I would not approach this situation as a âsplit all costs evenlyâ metric. Each person should, if there is space for it, buy their own hay/grain/shavings to feed their own horse. They pay the rough board fee, what ever it is, and the rest is worked out between parties on who is responsible for what chore, which day of the week. I have seen a few co-op situations and the split-costs evenly approach always ends up with someone feeling they got the short end of the stick.
Co-op situations truly only work best when everyone wants it to be co-op, and wants to be there to put in the work. Like Trubandloki said, there is no win here if people are being thrust into this position and do not want it.
Iâve done rough board/co-op before. Iâm not sure as a BO I would ever encourage it again, and as a boarder I would be very wary on who I co-opâd with. It requires no âPersonalityâ parties, and everyone to be on the same page, gracious, and willing to step in where they can. Resentment builds up fast if one party is a perennial slacker, constantly doesnât do their part, doesnât get the feed/hay right, etc. A good co-op situation has a lot of flexible, moving parts, and when there are bad parties in the mix thereâs just too many moving parts to make it sustainable and mistake free.
When I orchestrated the co-op situation as a barn manager, here is what I found worked best:
- everyone pays their own hay/feed
- everyone responsible for setting up the dayâs worth of hay/feed/water
- everyone responsible for mucking their own stall / picking paddocks
- barn workers (me, other staffs funded by full board boarders) would drop hay/feed 3x a day while we fed full boarders. We only had 5 rough boarders so the time spent to do that was negligible and the costs for this labor defrayed by the co-opâs board rate
- co-op parties worked out who was responsible for turn in / turn out
- make a schedule and make it consistent - buy a white board that has everyoneâs names / chores / days they are doing
Some things I learned managing this situation:
Itâs best to have one party feed all horses at once. I was a BM during the takeover of a pre-existing barn. The previous co-op/rough boarders would all come at different times to feed, which upset the full board horses if it was before their AM feed drop, and would upset me if I fed full-boarders while the rough board horses were looking at me all sad and hungry. It lead to a lot of kicking walls, pawing, and agitation in the barn. So after sitting down with the rough boarders and BO, we decided that barn staff would drop all feed, all the time, to keep it consistent - but the rough boarders had to have the hay & grain set up in buckets to be easily âdroppedâ. No exceptions. If you donât have a barn staff in your situation anymore, hire help or discuss paying BO a bit more in your base rough board rate to cover a barn staffer.
There is always going to be one party that doesnât feed enough, or work enough, or whatever. Itâs better to ask them to leave ASAP before they sour the rest of group.
You may run into someone who does not organize paying their hay/food/whatever well. Or they may not feed enough at all. I had one rough boarder who fed her 17h retired TB one cup of Sentinel LS a day and only gave 3 flakes of hay. He was emaciated. Her other horse was on full board. I ended up paying to feed him myself. If you are like me, you might get roped into something like that.
Put a white board in the rough board/co-op main barn, with everyoneâs contacts. Write M/T/W/T/F/S/S across the top (column) and then the chores listed in chronological order on the left, descending (ie. AM turnout, Water, PM turn in, stalls, turnout). Fill in with the name of the party responsible. I donât know the psychology behind it, but my rough boardersâ attendances got significantly better once their name was somewhere front and center as the responsible party for a specific chore.
On stall and pasture picking - our co-op boarders usually made a deal among themselves where one person would be responsible for all five rough boarders for one chore. It worked well for that group - theyâd have one person do all the turnout/stall picking/set up grain in the AM, and each would only have to come âone and a halfâ days a week - they alternated who did PM chores.
