Stall Cleaning and Shavings

[yellowbritches]

If I bed the way I like to bed, I have rarely had to add more than a bag or two (or wheelbarrow) every week to ten days (for the real clean horses). If the bed is deep, I find that even the messiest of critters can’t do too much damage. If bedded right, they get picked daily/twice daily and wet spots removed every day or every other day (depending on how much the horse is in and how wet they are). There should not be wet on the surface ever or a smell of ammonia. Rarely need to strip.

Since I board now instead of run the barn,I have to give up a bit on my preferred bedding. As long as my horse isn’t standing in a puddle of urine and he doesn’t have any bed sores, I try not to fuss…though I do bite my tongue, as I’ve done the math and I KNOW it’s cheaper (much cheaper) in the long run to bed my way!

[mountainhorse]

I clean daily, skip out throughout the day, and usually only have to add a wheelbarrow of shavings about 1x/week. Rarely have to strip, similar to yellow britches.

[Mako]

Thanks everyone for the replies! My mare isn’t the cleanest but she’s not that bad. We recently got a new barn manager and new employees and things just haven’t been up to previous standards. I completely understand not stripping the whole stall down but lately they just aren’t that clean and aren’t picked out properly with poop and wet pee spots that have been missed. I had to muck the stall out myself. I’m hoping this is just a learning curve and yes I have spoken with the owners, who assure me it will get better.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. All I want is for my horse to be standing in clean (doesn’t have to be white just not dirty), dry, well bedded stall. I think most horse owners who board out feel the same

[shakeytails]

About the only time I completely strip a stall is if it floods, which thankfully hasn’t happened in a couple of years. If a piggy horse’s stall is getting particularly dingy, I won’t add any bedding for several days so I can get most of the old out and add a bunch of new.

[yellowbritches]

[QUOTE=Mako;8603063]
Thanks everyone for the replies! My mare isn’t the cleanest but she’s not that bad. We recently got a new barn manager and new employees and things just haven’t been up to previous standards. I completely understand not stripping the whole stall down but lately they just aren’t that clean and aren’t picked out properly with poop and wet pee spots that have been missed. I had to muck the stall out myself. I’m hoping this is just a learning curve and yes I have spoken with the owners, who assure me it will get better.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. All I want is for my horse to be standing in clean (doesn’t have to be white just not dirty), dry, well bedded stall. I think most horse owners who board out feel the same :)[/QUOTE]
sigh I know all about management changes, as I recently left a farm I was VERY emotionally attached to because of a sudden management change. Be grateful it’s just stall mucking if that’s the only issue (found my clipped and cold natured horse shivering so hard he could barely walk in his shed in just his sheet on a day that didn’t even reach 40, and was piss pouring down rain).

I would not hesitate to mention to whoever is in charge to let them know you are noticing issues. Depending on how the staff’s schedules work, they very well may not be noticing the extent of the issue.

[kelsey97]

It’s sounds like the new staff need to learn how to clean stalls properly. Hang in there, and keep telling the BO/BM your concerns!

[Bent_Hickory]

[QUOTE=Tory;8598198]
It is amazing how your attitude changes when you are the one buying the shavings.[/QUOTE]

I have seen this time and time again – it’s the classic OPM syndrome.

[gumtree]

OP, what are you paying for board?

I and others often ask this but for some reason it is rarely answered.

[Mako]

No need to tell you the exact amount but its Over $600

[trubandloki]

[QUOTE=Mako;8604591]
No need to tell you the exact amount but its Over $600[/QUOTE]
The number does not mean much unless we know exactly where you are located (so I am not sure why anyone asks for the number). Is this board at the high end, mid range, or low end for boarding in your area is how it should be asked.

OP, I am glad you are talking to the barn owner. Good for you.

[Heinz_57]

[QUOTE=Mako;8603063]
Thanks everyone for the replies! My mare isn’t the cleanest but she’s not that bad. We recently got a new barn manager and new employees and things just haven’t been up to previous standards. I completely understand not stripping the whole stall down but lately they just aren’t that clean and aren’t picked out properly with poop and wet pee spots that have been missed. I had to muck the stall out myself. I’m hoping this is just a learning curve and yes I have spoken with the owners, who assure me it will get better.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. All I want is for my horse to be standing in clean (doesn’t have to be white just not dirty), dry, well bedded stall. I think most horse owners who board out feel the same :)[/QUOTE]

We have horses at home, so I can do whatever I want, but my non-horsey husband can clean stalls better than this, so there’s really no excuse.

I use pellets, exclusively, and it has turned my lifelong pig into a normal, easy to clean job. I will never go back to bulk sawdust or bagged shavings, the absorption difference is SO dramatic! With all horses, it does take some time for a new stall cleaner to get to know them - when I was working barns, it took me maybe a week at most to figure out which horses were pigs, who was a stall walker, etc. and how much bedding was “ideal” for their situation vs. wastage. I’ve never boarded or worked in a barn that intentionally fully stripped every stall - you just pick out the dirty and the wet and add back whatever is necessary. No need to throw away perfectly good bedding.

In my own barn, I might strip the stall and let it dry out for a bit if it got really wet, but since we’ve switched to pellets there has been no need. Most BO/BM are trying to keep costs down and so don’t like to see expensive bedding being wasted - so I wouldn’t be surprised if the new staff is erring on the side of ‘less is more’ until told to do otherwise. I can’t remember which poster said it, but as was already mentioned, everybody wants lots and lots of bedding until they’re the ones footing the bill! :lol:

Hang in there, OP. And keep complaining if it’s not done right.

[yellowbritches]

[QUOTE=Heinz 57;8605857]

Most BO/BM are trying to keep costs down and so don’t like to see expensive bedding being wasted.[/QUOTE]
I once charged a boarder for shavings when her husband unnecessarily stripped her horse’s stall while “helping.” I was livid. The horse’s stall was a normal amount of dirty, with lots of very fresh shavings that had no business ending up in the manure pile. One and only time I ever did that, in 12 years of running farms. :lol:

[gumtree]

[QUOTE=trubandloki;8605043]
The number does not mean much unless we know exactly where you are located (so I am not sure why anyone asks for the number). Is this board at the high end, mid range, or low end for boarding in your area is how it should be asked.

OP, I am glad you are talking to the barn owner. Good for you.[/QUOTE]

The OP is in NJ. NJ is ranked 46th in land size and 11th in population. Verses New York which is 27th and 3rd in population. NJ is the 5th most expensive state to live in based on “cost of living”.

So just by being in NJ is enough information.

The vast majority of NY population is centered around NYC. Not Upstate where you are located. The most expensive area to live in is around the great NYC. No the same with NJ.

Given the size and population of NJ it is is safe to say that it has limited open land for a horse operation. It is an expensive state to live in. Cost of land, cost of living and taxes. Being a small state it is expensive as a whole. Unlike New York.

So the “number” means a lot to any one who understands how to run a business.

Basic fixed costs, feed, hay and bedding for just about any horse operation are about the same regardless of location. The MAJOR difference is the cost of land, buildings, taxes, payroll, payroll taxes, utilities, insurance, etc.

So the break even point for an boarding operation in just about any part of NJ is going to be considerably higher than most places in Upstate NY and many, many other parts of the country.

$600 per month for a stalled horse is $20 a day. Bare minimum fixed cost per day in NJ for just feed, hay, bedding, labor and payroll taxes is going to be around $10-$15. This does not include, mortgage/lease, insurance, property taxes, income tax, utilities, repair and maintenance, equipment, etc.

At $12.50 for basic fixed cost per day per horse, $375 per month, X 12= $4,500 of fixed costs per stall.

If there was a “profit” of $225 left from the $600 and I highly doubt it is anyway close to that, $2,700 profit per stall per year

20 stall barn $54,000, $4,500 per month. Take out mortgage/lease payment, insurance, property taxes if owned, income tax, state tax, utilities, workman’s compensation (very expensive for a horse business), repair and maintenance, equipment purchase payments, etc. There sure as heck not going to be a lot, if any left over to "live"on.

For a horse business that only charges bare minimum board to have a chance of making enough money to justify the exercise it has to utilize “economy of scale”. Keep expenses low, maximize return on property investment by packing a lot of horses on a relatively small property.

So, pointing out the above numbers to give a perspective so those who feel they are paying what they may consider premium board in reality they are not. $600 in NJ can not be considered expensive in a state/area that is one of the most expensive to live and work. Which is why I asked what the OP was paying. The old saying “you get what you pay for” applies to just about everything. ESPECIALLY horses, their care/attention to detail and the facility/property.

[BeeHoney]

Gumtree summed a lot of it up there.

Yes, in recent years bedding has become a hot button issue for boarders. People want a thick, fluffy bed of fresh shavings, but that costs a fortune for a boarding barn. The expense is not just in the purchase price of the bedding (which has gone up a ridiculous amount in recent years), but also in the increased labor to dig/sift through all that bedding to clean the stall. Additionally, labor and cost of disposal can be significant. Bedding more deeply for horses that are “churners” ends up being even more ridiculously expensive.

Now, if your horse’s stall isn’t clean, that’s one problem. But it is perfectly possible to keep a stall nice while adding bedding every other day or every couple of days and not ever stripping it.

It sounds like your barn may be adjusting to new staff, and that may be a temporary problem. They may be training a new employee or perhaps they just ran the numbers and got a bit of a shocker on how much they were spending on bedding and are trying to figure out how to save. A polite mention to the BO that your horse’s stall hasn’t been the cleanest lately might be reasonable feedback.

It’s possible that I’m biased because I’m a BO, but I really don’t think that deep bedding adds much to a horse’s care. People love the “look” of a deeply bedded stall–it’s like a storybook picture to see a horse standing knee deep in golden straw. But, have you ever cleaned a stall that was bedded like that? It might take an extra 20 minutes to clean, and any normal manual laborer is going to miss a lot of dirty stuff when they have to dig/sift through all of that in the morning. Even when you are done there’s a lot of “half dirty” bedding left in the stall that will stink and attract flies. I guess you could throw it all away every day if you are a millionaire and care nothing for the environment.

In the real world, I find that stalls tend to be kept cleaner and fresher when they have “just the right amount” of bedding. Enough to comfortably soak up the urine and something to lay on, but not so much that the stall cleaner is missing stuff because there is too much bedding to sort through or such that there ends up being a lot of partly dirty old bedding that attracts flies.

[yellowbritches]

Here’s the math of my barn I managed when we from bedding “just enough” to properly.

We averaged about 15 stalls. When I came in, every stall was getting half to 2 bags a day added back in. We’ll average that out to one bag. 1 bag of shavings for 15 stalls 7 days a week comes 105 bags of shavings a week! When we bedded them properly, I think we put in 6 bags to start- 90 bags- so a bit of an initial sticker shock possibly. After that, with few exceptions, we averaged about 2 bags a stall each WEEK. We went from using over 100 bags a week to 30. That’s a huge savings.

As for cleaning, if you do it properly (basically tossing non wet shavings along the walls and allowing the manure to fall to the bottoms of the banks), and the stalls are matted, it’s a quick, easy process. Also save on having to get shavings every day (and in that barn that meant going a quarter mile away to the shed, multiple times). Or, for those with bulk, making a bunch of trips to the shavings pile, shoveling it in the wheelbarrow, and going back. The guy who did my stalls needed a quick tutorial on how to deal with deep bedding, and after that, had it mastered and could whip through stalls way faster than me (I am notoriously slow, despite the number of stalls I’ve cleaned over the years).

It isn’t more work and it isn’t more expensive. People are just often to inflexible to change.

[Heinz_57]

[QUOTE=yellowbritches;8605885]
I once charged a boarder for shavings when her husband unnecessarily stripped her horse’s stall while “helping.” I was livid. The horse’s stall was a normal amount of dirty, with lots of very fresh shavings that had no business ending up in the manure pile. One and only time I ever did that, in 12 years of running farms. :lol:[/QUOTE]

One of the last barns I boarded at before I bought my property actually had to put up a sign/make a rule that barn shavings were ONLY for stall use and not to bed trailers with because they were losing so much $$$ (big barn, lots of weekend warriors going to shows all season long).

[trubandloki]

[QUOTE=Heinz 57;8607520]
One of the last barns I boarded at before I bought my property actually had to put up a sign/make a rule that barn shavings were ONLY for stall use and not to bed trailers with because they were losing so much $$$ (big barn, lots of weekend warriors going to shows all season long).[/QUOTE]
I have always been shocked that this has to be said.

Your board does not cover your trailer bedding. Or 10 bags of shavings to extra deep bed the stall at your weekend horse show. Geez.

[hessy35]

I feel spoiled now. I complain because (in my own head) the bedding isn’t very deep (only about 2.5" but on top of double mats). But my horse’s stall is cleaned completely every morning, and I mean spick and span! We have a wonderful woman who is meticulous about cleaning the stalls. I also pick it out in the evening when I’m there.

[gumtree]

I made a small “math” mistake on my previous post. But it makes for a good example on how small things add up to a nice chunk of change. I said $600 a month is $20 a day. But that is based on a 30 day month. But there are 7 months with 31 days, 4 with 30, 1 with 28, 29 every four years.

We and just about all operations I know charge by the day not a calendar month. So if an operation does change $600 per month regardless of actual number of days. The “real” number is $19.73 per stall per day. 26 cents a day less.

26 cents doesn’t sound like much but if you do the math for a 20 stall barn, 20 stalls X 26 cents = $5.20 per day X 365 days = $1,898. IMO that’s not chump change. A nice mini vacation or several months of car payments.

Do the same math for $1 of extra stall bedding per 20 stalls. $20 per day X 365=$7,300. Any business that works on tight/slim profit margins. HAS to keep a close eye on just about every penny. It is amazing on how easily things add up.

“We recently got a new barn manager and new employees and things just haven’t been up to previous standards”

I would suspect who ever owns the barn/property did the math. And decided to bring in new management who they feel has a better understanding of the “business end” of running a horse operation. Gave them a budget to work with and told them to make it work or you’re gone.

The repetitive theme on just about all boarding threads is the cost and what “the market” will bear in their area. Or what people are willing to pay.

Any business has to be based on what the market will bear/give for what ever the widget is. But it is ridiculous to think that a business any business can “make it” work to fit the market. The ones that do will soon find that the ends do not justify the means.

Especially if they have to compete with cut rate hobby operations. These types of boarding operations have a fraction of the overhead. Little to no insurance, no workman’s comp, don’t have to pay commercial utility rates, pay under the table, etc.

I don’t begrudge these types of operations it is what it is. But it is a bit unfair. Very few if any other types of “businesses” have to compete with “hobby businesses”. The state will shut them down and or make them jump through the same hoops, rules and regs.

I think it was MVP who wrote an excellent “comment” on another boarding thread about the “cause and effect” of “hobby boarding” has and will have on the over all market/availability, now and in the future. There were/are several others also.

[DHCarrotfeeder]

[QUOTE=gumtree;8607720]
I think it was MVP who wrote an excellent “comment” on another boarding thread about the “cause and effect” of “hobby boarding” has and will have on the over all market/availability, now and in the future. There were/are several others also.[/QUOTE]

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?473873-Why-stall-boarding-rates-need-to-at-least-double-across-the-Midwest&highlight=boarding+business