The horse doesn’t get ANY hay? Where do you live that you have green pasture year round? Is the barn owner subsidizing the lack of hay by feeding large amounts of grain? Good hay is expensive but so is grain these days.
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Just a thought for all horse owners and all people - Guessing costs are going to become even more difficult in the coming year or so. Unless someone stops that war, and so far no one is stepping up to do that.
Exactly this.
OP, either the flat dollar increase is worth it to you, or it isn’t. There is no reason to peel it apart looking for trouble - for yourself, in the end. This isn’t enough $$ to care.
You are all hung up on the percentages. The percentage is irrelevant. If the BO thought that each boarder’s percentage mattered, the BO would have pro-rated a bit more. So therefore we can assume the BO does not think that matters.
The BO is not doing you dirty. Not singling you out. The BO is just running their business as best they can.
If this is enough of a frustration to sell your horse and be out of horses altogether, that’s what I’d recommend doing. There are likely more cost increases in the future, and every BO handles that according to their own logic. You may not be any happier about it somewhere else.
This.
If you can get the same quality somewhere else for less, you can move your horse. That’s really all this is about.
Not really. The horse business is a business. How a business prices is a take-it-or-leave-it situation. If, as a customer, you can do better in that market, change where you do business.
Are you planning to ask the store where you buy groceries about the details behind their price increases? Everywhere else you pay for goods or services?
The cost of mailing or shipping a package has gone skyward since 2019. Should I ask the USPS or Fedex to explain the details?
It’s not defensiveness. How would you like to have all of your customers inquiring, one at a time, the details of all of your price increases? The answer is simple: Costs are up. The market rate is up. As a BO, I’m just following the current economic conditions, like every other supplier. (I;m not literally a BO.)
It can help if a business anticipates common customer questions and addresses them pro-actively. But I’m sure it didn’t occur to the BO that a boarder would get hung up on the % increase when the actual dollar amount is this small.
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Maybe simple for the one increasing the costs but when you are the one affected by the increase, I kind of want to know. My BO would send out a letter before board increased and tell us exactly why costs were up. That way nobody had to wonder.
This was before email/ texting etc so more labor / cost intensive. OP’s barn has what 7-8 boarders?
Before you start in on me-- I was not a difficult boarder. I worked off most of my board every month and the boarders I rode horses for ( billed by BO ) or the horses I worked/ exercised for the BO came off my board automatically, so I rarely had to pay much if anything. I still got a letter letting me know .
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I think the biggest issue here is less the matter of asking genuine questions, and more the matter of tone. OP’s tone here is (rightfully, IMO) pretty triggering.
Yes, you can ask for details about what services you receive in return for paying X amount. Every single person who has boarded a horse has done that when they go to a new barn and that’s OK. For X amount of money, what’s included? How much does it cost if I want my horse fed grain 2x/day? How much does blanketing cost per month, and is that every day? How much does additional turnout cost? All of these are fair and valid questions, but that’s not really what OP is talking about doing here. They want a justification for an increase of price on the same services and are coming at it in a rather demanding way. They’re not asking “what’s included for this price?”, they’re saying “I expect you to meet my price point!”
Re: How much money a BO should make:
Econ 101 teaches us all about supply and demand - and you know what’s not documented in that graph? Profit margins. As long as the supply of available stalls matches the demand of people willing to pay that price, the market will stay there. If the supply goes down (as it arguably has in the last 10+ years) then the price goes up until it matches the demand. If, all of a sudden, Thanos snaps his fingers and half of all the equestrians in the world and their horses disappear, the cost of board will go down to fill the empty stalls. Again - nowhere in that equation is there room for bUt HoW mUcH pRoFiT aRe tHeY MaKiNg?
I mean, really, has your employer ever come to you and said “Hey, we’re not going to give you a raise this year. We know the cost of everything has increased, but we found out that you actually have some fun money laying around at the end of each month, so you obviously don’t need the raise.” I mean - they can say that, but either you’re going to say “Ok, I can’t get a higher paying job, so I’ll stick it out and keep my existing salary at a lower QOL” or you’ll say “Ok, Company B over here will pay me more money, so I’m going to keep/improve my QOL over there. Adios!”.
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I do not see where the OP says that the barn owner did not give a reason in the text. The OP does not cover that point. Just that there was a group text that says there is an increase of $X and the OP thinks it is unfair that their increase is the same as the stall kept horses.
That text could have included, “I need to increase board to cover the higher cost of grain and other supplies”.
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I definitely think it’s helpful for barn owners to give as much notice as they can - ideally 3 months.
I also think that it’s probably smart for barn owners to train their clients to always expect a board increase at a particular month, say, March. Every March the board will go up by 5%. Or if not, that there’s a specific letter saying “this year, hooray, no increase.” This prevents what happens otherwise, which is that the BO doesn’t raise it for 3 years and then whoopsie, they really need to raise it and by a lot to cover costs. Then instead of 5% or 10% increase it’s a 20% or even larger increase and that is super hard for everyone to swallow. Boarders aren’t thinking about the three years they got away without an increase nor did they sock away the money that the board didn’t go up by for a rainy day. Instead, it’s a big shock to everyone’s budget and you have a mix of people who are angry and people who actually cannot pay it.
If you’re a human landlord, there are often regulatory limits on the percentage you can increase, and so that’s a reason they do annual increases.
Remember that percentages are about the base rate as much as the increase. So the lower the board is now, the bigger the percentage is going to be to cover the extra $5 on 5 bales of hay in a month, say.
Dividing the added revenue needed across each horse wherever it lives is a perfectly valid way to do it, even if it makes the percentages unequal.
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Maybe… but the board can’t drop lower than it actually costs to take care of the horses. So most likely, if half the horses disappear, a lot of boarding barns will just quit the business.
Likewise, if hay goes up 10x, boarding barns can raise their prices to cover the cost, but probably at that point a lot of horse owners would just be forced to sell their horses and stop boarding altogether, causing many boarding barns to go out of business.
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Agreed. Pasture board can absolutely beat the tar out of a field. Horses are on it no matter the weather and the fields never get a rest
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Sure - my example increased demand (via lower prices) to match supply. Yours is the opposite - the supply decreases to match the demand. And in the real world, a little bit of both probably happens.
Even in your example though, it’s not really a discussion of how much profit barns should make or not make. A barn won’t be in business if it can’t at least break even - now it might not be able to break even because their prices don’t cover their costs, or it could be because their prices are too high and no one will board with them. In an ideal world, that balancing point will be somewhere that us horse-crazy-but-not-billionaire-people can afford. It might not though 
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O_O I know quite a few teachers and it is nowhere near a part day. They work at least fulltime and often more. Teachers work the large majority of the year but not the full year, they are paid accordingly for that. And most teachers I know have at least a part time job during the summer.
Hoping we hear an update from the OP.
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Yes, exactly my point.
Sadly many think teaching is a cushy, part time, well paid gig anyone can do.
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I also feel like if you’re a human being living on this planet, you know why board is going up. Because literally the cost of everything you touch has gone up.
Fertilizer has gone up 100%….that effects hay, managing pastures etc.
Fuel is through the roof….that’s hay, grain, bedding, tractors for the farm etc.
Nutrena grain is up $5/bag the last time I was at the feed store.
Bull bedding if you can find it has doubled in my area.
And don’t get me started on taxes. I know no boarder wants to think that their board should help pay the taxes at the facility but….board helps pay the taxes, the utility bill (which I forgot, our electric has gone way up too!), fencing repairs, equipment to maintain pastures, arenas, fix fence etc.
The job of playing barn owner has stayed the same but the cost of providing the service has increased. So why should the barn owner do the same job for less pay? (Which I guarantee isn’t much over minimum wage to begin with. 
)
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A thousand times this.
I’m fortunate - I can absorb a board bump. OTOH, when I get a 10% increase out of the blue (after many years) without warning, it rankles. It’s not that I don’t understand the economics, it’s not that I don’t want my BO to have a confortable income, it’s just that it would be so much nicer if the business were run like… a business. One that acknowledged the relationship and provided some notice (in advance) that prices were being raised.
It’s the seeming capriciousness that’s the issue for me. Just like my electricity bills (grrr). I would way rather be paying a constant $25 or $50 more each year than go for longer and then suddenly get hit by a huge adjustment.
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I’m sure everyone’s BOs are also forecasting economists that could have seen this historic rise in inflation a year ago, in order to give everyone notice.
No.
Your BO is not responsible for absorbing ANY rising costs, not for a month, not for a quarter, not even for one day. I think a little understanding right now towards the BOs of the world would go a long long way, because they too are feeling the pinch. Not only are they entitled to break even, they are entitled to make money off the boarders. Yes, make money right off your back. What a concept.
Again, if you don’t like the steak, don’t eat it. Go find somewhere else to board where the BO is willing to bank roll you.
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And that, I think, is where the rubber is going to meet the road going forward. Will board prices need to be doubled for barn owners to keep their bills paid and ensure themselves a quality of life? At the rate prices are going for everything else, it’s not an impossible proposition.
For average people like myself, an increase like that would be unsustainable. I can’t justify a board bill that’s potentially 50% more than my monthly rent. I’m not saying that it’s anyone’s responsibility to meet my price point. Just lamenting the point of reckoning that seems to be coming for a lot of us.
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Agreed - if it doubles, something will have to give for me.
That said, if $50 more a month is make or break for someone, I think they should reconsider their finances. Horses do dumb stuff all the time that can land a $1000 vet bill.
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That person who does not really have the ability right not to shuffle $50/month into the horse spending might have a savings set aside for that horse emergency. Maybe that extra $50/month was what they were using to put aside for the horse emergency.
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Maybe. And maybe between the gas/electricity bill being double and the fuel expenses being triple and the groceries being 1.5x what they cost before, they’re really feeling it.
But they didn’t call the electricity company demanding an explanation.
Or go in to get answers from the gas station attendant.
Or kvetch at the bag boy about the apples being a dollar more.
The BO is trying to run a business, the same as everyone else. It’s not a special circumstance where you get to have a dollar-by-dollar breakdown of cost increases. It’s up because everything is up.
And trust me, I am feeling the pinch myself. My board just went up. Everything else is more expensive. I am tightening the belt the best I can and making it work. But I’m not going to nickle and dime my BO over his increases, because I understand that everything is more expensive right now. It’s a no brainer.
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Why would you not tip 20% on the entire price of your hair service? Who cares if a good portion of it is materials?
You tip waiters based on the cost of the meal - if you order the caviar that is a much larger tip even if they only brought out one plate.
If you can spend a small fortune on stuff like hair extensions there is no need to start getting stingy when it comes to tipping the person who is putting them in for you.
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This is a hard reality but if people are truly having trouble getting their budget to cover a two digit adjustment to their monthly budgeting, luxury sport pets are not for them.
Horseownership is a completely unnecessary expense that no one has ever been forced against their will to take on, and the animal is 100% dependent on the owner’s budget. Sorry, you need to have significantly more than $50 left over at the end of the month to have your bases covered.
If we want to talk about rent or healthcare we can have a conversation about how these items should be universally affordable but people complaining that their luxury sport pets which no one forced them to buy are getting too pricey is just …no.
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