Several years ago working for my vet’s personal breeding farm, I worked a 10-12 hour day, took care of up to 40 horses (cleaned stalls, scrubbed buckets, AM &PM feed, individual turnout, meds, some occasional grooming and helped her with vet clients that came in. It was everything I could do to keep up with it all. No way can one person do all that and shame on you for trying to 1099 that kind of job.
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They would need to pay the employee a million dollars a year so he/she could hire out subcontractors to get all the work done.
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My guess is that OP is filling this role. If so, please safeguard your health. When we do the things we love it is hard to set boundaries. I imagine this was sold as a “barn manager who teaches a few lessons” or a “head trainer overseeing the barn” type of role that has spiraled out of control. At a minimum, they need to outsource farm maintenance, blanket cleaning services, and social media into contract roles. You should be salaried if you’re spending 40+ hours a week running and managing the farm.
If you don’t have free housing you should have a housing stipend and they should be putting aside resources to make 1-2 full time working students possible. Working students can handle tacking/warm up/untacking of training horses and be entrusted with hack days and other responsibilities as they evolve.
Personally, I’d be reticent to have a horse in a program with someone this overtaxed. No matter how much you try, something will fall through the cracks. A barn manager needs to have downtime to think two steps ahead about what the program needs or to notice the subtle changes in the horses in their care.
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If you already have an assistant trainer on staff then just designate the chores between the 2 and pay them both really, really well and hope they stay around.
One of the benefits better be an unlimited supply of benzedrine… and the department of labor on speed dial
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There’s no way this is a 1099 Contractor.
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Not even close. The IRS has a 20 question test for Independent Contractor v. Employee. As stated in earlier posts, the only part of this that might be the lesson instructor, but even that might be pushing it, depending on how it works, who collects the fees, how lessons are scheduled, etc.
Here is the 20 question test in case the OP wants to check. Sounds like this job fails to meet the standards for classification of an independent contractor. https://www.yfc.net/images/uploads/g…_Employee.pdf
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I think this would be better served as two FT positions, one a “basic skilled laborer” (yes I know it’s oxymoronic but there’s “laborer” and then there is “someone who knows how to run a tractor and accoutrements already and can fix things”) and one as the trainer/instructor - because that many horses will break a crap ton of stuff.
This number is way low IME, especially if there are babies and show horses as mentioned. I worked at a facility with 60ish horses, but vast majority was kept out FT. Feeding and turning out, which appears included since OP mentions making the grain for each feeding, from the barns (21 stalls) and then running the farm gator around to feed the outside horses in pens, took two to three hours - and I was devilishly fast. Run thru and dump grain for all the inside horses, load the gator and get all the outside horses, trough checks etc, come back and start putting out the inside horses, including booting those who need boots, blanketing or swapping blankets, sometimes leading two or three horses at a time, let the outside horses out of feed pens as they finish during my walks back to the barn, and it was a convenient facility without unusually long walks.
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This could be someone with money who has never run a barn before who is thinking about buying a fantasy place of his/her own so s/he doesn’t have to pay board. It’s not gonna happen, if so. This whole scenario is poorly thought out and reeks of inexperience.
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I believe this is a “real” job posting. I have heard about this on local ohio media and think the OP was even trying to recruit from a local university that has an equine program. How the the poor soul was supposed to do all of that PLUS go to school…This job has been out there for a while and has not been filled…you can only imaging why
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Omg wow. Do you know what barn? I’m from Westerville
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The OP has mentioned her barn in other threads over the years.
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I’m exhausted just reading that list.
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So it’s managing a 40 stall barn; 10 rides and 10 lessons a day; overseeing turnout, horse care & farm chores including mowing & fence repair plus doing some as needed; social media, records, accounts and marketing; and a blanket wash business?
To me this is the work of:
-A barn manager to handle scheduling, orders, vet/farrier, and overseeing barn staff/grooms
-2 or 3 people to cover the riding & lessons - a pro who does most of the riding and a few lessons, an assistant who does most lessons and a few rides, and perhaps an additional instructor for weekend or after-school lessons.
-Additional barn staff to make feed, help with turnout, groundskeeping, and tacking/untacking those 10 client horses a day. Let’s be conservative and add 2.
-Someone to run the blanket wash business, social, marketing, accounting and record-keeping. That might actually be 2 people.
Bare minimum, that’s 6 people. Median salary in Ohio is $56,000. Multiply by 6 (because we’re being conservative!!) and you’re at $336,000.
As there’s no mention of paid vacation, insurance or other benefits I’d round that up to $400k to cover what will surely be a MUCH-NEEDED vacation and the doctors to take care of the wear and tear this will put on you. If that’s a 1099, which is certainly illegal, why not ask for another 15% or 20% to cover your taxes? Now you’re at $475k. Nice little number if you don’t drop dead of exhaustion within a week.
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It could just be me, but I get the impression the OP doesn’t care.
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