I was in a Bruce Davidson clinic once. It was the 90s. It was on the west coast and for the time was costly and a rarity. There was one woman who was a debacle. She refused to try Davidson’s suggestions, barely even registered that she was listening. And shortly into the first day of a two day clinic, Davidson ceased speaking to her. It was completely understandable, and the woman showed no signs she even noticed.
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For years I did barn chores on the weekend. I didn’t hate it. But it’s hard, sometimes cold/hot/wet, physical, dangerous work. It pays peanuts, even less when you stay longer to do a better job and get paid the same flat rate as if you didn’t. While I find taking care of my own horses fulfilling, there was nothing objectively fulfilling about taking care of 20 other people’s horses. And I really like horses! Being barn staff is mostly about the physical labor and not as much about bonding with horses. If you really want to see if this is for you, keep the day job and commit to doing a barn job on the weekend for 6 months. Then re-evaluate and see if you really want to do that full time. By that time you’ll have a better sense of what it entails AND you’ll have a 6 month work history you can use to get a full time barn staff job.
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I’ve been doing some chores at a local barn on weekends and I have to say it’s been better than expected. I mean chores are chores and they are not particularly enjoyable. What I do enjoy is the people and family like feeling there and even though they are much younger than me I like helping them get ready for their lessons and watching how they interact with each other and the horses. They truly are a great bunch… It’s feels like family. Unfortunately this barn is downsizing so I won’t be able to continue with them.
But you are volunteering. When you are working without pay, especially at a job the employer would otherwise have to pay for, they don’t put as much pressure on you and you get to call the shots.
It is your hobby and social life.
When you are being paid, especially to do the core grunt work, you will need to do that to an acceptable standard every day before you are able to look up and socialize.
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I… wow, I… there are no words
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This is probably done but have to point out in many barns, the paid barn workers are encouraged NOT to socialize beyond being cordial with the paying clients and many of those clients do not want to socialize with the muckers and grooms and don’t want their kids to either. That’s for trainers and assistant trainers, not the grunt workers. The barn staff position is basically a servant, not an advisor.
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Really? Definitely not the case in my barn… We socialize with the paid staff all the time. Probably because it’s a family owned and run business… It has that homey kind of feel to it where I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Yes, barn help and clients interact differently at different barns. However, at 6am on a cold weekday, there will be no clients there while you lead out the horses in a snowstorm.
Since you don’t actually like the chores, that is a red flag. Also, can you do anything beyond this? can you do any riding? can you give IV/IM meds, hand walk, wrap, give meds, braid, load triailer?
Chores people make 7-10 an hour average in the US.
And yes, cleaning houses IS a better job than a barn job, really. They make a lot of money. Then you can afford your own horse and hand out every weekend with your friends. It’s MUCH BETTER to be the owner. Trust me.
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My experiences working where I have had such interactions with clients have been with smaller barns (<10 clients), so ymmv. But these small, family barns did not have the horses/money to hire full time staff. We were all like you, working off some lessons/board or just volunteering for a few hours. We’d all pitch in and grab horses for each other, and at most a shift was 3 hours if you had seriously dirty stalls. I enjoyed it because I was already a client so it was really just extra friend hangout time. Plus, I had my first experience where a horse scared me when I was in my mid twenties, and it was really worth it to be able to tell the owners that I wasn’t dealing with that and put him away without risking my livelihood. A nice perk of only being there once a week or so.
It was the giant lesson barns, or the fancy AA circuit barns, that could afford to have full time staff beyond the BM. When I was a working student and a lesson factory, I was definitely not hanging out with the clients like they were my friends - all of us working students went and hid out together on our days off. I lucked out in that my boss was pretty mild, but she definitely went off a couple of times and made her opinion of certain girls’ riding skills well known, resulting in those girls doing only manual labor and no horse time. If that had been me, it would have been a miserable experience.
I’ve been riding for my full 30 years, and have done my time as a groom for my trainers in the past at AA shows, but even I would not be qualified to groom for anyone at the FEI level. I still love learning and would volunteer to work with Beezie in a heartbeat but damn do I not want to suffer through the process to get there. If she’d let me shadow her groom for a week it’d be enough for me, and I’d welcome my lab job back with open arms!
I have never worked or boarded (or seen) a place so high volume that someone’s full time job (i.e. 40+ hours/week) could be just getting horses ready for/after lessons and observing clients bonding with their horses. Every place I’ve seen/seen I would say at most that’s a couple hours worth of the daily work and the remainder is all the slog/hard labor stuff (bringing horses in/out, cleaning stalls, setting up feed and feeding, filling water, fence repair, bandaging horses, lunging horses, giving medicines, holding for the vet/farrier, mowing, picking fields, dragging, feed store runs, stacking hay, throwing hay, painting jumps and fences, etc.) It would be a pretty unusual business that literally had people coming to ride for a solid 8 hours a day such that they would need a “tacker and untacker” employee for that many hours a day. Even in trail ride places where they are sending people out for much of the day, the employees are still putting in 3-4 hours of hard work in the AM before the first customers come and another of the same in the evening after the customers are gone.
Which points out that… at most barn jobs, the idea of an 8 hour day is unrealistic. If it’s you’re full time job you’re likely to be there closer to dawn to dusk. You may get a break, and you may get paid hourly (other places play a flat rate) but it’s not a 9-5 clock in/out type job. Being realistic, although there are fun moments-- 95% of the job of being a barn worker is heavy labor out in the elements. Better make sure that’s REALLY the job you want before you ditch everything and jump in with both feet.
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My friend runs a small boarding barn, with one paid employee. That employee is in her 40s, a very hard worker, whose other job options are also minimum wage. She appreciates the respect, responsibility, and autonomy she gets in this barn. But she rarely has time to socialize. She is too tired and too busy.
She works 5 days a week, arriving at about 7 or 8 am, and leaving about 2 pm, but sometimes later. There are about 25 horses on the property. Some are on stall rest, some are on pasture board, some get turned out daily. There are two seperate barns, without hay lofts.
Here is her schedule. Arrive, feed morning mash (soaking overnight). Pick out the paddocks, and dump, scrub and fill the paddock water buckets (involves dragging a hose around). Take the turnout horses to their paddocks. Clean all the stalls (up to her to strip and refill or top up as needed), dump and fill stall water buckets, stuff and hang the big overnight hay nets. Set the evening mash to soak (barn manager mixes the dry ingredients). Feed lunch hay to the horses in turnout, feed hay to the pasture boarders (this involves taking whole bales across the property in a wheelbarrow). Check and fill pasture water as needed (this involves dragging and unhooking hoses that run across several acres). This takes about 5 to 6 hours going at a sustainable pace, but without taking time off to chithchat or text message. The layout of the property is not very convenient, IMHO. The hay is a long ways from the stalls, and the manure pile is a long way from the paddocks. There are a lot of steps to each task.
Then she goes home for the afternoon. Then she returns an hour before sunset, does turnin for the horses in the paddocks, and feeds evening mash. This takes over an hour (i’ve done it, it’s surprisingly time consuming).
I asked her once if she was thinking of riding again, and she basically said she was too tired to even think about it.
If this employee wants a day off or to go out of town, it’s a major emergency for the barn. Any time she is off, including weekends, they piece together the work between the barn manager/trainer, the junior coaches, and girls working off lessons and board.
The lesson students get helped to tack up by the coaches on duty. At bigger lesson programs, they may hire assistant coaches, or they may get other students to volunteer to help in exchange for riding time. Typically the barn worker is not involved in this.
Anyhow, the barn worker in this case is usually at the barn alone, gets there well before the barn manager. She gets to set her own pace and to some extent organize things to her liking. But she is also totally responsible, and has walked to the barn in the snow before when she didn’t have snow tires. You cannot skip feed and water for horses or you risk colic or worse.
I would say that a barn worker job is good for someone who doesn’t want or need a lot of people contact, who likes to lose themselves in hard physical labor, who likes the empty barn in the early morning and after hours, and who doesn’t really want to get out and do other things in the world. Also who doesn’t really care about riding the horses.
I could get into aspects of this myself 
but I know I do not have the physical stamina to hold up to the work, even in my 20s I didn’t. And for me riding has always been a priority. I don’t want to look after other people’s horses at the expense of not riding my own.
It could be a meditative break from the pressures of a career if you were able to get into the zen of working to exhaustion and mostly alone every day of the week. But it is not going to give you a substitute family atmosphere.
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I have a feeling we could all share our detailed experiences - personal or otherwise - of what it’s truly like to work in a barn and the OP wouldn’t be deterred.
So in that case - OP, find a local barn and let them know you’re looking for an entry level position based on your experience. You’ll be targeting finding something that will include feeding, turnouts, and cleaning stalls. Perhaps in a smaller barn you will be asked to help in other areas. Be prepared for either part time work OR full time work that will exceed an 8 hour work day. Local entry level positions are usually either/or as they either don’t have enough work for full time staff or they don’t have enough money to pay more than one worker who is saddled with everything.
As you work in your first entry level job and gain experience, look for any opportunity to learn more horse skills. Hold horses for the farrier and vet and learn as much as you can there. As you build your skill set, you may be able to find a new job in a beginning groom position. And then you can work your way up from there.
The horse world is no different than any other. You’ll start at the entry level according to your skill set and work your way up from there. Look for a barn that treats its staff well, but don’t be picky in terms of discipline - horse care is horse care whether it’s h/j or dressage or western. But most importantly, be realistic about the type of job you apply for so that you set yourself up for success. I wouldn’t look at Yard and Groom yet; those jobs are typically for experienced grooms. Start with a basic worker type position and go from there. If you’re not fit right now, start a workout program so that your stamina is ready for it.
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OP feel free to PM me. I enjoy my healthcare job and it pays well, but I spent years working in barns in Ontario. Some were better then others pay wise, but there wasn’t a single one that I disliked.
I can give you a run down of some A and Trillium barns that treat their staff well, and I can let you know which skills you’ll need for which barns, which ones may be able to offer accommodations, etc. Which barns pay hourly ($15/hr in Ontario now), and which ones pay a daily rate.
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It is very different when you are volunteering vs. an employee. As a volunteer, the BO doesn’t care if you take a long time to do your work because you are chatting. When it is costing them by the hour, too much chatting will get you fired. No one wants to pay workers to chitchat.
also, it will be much harder for you to get a good engineering job once you leave. It is so much easier to get hired when you already have an in-field job. It may be harder than you think to come back.
@vxf111 gave you a very good suggestion about trying it on the weekends first before you resign your position. Alternatively, you should look for a better job you find fulfilling in your field. Then you can have the best of both worlds (a rewarding job that lets you afford horses, and time to spend riding). Good luck.
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Interesting. Perhaps your calling is to work with children?
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I’ve been around horses my entire life, ridden, owned and showed horses for pretty much as long as I can remember. As a junior I was a working student, and in college I worked at a barn to work off some of my board. I still groom at shows sometimes, and I enjoy that to an extent, because it’s for a day or two, a week at the most, I work for nice people and get paid well. But the days when I would have to set my alarm for 5am before classes to feed, turn out, hay and refill waters were not easy. The farm wasn’t convieniently laid out, which made it more difficult, and of course, the horses have to be taken care of no matter the weather. The pay was 9.25 an hour. I don’t miss it— and I had it made compared to many people who work in barns. My boss allowed me days off as long as I gave her reasonable notice, and was generally easy to work for. That’s more than you can say for many people in the horse world.
Thats not to say that you shouldn’t try it if you really have your heart set in that direction. I wholeheartedly agree with the many other posters who suggested you try a barn job on the weekends before doing anything drastic. If I were you, I’d be looking for a new job within engineering rather than looking to get out of the field altogether for a barn job. As it’s been stated a million times already, barn work pretty much… sucks, for lack of a better word. I understand where you’re coming from, but when I find myself having those thoughts, I remind myself that if I stick it out and work hard enough in my “real world” job, I can afford a horse of my own and enjoy it as a hobby, and be in a far more financially secure position.
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I haven’t read all 12 pages. But I have worked full time in a barn. After my undergrad degree. There are aspects I loved and those that I did not…like ALL work. But what sent me back to law school and a different career path besides just knowing that I could be more successful was that my passion was becoming a job. I’m VERY horse crazy. And yet in my few days off…last thing I wanted to see was a horse. I still work hard…and ride either early (very early) or late at night. I own my own farm and work an insane amount in my ‘real’ job’ that does compensate me well…and as tired as I am, my passion and love for the horses came back once it was no longer my livelihood.
You sound unhappy in your current job so you do need to change something. Consider going back to school for something else. I know many engineers who are now lawyers. Or pusue an environmental engineering degree (although research jobs and the job market before you do). But realize that work is work…there will be things that you don’t like in any job. And really make sure that the job is the issue…most people would rather not work for a living if they had other options but working in a barn may have a side effect that you are not expecting.
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The other side is always more appealing. I would love to work at the barn where my horse is kept but realistically it’s not practical. I’m married but I made a promise to my husband that I’d pay for everything horse-related if I got one so I have to work. Board isn’t cheap around here and shoveling manure in all types of weather and elements just to pay for it would get old fast. I’m an RN and sometimes I think dealing with horse shit every day over sometimes having to deal with human shit is more appealing but the money isn’t there for me to do that 5 days a week. Plus it would lose its appeal and my passion would likely become a chore. Consider that… I have considered working one day a week or so just for funsies because I do like cleaning stalls sometimes but those types of situations don’t exist at my barn. So I’m strictly a boarder and enjoy my free time with my horse.
I don’t know what your financial situation is but giving up an engineer’s salary would be ill-advised to make 10-12/hr at a horse barn, most likely with no benefits or insurance coverage. Seems like a no-brainer. But again, if you’re really burned-out in your field and need a break and have other support, then by all means go for it! Maybe you could consider another line of work, maybe one that isn’t a 5 day a week thing (I know I could never do that! Hence why nursing appealed to me…) Not everyone is satisfied with the “typical” work week…
Edit: I didn’t even notice this got to 12 pages before I replied.
Edit 2: :uhoh:
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:uhoh:
