Ok, I didn’t read the whole thread. Can’t believe the pushback you are getting on this! Absolutely I would pay extra for a la carte items. It might read better if you had standard board is $X which includes A, B, and C. Then here is a list of extras for an extra fee. I’ve never understood how barn owners can make a go of it when Abe eats $20 worth of food a week, keeps a tidy stall and goes naked and Zorro eats $50 worth of food a week, trashes his stall and needs multiple wardrobe changes. If you are willing to provide individualized care, I am willing to pay for it!
3 Likes
Board will be rising as land is being swallowed by neighborhoods from folks moving here from Loudoun County. They can’t build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with growth.
There are a few boarding barns that have been in families for generations but have a feeling they will cash out when they retire. They keep cost down by doing their own hay, little shavings, no pasture maintenance, feeding local grain options in bulk. So kudos to them.
I pictured (and maybe I didn’t articulate this) that the barn owner might have the conversation with the owner who wants more shavings that says “we can do this, but it will require two cleanings and that will cost x”. I first started it with per hour/minute but realized that was too hard for people to understand. Then the horse owner has a decision to make. They can have more shavings and a clean stall or they stick with the minimums.
If you need to save costs but Dobbin needs more food, you trade on something else. Maybe you don’t get 6" of bedding which you previously wanted. There are options for you.
This is why a standardized list where the barn owner has a leg to say “Dobbin looks like crap, he’s a pig in the stall, and you’ll really need to pay x to keep him better”. But there are ways to work through the other options to help the HO get to a cost that can help. Obviously sometimes there are no ways to do that and eviction is the only answer.
No - if you have 3 bags per week, that’s what is billed at the end of the month. It’d be nice to track and verify but the general consensus is that it’s too hard and not worth it to anyone. I would have thought it would be preferable, which I suppose is why I’m so confused about why people hate the idea.
Thanks - I was pretty surprised too! I provided individualized super-care when I boarded but then I felt badly about the inequality between boarders. So being able to make that go away and the billing be more obvious felt like it’d be something boarders would want.
I know I didn’t explain my thoughts very well - it seems the problem is with the word daily, which was really only about breaking it down so that you could make pro-rated changes or describe how often someone gets something.
Bagged shavings are insanely expensive. I buy my shavings by the dump truck load. I built a shavings storage bin for like $200. I couldn’t imagine bedding like I like my horses bedded using bags. I’d go bankrupt. A load of shavings is $200. Lasts my two horses for 3-4 months.
2 Likes
Yeah - that’s what happens as cities sprawl. Then there’s a tipping point where the land is so valuable that you lose barns. I think that’s where we are here since we’re so close to the city. So many neighborhoods here were once farms and as they get pushed further and further out, it makes riding less accessible to owners.
Those types of barns are common around here around the hour-hour and a half mark outside the city. And some of them are very cheap. Care is not good, lots of horror stories, but they do keep costs down for sure.
Ah, back to stupid.
I wonder why so many of us here thought you meant daily line items??
5 Likes
Yeah - I’ve been looking for a supplier here. Sadly we’ve had a heck of a time finding delivery that is any cheaper than bags, and the bags provide an easy measurement to tell staff 3 bags vs. put a wheelbarrow load in. It’s also easier for ME as a barn owner to verify that the staff did that. I do counts weekly of inventory because variations not only interrupt my chi and make me concerned someone didn’t get something but also can cause surprise issues “hey, we’re out of bedding all of a sudden”…wait…what??
There was some massive disruption during COVID and I’m not sure it has been resolved yet - we bought our facility right on the tail end of it.
1 Like
I said I explained it poorly. If you would, go back and count the number of times I said I explained it poorly since you want to verify everything I said to make your point.
I never said you were stupid.
What I said was “oh gosh, that’s why we had a misunderstanding - no wonder I was confused”. I validated you and STILL you find the need to quote my posts to prove yourself.
Whatever. Hope it’s clearer now.
1 Like
I’m not sure you explained it poorly. I think you realized that the proposition was untenable, then altered the proposition to what is basically already in effect: Base minimum board with surcharges for extras.
Either way, I think this thread illustrates just how much more work this would be for BOs. So while you’re not subsidizing an owner’s horse habit with actual dollars, you would be with extra time spent trying to manage the whims of 20 different owners, communicate those whims to staff, oversee 20 different custom programs that you’re relying on staff to implement, independently bill each client or develop software to handle that, double-check that billing is correct, and then handle a gazillion conversations with hobby horse owners that saw something on facebook and are now quite sure they know more than someone that’s been managing horses for 3 decades.
7 Likes
For those that have said that the easy keepers/tidy horses sort of balance out the hard keepers/slobs -
No.
The barn owner deserves to turn a “profit” (I know this is a bit of a joke, but still) on every horse in the barn, so the baseline price should be set on the easy keeper/tidy horse. Anything extra for the messy hard keeper should be passed on to that horse owner.
Just my .02
ETA: Or you baseline price your worst case scenario, but that would likely put you at higher base board than any barn in the area. Some people would be OK with that, others not.
1 Like
To be fair, it’s because your OP itemizes down to things like hourly turnout.
If you’re just talking about customizing the “hard costs” like feed and bedding, that’s a completely different story, and yes it is very very common in several areas, and is swiftly becoming more common.
Some of the others items are less common, but not non-existent, like charging daily for blanketing or medication administration. BUT I’d say that those items are usually offered as ad-ons and thus expected to be used occasionally. As a boarder, I would not want to pay a daily fee for such services on a long-term basis, then have my board price fluctuate every month depending on the weather or whatever. If the service is needed for more than 14 days, I would want a monthly rate. And that’s actually how I structured my board as a BO. I offered a daily or per-occurrence rate for occasional use of services. If needed regularly for more than 14 days, I had a monthly rate.
Maybe edit your OP to remove those turnout hourly lines. And remove the “per day” description for the others.
3 Likes
Thanks for telling me what I think - because that isn’t offensive at all.
I actually built a system that tracks this. You tap the horse, tap bedding to add that it was used. I did it because I couldn’t take inventory from 600 miles away and my helper was notoriously bad at telling me how much bedding/hay/grain we had left so I could order it.
Wasn’t hard. I do speak of things I know.
1 Like
Maybe that’d be better. I should have said per day charged by month. So you get so many lbs of hay per day but it is one lump sum.
I did veer into saying it could be done when people objected strongly to the notion - because I did exactly that when I was managing my barn from far away - but that seemed to cause more consternation so I dropped that.
That was an additional thought experiment about tech being enabled in barns, but I didn’t realize I was perceived to be making a case for CVS receipts as opposed to customized services.
That was why I was so confused by the strong objection!
1 Like
Oh I give up. You’re right, you just explain things poorly and the rest of us will just wallow around in confusion and remember that no matter what we just read, you actually meant something different.
9 Likes
Yup, it’s “our problem”! 
3 Likes
How is me apologizing repeatedly for the miscommunication saying anything about you?
Maybe I just apologize for being unclear wrong too!
As someone who has cleaned their own stall(s) for a very long time (including when I was boarding), I can totally get why it is not preferable.
There are stall cleaners that:
-
toss out too much good bedding when cleaning a stall so I would be paying extra for more to go in the manure pile.
-
do not bother to clean out the wet spot well enough so the new bedding I am paying or is getting ruined before the horse even comes in.
-
Is more than willing to toss clean bedding on top of dirty bedding.
-
Leaves manure chunks and stirs them into the clean bedding.
My list could go on, just a few examples.
I don’t want to pay for extra bedding just to not get ahead with the extra bedding.
Plus, how do I know that my horse got its extra bedding that I paid for?
On bulk bedding - I used it for years and have boarded at barns that use it, cleaned stalls at barns that use it.
I find that it is cheaper to buy but maybe not so much cheaper to use, if you are paying your workers by the hour (if you are paying by the stall then it is clearly not more expensive).
Where I am, the bulk sawdust is typically from mills that are working cutting wood that is not kiln dried yet and the pile is stored outside. So a certain amount of absorbency is not there that is in bagged shavings or pellets. There is less consistency to the product too. Some days you get a load that is dust with lots of bark chunks, some days you get large curls of shavings. My biggest issue is the amount of extra work associated with bedding the stalls. I can stack and take many bags of shavings on one wheelbarrow trip. With bulk shavings I have to shovel the shavings into the wheelbarrow and to the stalls. It takes several more trips than with the bagged shavings.
6 Likes
Doesn’t this happen regardless though? I mean, I know these are all complaints I had about my previous barn worker before I re-trained her but I’ve got to stay on her daily which is a problem I need to solve.
I have cleaned stalls in barns that have 6" of bedding and barns that have 2". There are definitely different techniques based on the amount and type…and horse!
Is it preferable to just not get more bedding?
The bedding in particular stuck out to me because I like my horses if they are stalled to be able to lay down at night, so the bedding has to be pretty deep to avoid them standing up and smelling of pee. My help, if not monitored closely, will only put 1-2" of bedding in. This stinks and makes the horse smell like crap. I don’t mind paying her more for her time if she cleans well. So I do and continue to tell her “for the love of god please put more bedding in the dang stall”. For record - when I clean for weeks on end (which I have done many times) - I bed deep and find it no more difficult to bed than a thinly bedded stall. I don’t have mats, so the thin bedding destroys the stall floor because the horses can reach it, which I also find particularly irritating. It’s a management issue that I’m still working on (she is only still here because she at least shows up daily and does treat the horses kindly, if I could find someone else that fit that bill who also didn’t have to be watched like a hawk that’d be superb. I digress.
Anyway - this doesn’t seem like a “boarder preference” issue. It’s a management issue that I most definitely struggled with even in the normal model.
I had a great kiln dried supplier in my former state. I’m not sure where it comes from here since I haven’t been able to get it since the aforementioned supply chain interruptions seemed to screw things up and now no one comes this far for delivery (even though I’m in the city - it’s opposite-land - far for the mills is closer to town). Bagged bedding is definitely more consistent, and I have several suppliers to buy from if one retailer doesn’t have it. I do buy at “bulk buy discounts” which helps. I also do things like put layers of pellets in wet spots to help keep the absorbency up a bit.
I’m hoping to get a mule so that I can stack the bedding in the bed and just drive down the aisle dropping it off at the stalls. That seems to be the most ideal from an ease of use standpoint!
As a barn owner myself, no way in heck would this ever fly for me or my customers.
It is our responsibility as business owners to know to the penny what it costs to run our operations. I can tell you day by day what standard operations run PER HORSE. I also know what my overhead expenses are and what my profit margin must be to keep myself afloat and I charge accordingly. If someone doesn’t want to pay my (very average for my area) boarding prices, they’re welcome to find a farm that suits their needs. I am extremely flexible in terms of what I will do for my clients and how I go about caring for their horses, but at the end of the day, my program runs in a specific way that works for specific owners. I’m not trying to keep everyone happy, I’m trying to keep those happy for whom my farm is a good fit. And if I had to sit down at night and keep track of who went out where and for how long and who got wrapped and who ate 8 flakes of grass hay versus 4 flakes of alfalfa…I’d be out of the business so fast you could smell the burnt rubber from Canada!
7 Likes
