Same here.
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as for adding hours at feed stores, the small chain we use primarily is locally owned but the owner is easy to talk with, as a suggestion I asked if he had thought about staying open later which he did add an hour now closing the 12 stores at 7pm week days, they are also open Saturdays and half a day Sunday
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When I lived on the east coast of the USA that blew my mind. Every day? For 2 hours?? After work and before dark??? I understood why so many places had an indoor in an area that didn’t get very cold.
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Sympathy from me too. I seem to pick professions where there is literally no time off, paid or otherwise. As a vet student, I once couldn’t go attend to my own horses major colic because I was needed in clinic and was told to have someone else deal with it when I asked if there was any way pretty please that I could leave treat her/bring her in. I’m still resentful of that. I learned to trim my own horses years ago for a similar reason.
One idea though, at my barn we have someone who hauls in the night before and leaves her horse for the farrier and then picks them up the next evening. She does the same thing for routine vet work and we handle that for her.
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I’m tempted to go down this road. My farrier is injured and out for the next 5 months. I’m not a fan of other farriers in my area plus getting them to work with me is a PITA.
I have the same issue as OP with a lot of businesses (I don’t own horses, but I work 9-5 and have trouble making it to many places during their open hours.) If places would just have ONE day per week with early morning or evening hours, or even open a few hours on ONE weekend day per month, that would be so extremely helpful. (AND they would be getting business they are currently missing out on.) Even with that, I often have to twist my life into a pretzel to make sure I can, say, get to the bank during the three hours they have on Saturday morning.
I chose all of my medical providers because they did have appointments during those times, but since covid the only one that still does is my dentist. Luckily I have plenty of PTO, but even so it’s a pain. I try to schedule multiple appointments in one day so I’m not wasting a ton of vacation days on boring medical BS. I order to achieve this I have to make the appointments months and months in advance. At least you can pay someone to hold a horse… you can’t pay someone to go get a mammogram for you.
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It really has gotten harder for smaller horse owners in recent years. More and more, farriers, vets, dentists, and other equine practitioners and businesses are trying to focus their businesses on facilities with larger numbers of horses.
I think the best advice is to find out what farriers (and vets) service the farms closest to you, then try to use those practitioners first. If you work f/t and are not available during business hours, I would work hard to form a relationship with a part-time worker and pay them well, including a “trip fee” any time they come out to do fewer than a certain number of hours of work, and use them as a holder for your routine appointments. This would provide you some peace of mind also for those times when a horse needs a vet visit or other care in the middle of the day.
Be aware that as a smaller client you will be held to a higher standard than a larger barn. Expect to (potentially) pay a slightly higher rate for services, include a tip, and always have everything set up nicely ahead of time–for example, in the summer have a fan and a bottle of fly spray set up by the work area. Make sure your horses are well behaved. Pay promptly without having to be asked. Say thank you frequently, give holiday gifts, etc.
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I’ve accepted that until retirement I feel like I’m on Survivor. There is a BIG difference if you have the funds to pay someone to mow, do your stalls, clean your house etc. If not, and it’s YOU and you need to work FT away from home…horse keeping takes grit. I got grit in spades.
All my vaca time gets burned on horse appointments, farm keeping and appointments and it just is what it is.
It is amazing, simply amazing to see my horses in the am, in the pm, all weekend and OMG they are relaxed and happy. Grew up with them at home and it seemed easy. Of course we did not have 26 acres and why does it feel like the Amazon??? Beating nature back with the mower, weedeater, nippers, chainsaw.
Shit breaking every,GD week. So thankful my DH grew up on a farm and can fix literally anything and get us back beating back the plant growth. I laugh writing this but let me tell you there are times I cuss like a sailor out there.
We work like we’re Amish.
Gotta claw time for training and riding.
OK, took a break in the basement and now back out to mow. 
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How does anyone get a doctors appointment or dental appointment and services just like that? You take time off . In the cases of vet and farrier you are there for the appointment or someone else is or you have the horse up and waiting so they can work on them ( if you have that kind of horse).
Farriers in my rural areas travel over an hour to just get to the first client? In a weeks time they go in all directions. It is so different for more urban or city based farriers.
If you were a farrier who lived close and worked on the horses in just 1 boarding/ training barn and didn’t have to travel that would most likely work.
My farrier has days where he just goes to 1 barn and does a large number of horses but he still travels far too get there and he is so busy he can’t just take off and do them another day when it is cooler.
I have had several farriers who will shoe on the weekend if you make arrangements to haul to their property. It is just finding one who will work on your time too.
I am not unsympathetic, just lucky to have had a BO who was around when the farrier came( i worked) and after I married ,when I did work , it was a farm business so i was home .
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I see this too. But the irony is we are losing large facilities left and right.
I’m sure we are losing private, “backyard” owners, too… but I’ve also known a lot of people who have moved their horses home when the otherwise wouldn’t have because of the increasing expense of boarding or lack of boarding facilities period.
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Now, there’s a business that would have a lot of takers! 
Rebecca
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I agree with the suggestions to develop a helper. I’m not in this situation, since I board at a big general boarding place, but know a lot of pet sitters. Someone like that might be a good source of labor. Might not know a ton about horses, but interested in learning. Young adults in service jobs often have middle of the week days off. High school kids in my area get off at lunch on Wednesday. I feel your pain! Really tough to maintain the schedule and work. Hope these suggestions are helpful!
I had this rant in Off Topic recently whereI had to burn hours to meet the vet only for my vet to have to cancel because the previous client didn’t disclose a yummy respiratory bug going around her herd.
I work away from the farm and run it myself, and I schedule things out so I’m off or shift adjusted as much as possible. But I told my work I can’t do another summer on call. I actually can’t. The grass doesn’t mow itself, the chores don’t do themselves, the horses certainly don’t ride themselves or they better not be or I’ll be burning more vacation for vet visits.
I don’t know how people do it. I at least can use sick time for my doc spots but I’d also like to use vacation time for actual vacation. Thankfully I work 4-10s right now so I can schedule the Fridays for the farrier, but my vet doesn’t take Fri appts and uses it as an overflow day like this last week when I was rescheduled for my missed appt.
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I’m glad at least I’m not alone and just doing something wrong! It really is frustrating.
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Farriers in my rural areas travel over an hour to just get to the first client? In a weeks time they go in all directions. It is so different for more urban or city based farriers.
If you were a farrier who lived close and worked on the horses in just 1 boarding/ training barn and didn’t have to travel that would most likely work.
My farrier has days where he just goes to 1 barn and does a large number of horses but he still travels far too get there and he is so busy he can’t just take off and do them another day when it is cooler.
I have had several farriers who will shoe on the weekend if you make arrangements to haul to their property. It is just finding one who will work on your time too.
I grew up in a town of 330 people and we regularly had the farriers that traveled quite a ways to do our horses. As a mid-30s adult, I’m now in a slightly larger town (2,400) and my farrier does drive roughly 45 minutes to get to me. He schedules his loop anywhere from south of Fort Worth, TX to just north of the Red River in southern Oklahoma. He sets his schedule, but is accomodating to those who need it - early mornings when it’s hot, weekends when required - and in exchange he has a solid book of business without having to only do the massive barns. We actually spoke about this the other day when he was here - how it’s so much easier to have a big subset of small owners with well behaved horses, versus some of the big barns with horses who act like jerks. He is a gem who has diversified his clientele like I spoke about in my first post on this thread.
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Nope, you aren’t, and it can be super frustrating. I AM lucky my Dad lives here and he can at least latch gates behind himself and be trusted to throw hay or notice if someone has a leg missing… so like when I got called in at 3am and then worked until 5pm, I was able to get him to do morning turnout and give the senior is already prepared (soaked) breakfast. But not much more.
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I understand that a lot of people are saying that it would be a niche market for a farrier to accept and cater to smaller clients. However, the economics of it are a little daunting. Let’s say a farrier makes a trip to a single farm 30 minutes away for an all morning appointment and does roughly 6 trims and two sets of front shoes. Let’s, just for ease of math, say that trims are $50 and front shoes are $200. (Obviously this varies widely by farrier and by area.) That’s $700 for about 4-5 hours of work (well, minus materials and gas) plus one hour of drive time (again, estimates here). I think that it is easy to picture that it would be extremely difficult for a farrier to generate similar income by doing multiple smaller appointments involving longer drives as the driving time is unpaid, plus gas for a heavy truck towing a farrier wagon is not cheap either. Someone with more energy than me can do the math, but the farrier would have to charge much higher rates and I think that even when people say they would understand, there would inevitably be the perception that they were being charged unfairly.
I think the best way for smaller barns to survive is to have themselves set up as a “break” appointment, near another appointment, well behaved horses, nice cool fan, quiet area to work, etc, and to also be realistic about making it worth the farrier’s time. Farriers are just like everyone else out there trying to work and make a living, any sane working person would have a preference for building the clientele that generates the most income.
The other thing that farriers and vets like about larger barns is flexibility/ease of scheduling. A farrier or a vet can call and say they are coming later (or earlier) if something in their schedule changes and for a farm staffed with employees, it’s no big deal. There are some inefficiencies to having clients that are limited to very strict appointment times.
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I was talking to mine about this on his last visit. He actually said he prefers to do a few horses here and there and driving in between because then he gets a break. At the one barn they just keep doing horse after horse with no break. It is abusive on the body .
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That makes sense. I’m always amazed in my farriers that they can do that job physically I wouldn’t even be able to stand up right if I tried to trim one horse.
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Sometimes I throw my back out just picking out a hoof!
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