This has been debated at length. We don’t know what her barn’s costs were and neither does she. The increase may impact a cost applicable equally to all horses whether stall or field boarded. Neither she knows nor do we.
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You think your barn owner should get a second job to “make up the deficit” that it is costing her to take care of your luxury sport pets that nobody forced you to buy?
As opposed to charging you what it costs her plus enough to pay herself?
And you attribute this to her living outside her means?
WOW.
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This is it exactly. I finally found someone I can trust to feed and turnout Saturday and Sundays after working 12-14 hours daily. Now with all of the prices going up, I have had to raise the board 50$. Yesterday I our local hardware store had a deal on pellets. I took my husbands truck to the farm, picked up the trailer, helped load the pellets, took the load back to the farm and unhooked the trailer. Point of the matter is, I did this to save my boarders money. Nobody will care or notice. THAT is why it’s frustrating when you do finally raise your prices and someone complains it’s too expensive to board any longer. Fine! Go buy a farm and do it yourself!
Yes, I do sound resentful. This whole service and supply is hurting barn owners too. The cost of living and running a fair business is costing us emotionally and financially
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Agree. They time/money the BO spends on running her boarding business is not her “personal spending habit” and she need not take her own personal money and put it into the business to defray costs for boarders. Nor need she get a second job to cover the loss on her boarding business in lieu of raising prices for boarders. Suggesting she should do either of these things is pretty audacious!
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It’s usually a bigger inconvenience to a boarder for their barn to have to shut down because the owners can’t continue with the hours and the expense than paying more board. The exception is when the boarder has to find somewhere less expensive.
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The fact is that if you are paying $$ 800-1000 a month(or more) to board your horse, the BO should be able to meet the horses needs and get a good salary besides.
Many on here pay way more than that. I have no idea how the BO spends their money or what kind of debt they may have. They need to budget like everyone else does. It is a business like any other.
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Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Not sure how you think you can make such a blanket statement. Whether $800-1000/mo gets a BO a “good salary” is dependent on a bunch of factors. Like location, and facility size, and number of boarded horses. NTM dependent on your definition of “good.”
Just for S-A-G, someone buys a place in Ocala, Florida, by WEC. This person snags a modest 20-stall facility for $2m. (Looks to be about middle-of-the-road based on a quick look at Zillow just now) Monthly mortgage + insurance + taxes let’s say $10,000. Let’s say, 75% of the mortgage payment is paid for by the business. 25% paid for by the BO’s “salary.” Maybe they have two horses of their own, so they have 18 boarded horses.
That’s $416.67 for each boarded horse’s share of the property.
With hay down here at $650+/ton, you’re looking at $250/month per horse in hay, at the lower-estimated amount of 25/lbs per day.
Grain $20/bag, $60/month
Shavings, IDK I had mine out 24/7, let’s say $100/month.
So we’re at $825. That doesn’t include labor, aka the BO’s “salary” if they’re doing all the labor, nor a business profit. NTM facility upkeep expenses.
So if the BO is living in fantasy-land and has no upkeep expenses, and charges $1000/month board, their salary is $3,150/month. The equivalent of $11/hour. For 70-hour weeks of manual labor, 52 weeks per year, no days off, no vacations.
Guesstimating facility upkeep expenses at $650/month (fencing, pasture maintenance, electricity, etc. etc. etc.) they’re getting $8.90/hour. With zero business profit.
Sounds awesome to me.
When I had my little facility, I had a full-time office job that paid all the bills. My “income” from having 6-7 boarded horses came out to like $5/hour for my labor.
Of course, some rich person could plop down $2million cash to buy the property, then they wouldn’t have a big monthly mortgage payment. But since when did rich people offer to subsidize anything for us non-rich folk? They’re going to charge a board rate that gets back their $2million investment as fast as possible. Faster than 30 years (aka the length of a mortgage), no doubt.
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I think I was in my 30s when I realized that there are no sprinklers in Kentucky. What a culture shock! 
So the thing about hay is, it’s just grass jerky. To grow hay is not all that more expensive than to grow grass and have the animals eat it directly. You have the cost to bale it, stack it, and ship it, against the cost to rotate it out and maintain it while animals are actively stepping on it. In different regions, the specifics are different. In the east and north, hay is grown in summer and baled for feed for the winter; in the west, hay is grown in winter and baled for feed for the summer. In the west, in some places, it’s practical to increase the hay growing season with summer irrigation.
Pasture generally uses less fossil fuels but fossil fuels (even today) are cheap compared to human labor. Managing pasture land is more labor intensive than growing hay.
Artificial fertilizer is what people use because it was the most bang for the buck, but with fuel costs high there are other alternatives, so if the situation persists or if there are true shortages, those alternatives will become more viable. But, they will likely require more labor, which again, is expensive.
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You are free to write the business plan and get in on that sweet, sweet lucre.
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As a barn owner with boarders I don’t mind if someone says “hey, can I ask why the increase in board” because I know exactly why and then I can educate them about why so they don’t have hard feelings, especially if they ask me in a friendly manner.
When I had a horse in for rehab I quoted them a different price and then explained the private/limited turnout, vet visits etc were extra labor so that’s why their board was higher. They had no issues with it.
But I’m super picky with who I let board.
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Hahahahaha.
Sorry, not to be mean, but depending on your location, that is a ludicrous statement.
A friend recently asked me on behalf of another friend if I knew of any good backyard barn situations that could take in two mares. Apparently the owner thinks he gets better care for less money at backyard barns. Me: Okay. Then my friend dropped the other shoe: “But he never lasts very long because he always thinks they don’t feed enough hay.” Me: Well, exactly. Board is cheap because they aren’t feeding very much hay.
In boarding, you generally get what you pay for.
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I always appreciate when someone like yourself gives this type of insight via text/email/phone call. Then I don’t have to bother with an on-site interview.
As someone else said upthread you are more than invited to purchase your own place and then you will find out real fast where that $1k/mo goes (you won’t even get to your horse direct expenses by a long shot)
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I don’t know what planet you live on, what alternate reality, what cost-of-living area … but you are profoundly out of touch with the costs that many well-run board barns are facing.
There is no reason or excuse to blame a widespread board-barn economic crisis on barn owners. Your statements about barn owners are unfair and without knowledge of their realities.
Fortunately almost everyone else in this thread seems to be more realistic and empathetic to what board barn owners are facing.
My board barn owner has costs for feed and hay up 30%-100%. Plus the rising cost of fuel transport it, to run the tractor, etc. She increased board only 23% … so she’s absorbing some of the increases in lower profits, and hoping costs come down. If costs don’t let up within a few months, she says she’s not sure she can continue to offer boarding.
I’m looking around just in case I do have to move, and it is scary out there. My barn owner also said she’s suddenly getting calls asking about pasture board, because all board has gone up and some horse owners are not finding what they feel they can afford.
What will happen is what happens in other economic crisis that affect horse owners. People will make budget room for higher board by showing and trailering less. Entries will go down. Purchases of tack & gear will go down. The industry will feel the squeeze, to whatever extent.
I fear we may have a fallout on this, this year. There’s a definite possibility that there will be fewer board barns operating by this time next year.
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It makes one wonder then, if it were that simple, why boarding barns are closing at an alarming rate?
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You’ve picked an arbitrary number that you’re comfortable with & decided that’s what X should cost, regardless of actual operation costs for X. That’s not how any of this works.
This has (a bit surprisingly) turned into an excellent thread in which actual operating costs for barns all over the country have been cited; urban v rural, grass v 24/7 hay, outdoor v indoor rings, and all the daily, weekly & yearly minutiae that goes into keeping a working barn from falling apart. I am struggling to understand how you are still on this particular hill. The call to “budget better” reads just like the horsey edition of avocado toast. There’s no budgeting your way around base costs when properties are setting record per-acre prices, and there are no clients where property is more affordable.
On the flip side, you’ve offered an IRL example of how these discussions can potentially go for barn owners, and demonstrated why they might be wary of them. Especially when the answer is readily apparent & equally obvious.
Blessed are the boarding barn owners, man. Bless. Them.
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we are getting offers to buy by the square foot…Cash …and when you have multiple acres (each being 43,560 sq/ft) the value adds up quickly
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I wrote a long and drawn out post about my costs and then deleted it. But, without paying labor (I just fired my stall cleaner) my costs are over $900/mo per horse. The going rate for board here is ~$600/mo without an indoor. Explain to me, if you would, how my avocado toast-eating is affecting my “salary” of -300/mo per horse?
If I take out paying any portion of the taxes and facility (I have budgeted the overage over what a “normal house” would cost in this area), or the incidentals, it’s still a loss of 100/mo per horse. I also haven’t included the cost of my truck and trailer which I was going to buy anyway as a horse owner but are pretty mandatory as a barn owner, nor work clothing etc. And I work 4-5 hours a day on top of my full time job, plus all weekends and holidays on the farm.
That’s not the ultimate plan for the business, we’re incurring a TON of up front costs as maintenance hasn’t been done on this farm in over 40 years, I have great boarders who I want to keep here because I like riding with them. But I digress.
In order to have what I would call a reasonably comfortable salary from board, I’d have to charge $600-700/mo ABOVE costs, making board $1500-1600. Pretty pricey for a place with no indoor nor functional bathroom.
Like all barn owners I’ve met, that’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing it for a variety of reasons including the care of my own horses, having people to ride with, exposing people to a different method of horsemanship, and keeping an urban barn alive that would otherwise go for development. It’s a labor of love. I’ll have to make a profit eventually or the IRS will eat me alive, but that profit will likely only ever be a couple of bucks.
So while I’m happy to have boarders and I truly do love doing it — it’s the dumbest thing I could do financially ever…shy of actually lighting money on fire in the backyard and having a bonfire party.
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Yes I gladly pay premium (for my area) board fees because they do take exceptional care of the horses. I choose to board at one of the only high end places in my area because it gives me peace of mind and that is worth it to me. There are plenty of less expensive barns in my area but the quality of hay isn’t that great, etc, but it’s an option for folks on a shoe string budget.
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A business is a business. Why you think a boarding barn is somehow more affected than other businesses facing big price increases on many of the products they need to run their business is beyond me.
She needs to pass the increases on to her boarders. Not try to absorb them on her own dime. I realize that many people are unable to pay what she may need to charge to keep their horse. I am sorry that we are in the state we are in with rising prices.
If horse owners have to put trailering and showing by the wayside for a year to afford to keep the horse that is a small price to pay. Living within a budget hurts sometimes and we may not get to do what we would like but if it means you can keep the horse and hopefully show next year, I would think it is worth it.
I live in the Mid West. Boarding ranges from $300 rural to $800+ in the city depending on what they offer.
Less than your area but I am sure BO’s and boarders are feeling the hurt just like you.
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Midwest takes in about 15 states depending on interpretation of “ midwest”. IME in several “midwest” states, 300 to 800 would be low.
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