The Truth in Boarding Barns

[merrygoround]

[QUOTE=mvp;8423886]
Some people say this, and others gather their accounting ledgers to show us that there’s almost no profit in boarding.

How can both be true? Or, in this case, how can the numbers be so far apart as to a horse being able to live at home for just 1/3 the cost of boarding him out? What is/isn’t being counted in each scenario?

That kind of “the numbers don’t make sense… by a wide margin” contributes to the adversarial part of the HO/BO conversation. If everyone misses by so much, someone’s gotta be lying, right?[/QUOTE]

No! The homeowner may well have bought the property with the barn already built, fences in place, and doesn’t really factor in the maintenance costs of her property.

The barn owner not only feeds and beds those horses, but also has to,in all common sense, keep track of the costs of that chewed through fence, that kicked out stall wall, the cost of help, the extra insurance for other horses on the farm, et. etc. etc.

No one is lying, there is simply a different perspective. Especially that imposed by the IRS among others.

[Pocket_Pony]

[QUOTE=mvp;8423886]
Some people say this, and others gather their accounting ledgers to show us that there’s almost no profit in boarding.

How can both be true? Or, in this case, how can the numbers be so far apart as to a horse being able to live at home for just 1/3 the cost of boarding him out? What is/isn’t being counted in each scenario?

That kind of “the numbers don’t make sense… by a wide margin” contributes to the adversarial part of the HO/BO conversation. If everyone misses by so much, someone’s gotta be lying, right?[/QUOTE]

I can easily see how both can be true, since I’ve been on both sides of it, and no one has to be lying.

I have to live somewhere. Since I don’t want to live in an apartment, I bought a house. Since I don’t want to live in a suburb, I bought a house in the country. Since I bought a house in the country, I might as well bring my horses home. I am willing to assume a certain amount of debt as a mortgage in order to live in a house of my choosing. Part of my expenses, regardless of where I buy a house, are property taxes, insurance, water, electricity, maintenance.

Considering the costs of all of those things are line items in my budget that I’d be paying for regardless, adding in the costs of such for having electricity and water in the barn and irrigation in the pastures is something I’m happy to pay for because it is my lifestyle choice.

The additional costs that come up because of the general care of horses is something I’d also be paying for anyway, were I at a boarding barn…hoof trims, lessons, veterinary care, feed/supplements, tack, etc.

Then, of course, there are the extras, like putting up additional fencing, equipment purchase/maintenance, various miscellaneous stuff that are either values to the property itself, or things that are mine and I can take with me wherever I move, or sell if I want/need to.

So let’s imagine this “average” $500/month that everyone is talking about. I have three horses at home. If I were to board out my three horses, then it would be $1500/month just for board, not including any extra food or trailer storage or farrier, vet, whatever. That is almost as much as my mortgage, and not an extra expense that I want to add on, considering I live in the country. So for just a little more than that board bill of $1500/month is my mortgage, which remember I’d be paying anyway.

I just bought hay for $1400 - that should last me about eight months. I don’t buy shavings that often because two of my horses don’t use their stalls as bathrooms. I only feed a small amount of hay pellets to mix with supplements, so I don’t go through extra feed very quickly. I don’t go crazy with the supplements, so that isn’t hundreds of dollars per month. I pay a hoof trimmer $105 every 6 weeks, but up until a recent injury I was doing that myself.

So just ballpark-ing it, I pay $250-$300/month per horse versus $500/month PLUS whatever additional things there are (shoeing, vet, etc.). For that I get the pleasure of having them at home, cared for just the way I want. I check on them 4x day, feed them 4x day, they get turned out according to a schedule that I like, in configurations that I like; my barn is set up the way I like. I always know what is going on with them. I have BLM nearby, trails on my property, my own arena that I don’t have to share with anyone, my own tack room, etc.

Honestly, I haven’t broken it out line by line because, as I said, there are things that I’d pay for anyway, so trying to figure out x% of x expense is just not worth my time.

What is worth my time is the convenience of having my horses at home, being able to set a schedule that works for me and my work schedules (two jobs), working outside on the farm (I enjoy the manual labor of mucking, dragging, fencing, mowing, fertilizing, whatever). It would really suck to have part of my day spent driving to/from the barn if I already live in the country!

I don’t begrudge BOs how much they charge. Why shouldn’t they make a living and enjoy a decent quality of life? I have a friend who would always complain about the cost of boarding, saying the BO was making a killing and subsidizing her own riding and she didn’t think it was fair that board charges should go up during a drought, for example (when hay becomes more expensive). Or another friend who would complain about the nickel-and-diming of paying for blanketing, turnout, holding for the farrier, etc.

Perhaps it is just perspective and the way you look at it. I don’t write 3 x $500 checks to one person every month for my horses, plus others for various other services. Some months I’ll pay a lot (hay bill), some months I’ll pay nothing (already have feed and bedding stored, not a month for hoof trims, no vet bills, no other bills) except general house bills (which, again, I would have been paying anyway).

[Obsidian_Fire]

These threads about boarding are certainly good for one’s perspective. Gives me plenty to think on and a reality check from time to time.

I’ve been a boarder my entire horse life and the one and only time I begrudged the BO rate increases was at a facility where nothing got improved. Things got ‘fixed’ but only when they had gotten so far along there was no choice. The place was in disrepair when it was purchased and the following years of usage did it no favors.
The capper came when the arena finally got so bad that you wondered if a good wind would blow it over, and when it rained, well, get out your raincoat, and the BO’s flat said, we aren’t going to do anything about it. (but yet we just don’t understand why we are losing boarders!)

I will say the owners were good at caring for the horses, and spent a great deal of time in/around the barn so things got noticed. Which can make up for a lot, unless you truly want to ride your horse.

Compromise…name of the game…

[netg]

[QUOTE=mvp;8423886]
Some people say this, and others gather their accounting ledgers to show us that there’s almost no profit in boarding.

How can both be true? Or, in this case, how can the numbers be so far apart as to a horse being able to live at home for just 1/3 the cost of boarding him out? What is/isn’t being counted in each scenario?

That kind of “the numbers don’t make sense… by a wide margin” contributes to the adversarial part of the HO/BO conversation. If everyone misses by so much, someone’s gotta be lying, right?[/QUOTE]

My reason for buying and building a barn was so my horses could live in the lifestyle I wanted. Due to lack of grass in this area, most boarding facilities don’t have 12+ hours of turnout. I prefer high energy, fit horses. Therefore, they need space. So I built a place with the smallest run a 24x80. This was obviously not a financial decision, and the expense of building would cover a whole lot of board.

My monthly bills are less because of multiple horses - I pay a college student $100/week to feed my horses lunch, so that adds up, plus utilities, hay, etc. Other than hay my expenses which would have been covered at a boarding facility are basically identical regardless of number of horses. I also don’t pay myself for time spent, which differs…

[HorsesinHaiti]

If I ever had horses in the US, I could theoretically get a job that would pay for a farmette. My years of trying to care for ponies in Haiti taught me a great deal about horse care, including how much I DON’T know. So my preference would be to find a boarding barn with a knowledgeable BO and I’d consider myself to be paying them for all the experience and knowledge I don’t have - spotting abscesses and colic earlier than I can, advice on horse problem-solving, ‘just how creaky is this geezerpony and what should I REALLY expect/ insist that he do’, etc, etc. More experienced horse owners probably don’t need that, I certainly would.

[Miss_Motivation]

Good discussion (as most on COTH are) about pros and cons.

If you are super-picky on horse care and don’t leave home a lot, versus more average expectations and have a life away from the horses, will dictate what suits.

And many of us have found out that at different phases of our life, we fit squarely into both categories!

[OverandOnward]

When someone gives a cost of keeping their horses at home that seems much lower than a boarding facility, it could be they add up just the direct costs of care - feed & shavings, the things they pay monthly - not the more complicated business view.

Possibly they are NOT including the cost of :

• their time / labor
• the capital cost of the property/barn their horses occupy
• cost, maintenance & repair on equipment they also use on other things as well, such as a tractor
• the barn’s share of utilities cost
• occasional cost of equipment such as feed bins, manure forks, wheelbarrows, manure spreaders, some of which have to be replaced periodically, and do add up
• costs of time spent on paperwork, bill-paying, expenses
• additional insurance
• vacation care
• etc. … all the less tangible, and perhaps the less frequent, costs

If you really break it down and make the cost of the property & barn comparable ( as it is so variable by location), the cost per horse in a board barn is undoubtedly much less than just keeping a few at home, because of shared efficiencies.

Labor cost: Is not “free” to the horses-at-home owner, just because that is how they choose to spend their time. Hypothetically, the time spent caring for their horses could be spent doing something that brings in income, so they are sacrificing that income opportunity. Quite probably most are theoretically giving up far more income than what it would cost to pay a barn worker - but they are doing what they love.

[McGurk]

Some of the big cost differences that hasn’t been mentioned in a commercial barn are federal and state wage tax, worker’s comp and liability insurance.

If you’re boarding in a barn that doesn’t carry those costs, it is not a bargain.

I have been a barn worker, manager and owner. Now I keep my horses at home very happily. I will not take in boarders, period.

In the hundreds of threads about boarding and boarder complaints, 80% of the time I side with the BO or BM. The other 20% of the time there is bad management or negligence of the part of the BO or BM. It does happen.

The most common complaints boil down to is that a boarder wants a level of care or service that they’re unwilling or unable to afford.

[Hulk]

I have been reading this thread, and been thinking about boarding here on my farm and all the reasons why I don’t do it. I get asked to do so all the time. I guess that even thinking about this thread and having boarders induced a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt I had to board my horses and they were being treated terrible. I guess some of us just are not cut out to handle the boarding scene. Those of you that board or are BOs or BMs are made of much studier stuff than me.

[theotherdasher]

"I’ve been a boarder my entire horse life and the one and only time I begrudged the BO rate increases was at a facility where nothing got improved. "

Statements like this make me crazy.
Even BO’s deserve a raise every once in a while. Expecting that the extra money taken in is only for some sort of improvement to the facility is just wrong.
WYSIWYG

[SharonA]

[QUOTE=Hulk;8428382]
I have been reading this thread, and been thinking about boarding here on my farm and all the reasons why I don’t do it. I get asked to do so all the time. I guess that even thinking about this thread and having boarders induced a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt I had to board my horses and they were being treated terrible. I guess some of us just are not cut out to handle the boarding scene. Those of you that board or are BOs or BMs are made of much studier stuff than me.[/QUOTE]

It’s a catch 22. Private BOs hear would-be boarders complaining about the substandard care in the barns that are available to them, and private barn owners are dissuaded from taking in even the most normal of boarders, such that people looking for board can’t find anything decent so they complain about the care that they can find, which makes BOs reading their posts get leery…

The result, for those whose family or geographical or other commitments preclude their buying their own farm, is that there are very few good places to board a horse, for any price.

[starrunner]

I have boarded my personal horses, but also have family that I lived with horses at home as well.

There’s definitely pros and cons both ways. For me, I really enjoy having an indoor to ride in when it’s icky and am willing to pay for that. At this point and time, I also enjoy traveling when possible and boarding makes this easier.

But there is a major peace at home.

But the #1 thing I think people don’t think about boarding is if you have the personality to keep boarding as a business. If you like fostering drama, don’t board.

If you can’t handle people’s concerns or criticisms, don’t board.

If you can’t handle a wide variety of horses, don’t board.

If you are too wishy washy to make executive decisions in times of crisis, don’t board.

Basically, are you business minded and diplomatic enough to board? I unfortunately was at a barn that the barn owner fostered the drama and complained about every issue about every other boarder to another boarder and it was difficult. She was also afraid of some pretty normal horses, so that was hard.

And the crazy bookkeeping didn’t help. When I decided to leave, she changed her ledger which wasn’t up to date!

But I love the other barn owners I’ve been at. One was male, which actually was kind of nice. If women were too dramatic (ie making it so other boarders didn’t want to come!), they were asked to leave.

My current barn has a female barn owner, but she is so great and level headed. I don’t know how she does it.

[mvp]

[QUOTE=Pocket Pony;8424269]
I can easily see how both can be true, since I’ve been on both sides of it, and no one has to be lying.

I have to live somewhere. Since I don’t want to live in an apartment, I bought a house. Since I don’t want to live in a suburb, I bought a house in the country. Since I bought a house in the country, I might as well bring my horses home. I am willing to assume a certain amount of debt as a mortgage in order to live in a house of my choosing. Part of my expenses, regardless of where I buy a house, are property taxes, insurance, water, electricity, maintenance. [/QUOTE]

So you do or do not consider the portion of mortgage, insurance, utilities, water and the rest (like tractor payment, panels and rubber mats you bought) “billable” to the barn/horse part of your life? And you don’t pay yourself for labor?

Or do you bill all those to yourself as the country equivalent of what you’d pay to live in a house in the suburbs or city?

I think a lot of small hobby farm owners do their costing such that the barn doesn’t pay it’s “in excess of the house” share of the farm expenses. That’s how it comes out looking cheaper to keep horses at home. Do you think that’s right-- this is how people are figuring it?

It doesn’t matter to me how people allocate their time and money. But if they want to talk about what boarding could cost or should cost, then they have to create legitimate “comps” in the two scenarios-- one where the costing is thorough and one were it’s not.

[fordtraktor]

Very few horse owners cost out barn expenses at that level of detail, mvp. Why on earth would you? No one does this because it is cheap!!! Trust me, keeping horses at home is NOT cheaper than boarding and we don’t want our husbands to really think too much about that. We do it because we love it. Not about the money. On a per horse monthly variable cost of feed basis you can see it. With all the capital outlays, never!!!

And we are not generally the people making the “board ought to be cheaper” arguments. I board a few horses here and my board rates are quite pricey for the area despite my lack of amenities because I feed free choice hay, good concentrate and bed well. I can’t do it for less!

[Hulk]

Sharon A, I agree finding a place to board around here is not easy. The one place closed down due to non payment of customers on a regular basis. I know the BO and she is a good business person, so I don’t believe it was a fault of hers. She just told me she had to waste far to much time tracking people down for the money. She offered decent care, free fed premium hay she made herself, and a 40 acre pasture for 10 horses and large box stalls cleaned twice daily, So care wasn’t lacking.

One of her customers she had to chase down told her she didn’t need the money, as her place was paid for and she was doing better financially than the boarder. I think that attitude of the boarders is the straw that broke the camels back. She now just keeps her own horses and is private.

The other place is going to probably close down soon due to the owners health. He is in such bad shape that I don’t even believe he is still at it. The care at that facility is not the best. Passable but not top notch. But they are good with the kids and kiddie lessons. Competitive snarky parent drama runs rampant in that barn though. He gets paid on time because non payment results in your horse not getting fed.

So there isn’t a whole lot of choice around here. You have to drive at least an hour to board anywhere else. This is why I get asked so often to board I’m guessing. I don’t blame people as choices are limited.

[Pocket_Pony]

[QUOTE=mvp;8429002]
So you do or do not consider the portion of mortgage, insurance, utilities, water and the rest (like tractor payment, panels and rubber mats you bought) “billable” to the barn/horse part of your life? And you don’t pay yourself for labor?

Or do you bill all those to yourself as the country equivalent of what you’d pay to live in a house in the suburbs or city?

I think a lot of small hobby farm owners do their costing such that the barn doesn’t pay it’s “in excess of the house” share of the farm expenses. That’s how it comes out looking cheaper to keep horses at home. Do you think that’s right-- this is how people are figuring it?

It doesn’t matter to me how people allocate their time and money. But if they want to talk about what boarding could cost or should cost, then they have to create legitimate “comps” in the two scenarios-- one where the costing is thorough and one were it’s not.[/QUOTE]

Sure, I consider a small portion of the barn costs of the property to be “horse related” versus just the house, but again - it doesn’t add up to $500/month. In the number I quoted above for my hay that cost me $1400 last month and that will last me 8 months, that is $175 per month, for three horses, so $59/month/horse.

Shavings, well, I actually don’t even know how much they cost per bag. Let’s go with $10, which I think is high. I have three horses. I probably use 2 bags of shavings per month between the three of them because they don’t spend a lot of time in their stalls and only one of them actually needs his stall cleaned regularly. So that’s $20/month; if I just divide it up evenly, that is $7/horse/month.

Electricity and water. I only use the lights in my barn at night for maybe 30 minutes while I’m doing chores. Water, I run that for less time than I take a shower. I’m guessing the cost of those two items is $20/month; so again, $7/month/horse.

So for horse-related costs so far, I have (and I’ll round up here) $75/month/horse in basic food, water, electricity, shavings - think rough board. Could you rough board your horse for $75/month?

If I take out a portion of my property taxes for the barn and paddocks and arena as a percent, then I’m looking at $50/month; for three horses that is $17/month/horse . Insurance would be a much smaller number, let’s say $10; for three horses I’ll round up to $4/month/horse. So now I’m up to $96/month/horse.

Since I do have irrigation water (not everyone does, some just dry lot their horses year round), I’ll add in $20/month total (which is high because I irrigate more than what is used for the horses); again, $7/horse/month.

Seeding/fertilizing I’ll say $50/month; for three horses that’s $17/horse/month.

Now I’m up to $120/month/horse - lower than my original estimate in my first post of $250-$300/month/horse.

If I factor in the cost of equipment amortized over the years (which is something of value that I could sell if I wanted to), then I could get back up to my original estimate of $250-$300/month/horse.

Is my time worth something? Sure. But I would be “losing” time altogether if I drove to the barn. The time I spend at the barn is productive time where I’m actually doing something versus sitting in my car commuting back and forth to the barn. And it is more convenient for me to have my horses at home so that I can have my two jobs, ride, fit my chores into 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, than it would be to try to find a 2-3 hour chunk where I’d have time to drive to the barn, ride, do whatever associated tasks, and drive home and then make dinner and do all my other home chores, too.

Let me ask - do you factor in the cost of your own time when you travel to and from the barn? Do you factor in the cost of your barn travel time to the total cost of maintaining your car? Do you count that as an expense in your horse budget? Your time to drive + a % of the gas + a % of the insurance + a % of the maintenance costs?

Regarding what I bolded above . . . well, no, I don’t “have”’ to do that, but as an exercise to show that I’m not just pulling numbers out of my ass, I did that above.

[Pocket_Pony]

Coming back to add another thing.

I see my house/barn as an investment of sorts. Am I guaranteed a positive return on my investment? Well, no. But, I’m not necessarily throwing money away, either. The house I just sold, well I lost money on that because when I sold the house before it was at the height of the market (and I made a very good profit) and so I bought at the height of the market.

If I use our general $500/month that we’ve been using, then over the 11 years that I lived in my last house, had I been boarding, I would have spent $198,000 on boarding. Did I lose 198,000 on the house I just sold? Nope. So while I didn’t make any money on it, it was certainly a worthwhile investment to not throw away an additional $198,000 over 11 years.

Finally, there is some non-monetary value in having my horses at home and structuring my life in accordance with my values in general. I value having horses at home, being able to look out my window and see them, watch them running around in the pasture while doing my chores, getting in the fresh air and living that lifestyle.

Sometimes if you crunch the numbers they are just irrelevant because the pleasure you get from having horses at home is most important.

[Jarpur]

Not to compare our small, personal operation with large, commercial establishment, but to give an idea of what we did: I crunched the numbers before we bought our place or put in our major horse-related improvements (fencing, arena, barn). Without allowing for any increase in our property value, the break-even on what we spent was about 7.5 years of dry stall costs (at that time).

So, at this point, not renting dry stalls basically covers the cost of our horse-related expenses. I was already providing feed, hay, bedding, cleaning stalls, etc., when boarding, although now I am responsible for dragging the arena, seeding pastures, composting manure, pressure-washing the barn, tightening the electric cross-fencing, etc. It’s a little extra time, but not near what I spent commuting to a barn all those years (about 45 minutes a round trip then, would be longer now, since there is a lot more traffic with 7 more lights and 2 additional stop signs).

Also, I drive several thousand miles/year less now than when I boarded (even with a relatively short commute of about 25 miles round trip daily). I figure that the extra miles would have meant an additional vehicle purchased, and used up, by now, if I had continued boarding.

No heavy equipment, only a garden tractor we’d have anyway in order to mow, and the usual stuff (push mower, string trimmer, etc.). Only horse-specific buys were water troughs and a secondhand manure spreader (and a round bale ring since sold). We have a Farm & Ranch policy, so extra insurance expense has been negligible; same with electricity, as we have fluorescent barn lights pretty much used only for bed check, and we’re on a well with dryland pastures.

Others’ numbers and experiences may differ, but it works for us; I fear that we’d probably be shut out of horse ownership if we hadn’t moved our horses home years ago.

[DressageFancy]

[QUOTE=mvp;8423886]
Some people say this, and others gather their accounting ledgers to show us that there’s almost no profit in boarding.

How can both be true? Or, in this case, how can the numbers be so far apart as to a horse being able to live at home for just 1/3 the cost of boarding him out? What is/isn’t being counted in each scenario?

That kind of “the numbers don’t make sense… by a wide margin” contributes to the adversarial part of the HO/BO conversation. If everyone misses by so much, someone’s gotta be lying, right?[/QUOTE]

The difference is that (for me anyway) I own my home/farm and the time/money spent on upkeep/improvements is as I feel I need/want done. Not as a going boarding business must spend to maintain a professional facility. I don’t have the extra utilities that go with HO’s coming and going after dark. (If you board you have HOs who have day jobs and can only come ride after dusk.) I don’t have the cost of hired help because I only keep the number of horses that I can easily care for by myself. I don’t have new horses to mix in the pasture and cause disruption of the herd pecking order causing possible vet visits/fence repairs/ect. I only have the number of horses that my pasture will actually support verses a too crowded pasture which is the norm at a boarding facility. Adequate pasture saves on annual hay costs. There are endless little expenses that push up costs that I just don’t have by having my horses at home. Thus I can keep a horse for less than half of what it would cost to board.

And yes I do have to maintain a small tractor for dragging pasture and arena as well as mowing the yard. But the cost does not compare to the larger equipment necessary to maintain a boarding facility.

[DressageFancy]

I do work full time away from home. Being able to spend my ‘at home’ time with my equine friends is something I wouldn’t trade for anything! I don’t have to plan time out of my day to drive to the boarding facility. I can just turn off the vacuum cleaner and within two hundred fifty feet I’m in the barn. I’m not really sure how you put a $ amount on the time needed to go to and from the boarding facility to spend time with your horse, but, it is extra time out of a buisy day when you aren’t getting anything done. So if I do do all my own care (which is time and you translate that into $) verses the say one hour commute (30 min each way) and you translate that into $ than my home labor is not really a big $ factor verses the outside boarding costs. Nope, still much less expensive to keep the ponies at home.