUPER common line. I’ve even said it myself. But the reality is in most places they don’t exist. Why? Because the profit margin is too thin (or non-existent), and not everywhere has room for 60-100 horses, and not everyone wants to run a large program.

So, you don’t replace the lesson string, maybe keep a few boarders in a program, or you kick everyone out and shut the whole thing down. Lesson programs are disappearing, plain and simple.

[Alterration]

@fivestrideline

However, part of the conversation is about the smaller, less showing focused barns that people tell new riders on here to find all the time. “You don’t need an A show program, you need a lesson barn focused on the basics! Something that just does a few local shows and has lesson horses. You don’t need to buy or lease right now!!” is a SUPER common line. I’ve even said it myself. But the reality is in most places they don’t exist . Why? Because the profit margin is too thin (or non-existent), and not everywhere has room for 60-100 horses, and not everyone wants to run a large program.

Agreed. This is what we were talking about initially.

Yes - of course diversifying and funneling people to spend increasing amounts of $$ buying fancy horses to show makes for a profitable business but it used to be that lesson barns with 5-10 lesson horses that maybe did a few local shows and had some fun shows could survive.

Most barns are not the 60-100 horse size nor could they be anywhere close to a major city or town. As mentioned before that drives horses out further and the further parents have to drive for the normal activity the less likely they are to be excited about doing that. Yes I know there are traveling soccer and softball teams but they don’t start there - they start out in local fields that are often just down the road. In this area those fields used to belong to horse farms - the golf courses and neighborhoods took over.

Most smaller barns are in the 10-20 stall range, and those made up the majority of the facilities in the areas that I’ve lived in over the last 50 years. The huge ones were typically poorly maintained and nowhere you wanted to keep a horse.

[Alterration]

Yep. Me too. The horses I rode at the lesson facilities worked hard. I don’t think that’s necessarily horrible, but it does make other people upset.

[Alterration]

You sound like you’ve got a bone to pick with a specific barn owner, and I get it. I’ve seen barns that run as the barn you mention does. It was an experience like that that made me buy my own finally.

However, that does not uniformly describe all boarding barn owners, nor even most of them. The vast majority of the smaller barn owners that I have been around over the last 50 years have been busting their tails only to fold because of attitudes that claim they must be rolling in it because of board or care prices.

Having done those books, the exact opposite is true.

And yes - as mentioned later - if the facility supports it of course diversifying and pushing people to spend more $$ makes it profitable. But even the facilities and existing land don’t necessarily support all of that without traveling far afield.

I know of only two barns in the area who have enough land to support growing hay even for their own horses. They are each about a hour-2 hour drive outside the city one way. Many smaller historic facilities do not have indoor arenas by local code. They used to be thriving lesson barns but now they are being pushed out by development and dwindling interest in the sport, as well as tiny margins.

[fivestrideline]

@Amberley

Successful lesson programs are big, period. They always have been.

No. They have NOT always been big, or “commercial”.

@Amberley

IMHO the small farms you keep mentioning where someone is just trying to supplement their own horse habit are the absolute worst case scenario. They aren’t committed to being a professional instructor and don’t have the horses to move students up. There are often personality issues and personal / professional boundary issues because the farm owner isn’t running it like a business. I never recommend that to people looking to learn to ride, I say go to a big outfit and take group lessons and trail rides for several years then decide if you want to compete.

I would NEVER suggest to someone to go to a “big outfit and trail ride” if they want to learn good basics and horsemanship. The people at those places are no more “committed to being a professional instructor” than someone doing it with 5-10 stalls? I really don’t see the connection there. Not sure how size of program correlates to “personality issues” either.

Also, not everyone lives in a place where these big operations exist? Big, commercial programs like this require access to tons of land - unless you live out west or extremely rurally, the places that used to do this have been gobbled up by development or sold when the original owners retired.

Honestly, maybe we just have different experiences, but I don’t see how wanting to do something on a smaller scale (which ABSOLUTELY used to be possible in the last 20 years) is such a bad thing.

[Alterration]

That is just untrue. Maybe where you live or during your lifespan but in many many areas, small barns used to be successful and they used to dot the landscape and be hidden inside of cities. That’s where many many people learned to ride, back in the day.

In the 90s I lived in a college town in a state that had a lot of rural areas. Despite that, there were at least 4-5 prominent facilities right in town (within a 10 minute drive) that did lessons. I think the biggest had 15 lesson horses. They were run as businesses, I don’t know where the assertion comes from that all small barns are subsidizing your personal horses but that was not the case 40 years ago.

They were driven further to the outskirts by development and now they are all an hour outside of town - those that have not closed or transformed into show barns with only 3 lesson horses and the rest owned or leased horses.

Most large operations around me in the area I live in now have 1-3 lesson horses and they quickly push people into ownership. Every boarding facility within an hour radius requires lessons and/or training with board - at least all the ones without barbed wire fences and terrible maintenance.

The landscape is changing and rapidly. The area I live in now used to be the king of saddlebred training (STL) but taxation changes to livestock rules and rapid development in the cities pushed that all to KY or further out to Columbia.

Dressage? Not one barn in our area has lesson horses. If you want to take dressage lessons you’d better be prepared to own and to pay a trainer.

The hunter scene is popping but those barns are all pretty far out and they push you into rated shows quickly. I know - I have one of their discarded lesson horses.

I think the western scene here is a little different but again, I don’t know of any barn with a huge lesson horse string that I’d say “yep, go there - they’ll teach you strong basics”. The ones who have the knowledge are running serious AQHA programs where again, the goal is ownership.

I wouldn’t touch the main huge facility with a 10’ pole. People I run into who have spent any time there have abominable horse handling skills, and horses have been injured and died due to terrible maintenance. The whole property floods.

Anyway - the smaller facilities used to be a way to make a living. Not to get rich - no one is saying you get rich doing it - nor even to have enough for vacations etc. But I had many very good trainers in my youth who lived exactly that lifestyle and did ok.