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Owning a boarding facility

Off Course
#1

I believe I posted in the wrong area earlier. Sorry everyon .

My wife and I in the next 5-6 years are looking at purchasing a horse boarding facility. My question is in regard to horse trainers.

We are wanting to have an on site horse trainer/ stable hand. We are looking at providing free living(except food) and up to two horses boarded for free. They would keep 100% of their training fees in exchange for helping with stall clean up and general maintenance of the facility along side me. We would like someone that is a competition rider(mostly western disciplines) to help promote our horses/ facility. We are located in the greater Houston area. To you trainers or boarding owners is this normal practices/ feasible? If not what are normal practices?

The idea is to have a covered lighted arena, at least 2 round pens, calves/cows for tie down breakaway roping and cutting practice. We are teachers and looking at life after teaching and this appeals to both of us. The biggest hurdle is having a trainer/stable hand to be on grounds in the event we leave town for a few days.

Anyone that could shed some light is truly appreciated.

#2

Do yourselves a huge favor & search this BB for threads on boarding issues.

The consensus seems to be that this is potentially the worst idea for a peaceful or profitable retirement income.

I have been a boarder for 20+yrs & also worked at barns(in exchange for lessons). I have had my horses at home for the last 15.
I have friends who own boarding barns & along with most definitely not being a sole source of income, or even a decent profitmaker, the stories of boarder craziness are enough to make me certain I will never board anything on my farm.
Unless I win a lottery & can afford fulltime staff.
Even then…

7 Likes
#3

I don’t know how many horses you were thinking of having on the property or in training, but I don’t know a single trainer that has extra time to spend on barn upkeep and stall cleaning unless it is a really small operation.

Where I board now there are about 35 horses. There are two full time staff who clean stalls, feed hay and do much of the routine maintenance plus the BM who also does maintenance work. There is one full time trainer with 12-15 horses and some of the other riders have an outside trainer come in. About half of the horses on the property are either retired or used for light trail only. The one full time trainer also has some part time help come in on busy days to groom/tack/etc. There is no way she has time for barn chores on top of lessons and training.

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#4

I agree with Missariel. A competition trainer will not be doing barn chores. You will definitely need barn staff outside of a trainer.

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#5

It’s somewhat perverse, given that most horse owners depend on boarding barns in order to conduct their hobby, that you’ll generally hear lots of NO!!! RUN AWAY!!! comments when it comes to starting up a new boarding barn.

The problem with “in-kind” arrangements is that it’s hard to define the standards for availability and quality of the work to be performed. Do a search here and you’ll find a million threads complaining this mis-match in expectations about what stable work is actually “worth”. You’ll read about a working student who doesn’t clean the stalls as well as the barn owner expects her to. Or the boarder who does all sorts of stable work in exchange for lessons, but the trainer is never available when the boarder wants a lesson. Or the self-care boarder who “works off her board” but gradually stops showing up and now the barn owner is stuck with this horse they don’t own or want. Or the boarder who allows her horse to be used in lessons in exchange for reduced board, but the barn manager considers that a service, because her horse is “getting exercised” for free.

Far, far better to simply charge and pay actual money for the services provided and received. So, collect rent for living quarters with a clear renters agreement. Lease out the facility to the trainer and let the trainer figure out how to make money while boarding his/her horses for free. If/when you need horse sitting / farm sitting services, hire someone and pay them to do it. (And if the business plan falls apart because it can’t afford those costs, then it’s not a viable biz plan).

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#6

PS: best place to start is identifying all of the stables in your vicinity and see what they offer and charge. What would your barn offer to the market that’s not already available?

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#7

really need to construct a business plan and since in Houston it needs to include potential hurricane evacuation with at lest two where to go with the horses, maybe even three different variations (just read up on .Hurricane Rita)

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#8

This and this :yes:

As someone who has been a boarder, a BM, and a BO, and now back to being an owner of my own facility… I’m still considering boarding once I have more facilities done. Why? Well, with the right person/people, boarding isn’t a nightmare. The person who wants to write a check, come see their horse, follows rules, and has the same mentality toward horse husbandry and isn’t insane is a pleasure to have.

And I say that because horse people, like horses, need boundaries. When BOs/BMs let rules slide, the insanity reigns, then the BO/BM tries to re-enforce the rules and people get all snitty, usually both strongly opposed to seeing things the others’ way, etc etc, and ta daa a nightmare boarding situation. Fair and unemotional boarding makes everyone happy.

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#9

  1. thank you for all of the responses

  2. i have begun some market research. I am in my beginning phases of my market research(this is realistically 6+yrs away)

  3. to answer some questions. I have found several places that have houses with barns and pastures that are already set up for a boarding facility. I am not looking for this to be a true business venture but more of a cover my bills while providing a service type of thing. I’m not trying to get rich doing this. My vision is to have 16-20 stalls for full boarding not including my horses and the trainers horses. My wife has another business after teaching that she would be a part of as well to supplement this income in addition to her full teachers retirement so this wouldn’t be our sole source of income. I am looking at retiring early and taking roughly 100k of my retirement coupled with the sale of our house to purchase our retirement home and couple it with horse boarding to make up what I lose in my retirement. In addition I was looking at having roping and cutting practices weekly for those that don’t have a place to practice and also having monthly play days charging for entry. We also were looking at having clinics for different western disciplines every so often, eventually hosting roping and barrel racing competitions periodically throughout the year.

  4. the avg rate in my area is 400-500 for full board, 250-300 partial board and 200-225 pasture board. All of the facilities that I inquired about do not have on site trainers.

  5. again thank you for the true to heart responses. please keep them coming. The more detailed information that I have the more my wife and I have to talk about and truly assess if this is a vision that we should pursue. I truly appreciate the encouragement and the DON’T IT’S. They both truly help and the more honest you are the more help you are providing.

if you would like to pm me please do so. I will be pming some of you to pick your brains as this will definitely be a huge undertaking and I want to have as much info as possible.

#10

oh yes i have tried to search for topics regarding this issue but its pretty rough trying to find pertinent information. If you know the threads please tag them here. in the meanwhile I’ll be searching and going through the pages trying to find these threads you have suggested that I find. Thank you again, i can’t say how much I appreciate everyone’s insight.

#11

Excellent idea…didn’t think of that. I have quite a bit of land in east texas that i could relocate them if needed. now having the trailers to relocate 20 horses is a different thing but definitely something I didn’t think of. Thank you for this pitfall.

#12

Stablehand is a lower skills job, needs reliability and a strong back, usually pays minimum wage maybe with living quarters thrown in. A 20 to 30/ horse barn could certainly employ a stable hand pretty much full time, depending on how many stalls you will.clean yourself.

A trainer is a high skills high prestige job in the horse world. If you figure a trainer can really just fit in one horse an hour, and horses in training need to be worked at least 5 days a week to progress, and your trainer will also need to give riding lessons to boarders at an hhour each, then you will see that a barn of 20 quality horses could also be full time work for a trainer.

However a trainer is usually paid by their clients. You have a trainer attached to your barn and your boarders pay them directly. You might require all your boarders to do a certain minimum of training or lessons a week.

How much are trainers paid? I pay my dressage coach $60 an hour for lessons. Not the most expensive option in my area at all.

You can see that the job categories and skills don’t really overlap here. If your trainer has to pitch in to basic barn work then none of the horses will get worked.

I suggest you find a local barn of the general size you intend, and spend a week of your next vacation being a “working student” there. Pitch into the barn work, observe lessons, have a sit down chat with the barn manager about how it all works. If you pick a different discipline like hunter jumper they won’t see you as competition!

4 Likes
#13

If you find a trainer willing to clean stalls, they likely aren’t very successful as a trainer and just need to make ends meet to feed themselves. Probably not the trainer you want in your barn.

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#14

Alright so the consensus is that asking a quality trainer to do stable work is out of the question. Got it. It seems that having an on site stable hand is more reasonable than an on-site trainer. For you trainers what are you charged for lease of the arena/round pen for breaking/training of horses.?

#15

really take time to read what occurred on the evacuation during Rita, what normally was a three hour trip to the DFW area became a 24 hour plus nightmare

The are others on this board in the Houston area that may have better insight

1 Like
#16

You may find interesting some of the information here:

https://agrilife.org/texasaglaw/

They also conduct seminars that may be relevant to what you intend to do.
Some of their cases have been about riding centers.
It is free to sign up and, being in TX, important to know the laws of the state as landowner, business entity and service provider.

1 Like
#17

I actually answered where you cross-posted on the western thread but what has been offered here rings true.

One stable hand around here (So California) costs me $22.50 an hour. That’s $15 (bare minimum for someone with any experience who will show up) plus all employment taxes and worker’s comp. Yep, for every dollar they earn, they cost me $1.50. You’ll need at least one stable hand full-time for every 20-30 horses, depending on stabling situation and what is expected in your area for board.

Sure, you can pay them cash under the table… but do you really want to risk a work-related injury and expensive-to-defend and likely-to-be-lost lawsuit against your entire lifestyle and security on that roll of the dice?

So don’t overlook how much your labor will add to your figures which will also include feed, bedding, facilities, maintenance, electricity, water, insurance, pest control, improvements, advertising, vehicles, equipment, vet and farrier… and your own horses adding not one dime of income to the mix, in fact they will be occupying stalls that could be at least making some contribution to costs.

It is VERY difficult to make money on boarding. Boarding is often priced unrealistically low relative to true operations costs because farms have been boarding for a long time and are legacy facilities that either have retired mortgages or other farm income or off-farm salaries which subsidize the boarding. It’s one thing to subsidize your own horses, but when you have to reach into your own bank account each month to subsidize each boarder’s horse out your window…makes one crabby!

Your place will need to be priced competitively with nearby legacy farms (unless you are in an area with no other barns at all) so competitor pricing can force you into a loss relative to your own costs just to get boarders in the door. No matter how snazzy your place is (and snazz is expensive) you can’t fill your barn without competitive pricing or a fabulous trainer… which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Successful trainers don’t usually pay much of anything to work out of a facility (how nice to have zero rent overhead for your business, right?) but they need to be rainmakers to fill your (competitively priced yet also profitable) stalls. Someone who cares for horses and gives a few lessons is a different issue than a high-end show trainer, but any professional working from your place will need to be insured, get along with you and the boarders and their own clients, and not do things you don’t approve of to horses or clients.

You are proposing an expensive and complicated business that will require a huge expenditure of time, money, and energy to maintain. It’s risky. Talk to everyone you can find who is doing something similar in your area or riding specialty.

You may find that you love the lifestyle, that you and your wife are great at managing boarders and employees, and never even want to leave your fun stable.

But if not- it’s tricky to have an exit plan from such a complex business and lifestyle. And if you are finding nice facilities for sale… it’s not because their owners want to share their gold mines.

Just be business-like, not emotional, about your comprehensive business plan, financial realities, and all the reasons that the potential barn business is attractive. It’s very possible to build a retirement lifestyle that revolves around your passion for horses, but eyes-wide-open is critical.

4 Likes
#18

You said a mouth full right there!!! Lots for me and my wife to discuss. You all have given me a lot to research and contemplate. The search for information is on and if there is anything anyone else would like to add I’m all ears. Thank you all so much. You have really put a lot of direction into my research. THANK YOU

#19

You’ve received some wonderful advice above. I will echo a few things.
A competent trainer won’t be interested in taking on a job that requires regular stall cleaning or general maintenance work. A talented trainer will have spent many years developing their training skills and that is where they can add the most value.

You might want to consider if you are looking to hire a trainer that will be an “employee” that follows your direction or if you are looking for an experienced trainer that will be an independent contractor and run their business out of your barn. Seasoned trainers are more likely to be interested in situations where they have a great deal of autonomy.

It “sounds” like you are expecting the trainer to train and compete your horses in exchange for free board for themselves and two horses. If you go down this path, you really should clearly define what is included in “free board” and what is expected of the trainer. Barter type arrangements are tough because each side is incentivized to expect more or contribute less than the other party might expect. Here is an example. What if the trainer’s horse sustains an injury, is laid up, and starts spending more time in its stall. Who pays for the extra shavings or the extra labor required to muck out the stall more frequently. What if one of the trainer’s horses is a hard keeper and consumes twice as much hay as a normal horse. Or if the horse is a beaver? How often will the trainer be expected to train and show your horses? Will the number of horses you have in training fluctuate? Will the trainer’s compensation fluctuate if they are putting more/less time on your horses. There are so many “what ifs” to consider.

One last thought. You will hear it again and again, and it is true; boarding horses is generally a break even business. There are lots of barns out there with no mortgages, little overhead or BO’s that are in the business for the love of it. These barns set the market rates. If you are going to attract boarders, you have to price in line with the market.

2 Likes
#20

Not trying to argue. Have a genuine question. The employer’s contribution for Social Security is 6.2% and Medicare is 1.45%. If worker’s compensation insurance is 10% (just a guess), how does it end up costing an employer $22.50 an hour for a stable hand that earns $15 an hour?

Perhaps what you are saying is barn help is earning $15 an hour after ALL taxes have been taken out? The math might work something like this; stable hands get $19 an hour gross pay ($15 an hour net after taxes) and the “all in cost to the employer” is $22.50 an hour after the employer pays all their taxes and workers compensation insurance?

TIA

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