Mine does too. I thought about that when I saw the gauze price that my vet charged for the nail incident. I needed the gauze, I was out (dang box was empty but left on the shelf) and it was the middle of the night, but the upcharge made me sad LOL
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I’m always surprised what’s just included with my large animal vets. Injectible meds dispensed for home use come with needles and syringes, wrapping material is (often, always?) just given to the client, etc.
It’s been a welcome surprise, tbh. I’m sure they just roll it into their fees and it sure does simplify their billing. Win win for both of us.
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Is yours private-equity owned? Probably another topic, (and I’m really just curious) but I’m finding it common as PE firms are buying up vets that they don’t give away as much.
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Same.
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Wow all of you getting such detailed itemized bills from anyone! I have never not once, now I’m jealous.
But as others have said - I don’t think I want to see what they’re charging for gauze, and syringes, etc.
Like how you hear about people being charged $1500 for one bag of saline drip at the hospital, or $250 for a single band-aid.
Get out of here!
So I guess that’s another issue with the proposed idea for boarding. Boarders are absolutely going to scrutinize the prices and basically tell the BO their time isn’t worth anything. Of course, someone will say “if you’re not overcharging nefariously, why would it be a problem to show your itemized prices?” and sure, that’s true to an extent. But you’ll ALWAYS get people that think a perfectly reasonable price is outrageous. So you know, pick your battles I suppose.
Certainly, the current system isn’t working. IDK if itemizing to such a degree is the right fix, though.
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I guess the question is - does not showing it prevent this? And I think the answer is no. At least not in my experience.
I agree that the current system is definitely not working.
I think one of the reasons I was thinking of designing it more of a custom-designed program (again, I think I described it poorly) in addition was to help encourage people who wanted to reduce costs to do things like shop for easy keepers who could live more cheaply. Of the boarders I had it always seemed like the people who could afford it the least or wanted to pay the least had the hardest keeping, most labor intensive creatures on earth. And sure, there’s always pasture board, but it seemed like there wasn’t an inbetween option anymore. Pasture board with horrifying barbed wire or serious show barn and nothing in between.
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What is the current system? The one that doesn’t actually exist?
Is it people offering boarding without having gone through the whole sitting down and coming up with a viable business plan?
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As a boarder, I’d hate this type of setup because I already live it. Most barns in my area have things a la carte already, as is the barn I’m currently moving to. Everything but the stall + shavings/stall cleaning is extra. Stalls have autowaters, so filling buckets is extra. Barn feeds cubes, so hay + feeding the hay is extra. Any type of turnout is extra. I’m used to being charged per lb of hay (and by type), having to provide my own concentrates, and paying for any interaction with my horse outside of it standing in its stall. I’ve had to pay a fee for all the supplies used on my horse (group rate split between boarders).
It’s better to have whatever you consider standard good horsekeeping factored into the flat rate, then charge for anything over that (ie. everyone is getting at least 5 lb of hay per day, if owner wants more then they pay). It also depends if you want to be considered full service, not full service, or super special full service. For example, if you think good horse care involves blanketing most horses or having fly masks, I’d include that as standard. Maybe charge if someone has very finicky blanketing requirements or it is too much work.
Additionally, depending on the amount of horses on property, this gets hard to keep track of. Did Dobbin’s owner pay for medication application this month or last? Wait, when did this horse start supplements? A trainer I was with gave out itemized lists every month, but it wound up being the same every month outside of little add-ons. I paid the same amount for hay (4-5 flakes a day), basic board, supplies fee, and training. I liked the itemized list as it showed me exactly what my funds were going to; if the price hay went up one month, then we had to pay more but I could see exactly why. But, basic things like grooming, sunpen use, filling water buckets, blanketing, shavings, stall cleaning, putting on boots/wraps for turnout, that was all factored into the base price.
I would also not like a stall setup fee. Having a stall prepared for a new horse is just… part of business? I wouldn’t pay extra to a kennel to clean up after the last dog left and before my dog arrives. I wouldn’t pay a restaurant extra to seat me at a clean table. And yes, if I was expected to buy things for the stall then I would definitely be taking them with me when I left. Why would I leave them? The barn didn’t pay for them, I did. That actually came up when I was at the above training barn. The stalls came with lights and fans. You had to pay to replace them if they died while your horse had that stall, but could take them when you left. I chose to leave my fan (horse moved to field board and I didn’t want to deal with the fan).
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Thank you for explaining how your barn works, that’s rare around here, so it’s interesting to see that it’s already a normal model in some areas.
Would it make a difference if the grooming, sunpen use, etc. was all lumped into one line item called “enhanced board” or something like that with the items underneath it as a description? More like a package than serious a la carte?
I don’t think that was for me, but it’s been my experience that barn owners do have business plans. It’s just that reality is SO different than the paper experience. Wildly different. And most barn owners are horse people first, barn owners second, which can influence things. Most, I believe, end up falling into the “do too much for too little and burn out bucket” because they love horses.
Having the ability to point to an itemized price list and say “nope, we charge x for an extra bale of shavings” rather than them just adding it because someone requested it seems like a useful tweak to the current system on the barn owner side.
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I would want there to be a minimum with “extras” at additional cost. So, for example, I’d pay full board for stall, 2x day stall cleaning (one full muck out and one pick end of day) with for example 1 bag of shavings added per day, x pounds hay fed 3 times a day, 4 hours turnout, one blanket change a day, fly spray, ration balancer and any supplements that I provide (I could pre-package them if needed). If I then needed more than the “basics”, I would be happy to pay extra. What is frustrating as a boarder is not having the lines clearly drawn between what is included in my board and what I should be paying extra for (and how much extra). For example–my horse is a piggy grey gelding who pees everywhere and sleeps in it, and has had ongoing issues with thrush this year. I would happily pay a bit extra each month if he could have an extra bag of shavings in his stall to try to keep it a bit drier overnight. But, that’s not currently an option at my barn because they don’t itemize things like that.
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Everything is al la carte here 
To be fair to my situation, SoCal boarding is an entire beast on its own. I don’t think al a carte is the worst idea for fancy extras (swimming, ponying, using therapy products/machines, applying medicine) but I do expect a horse business to factor some costs into the cost of doing business. I see a lot of barns that don’t factor in wear an tear on facilities into their budget, then pass that on to the boarders. If the barn offers cross ties, and one of the ties breaks because it’s old/warn/normal accident, I would expect the barn to replace that. I don’t expect to pay for a broken fence when half the fence boards are falling down. Restaurant isn’t going to make me pay for accidentally dropping a plate on the ground or because the booth fabric split when I sat down.
I would prefer a package deal. Complete itemized breakdowns of every little task feels very mercenary to a boarder/customer. Yes, the barn needs to make money and should be fairly compensated for that work. However, if I am going to be nickle and dimed, I’m going to demand all my pennies! As an example, when I had to pay for my own shavings, I was a lot pickier about how the stall cleaners were going about cleaning it. Or if I was supposed to get 4 flakes, what about the half a flake that my horse didn’t finish in the sunpen; that should be put back in her stall. I didn’t like that feeling; I never felt that I was being overcharged or anything, but I preferred packing X rate and not worrying about it.
Overall, the problem with horses vs any other business you mentioned is that horses just require so much more expensive, intensive care. With daycare, the staff isn’t in charge of meal prep, long-term medication, or general health. Daycare isn’t making sure the child has 3 full balanced meals everyday nor are staff going to the doctor’s appointments. Kids go home at the end of the day and became a different adult’s responsibility. A long-term dog kennel may do some of the things a barn does, but the end result is that the dogs will go home after X period of time. Dogs don’t eat as much, drink as much, nor need nearly as much stuff (fly masks, boots, blankets, bedsore boots, standing wraps, etc.). A kennel is also generally closed off; the owners aren’t coming to hang out with their dog, other people’s dogs, and having the dog trainer give lessons around all that. Horse boarding is a unique field of business. Your average boarder is going to wind up closer to a BO and/or barn staff than they are the cashier at their local Taco Bell (even if they go to Taco Bell daily).
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So I did some more board math, just to see if that furthers the conversation any. I assumed delivery for everything because even though that’s my time, it’s still my time and wear and tear on my truck etc.
I did an average here, of dry stall costs across the country that I found on COTH and the web. Bedding assumption was 2 bag/week at $6.75/bag, which is about the cost here including delivery. Stall cleaning/feeding labor at $5/stall, once per day, and turnout in dry lot $5/day because the dry lots have to be cleaned like a stall, and I put the workman’s comp in the dry lot cost because that’s when you get hurt is doing turnout/in LOL so it’s about the same. Dry stall covers facility maintenance, repairs, mortgage for the larger property (we got ours before the crazy prices and rate hikes), the dumpster needed for commercial use, and insurance.
We’re already at $554 before I add in any hay or grain.
Then add some additional services - these are just basic care things, not grooming or anything like that - just kind of the daily things I did for the horses in my care - I assumed I’d have to pay someone $25/hour which is the going rate here to do that, roughly 10 minutes a day - $100/mo.
Adding in hay and grain, looks kind of like this. There are some assumptions here, feeding an appropriate amount by bodyweight of hay, and the hard keeper is the really hard keeper I had here who really had some issues so these are just kind of representative. The hay and grain prices are indicative of what you can find around here, obviously this varies by location. I used Purina Strategy, Enrich+ and Purina Senior prices for these, and included delivery.
Add in profit, because any good business is going to have some. A veterinary practice that is considered “good” (not excellent) in profit margin is 13%. So that’s what I assumed.
That makes board prices look like this:
A quick scan of board prices in my area has the average of current boarding prices at…drumroll please… $675. This includes hay & grain. Now, are they using Strategy and good hay? No. Many of them bale their own and undercharge for their time as well as providing less than the 1.5% hay needed by bodyweight. But - a boarder coming in doesn’t know that. In fact, most don’t even know that their horses have requirements like that.
So - I know that boarding options in my area sucked, which is why I bought my own barn. But the reason was that people were cutting care options, prioritizing facility fanciness (because people buy that) and everything else just died.
This led me to think, well, maybe there are other ways to help boarders choose and price things. Maybe not, I don’t know, but maybe there are other ways to make this whole market work.
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No one in this thread is saying that boarding barns aren’t under water.
Nearly everyone in this thread is saying that daily line item billing isn’t the answer to that.
Your math project doesn’t illustrate or explain how daily line item billing will address the problem you’ve identified.
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I wasn’t making an argument. I was providing fodder for more discussion. It’s quite clear you hate the idea, thank you for your input.
I’m just saying “just raise prices” is non-helpful. It presumes all barn owners are idiots who just can’t do math.
That all looks very in line with what I’d expect. The barn I just left was spending over $1k per horse in labor/materials (board was not that high, so they were loosing money).
Lots of horse business practices became standard when labor was cheap. Labor is not cheap anymore and horses are labor intensive.
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Yeah, that’s what I mean when I say it hasn’t kept up with inflation. It’s been wild. I’m assuming your hay/grain is more expensive in CA though?
This is absolutely true, but all of those are hugely profitable because the expectations are in line with the costs. Our local dog boarding facility charges per weekend what most of our local boarding facilities charge per month, which is just insane to me.
So I’ve been brainstorming different solutions for awhile.
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Depends? First place I boarded my horse, hay was $13-15 per 100 lb bale (alfalfa or grass). Where my horse moved, slightly smaller 80-95 lb bales were ~$30. Grain isn’t/wasn’t included as part of board, so I had to buy my own. I was buying Hygain via Chewy ($30-$40 for a 40 lb bag). My horse is an easy keeper and was just on a ration balancer, so grain price was not too high.
But you raised prices. And then others raised prices.
You have over and over said barn owners can’t/don’t/won’t raise prices, but you yourself disproved that.
You don’t actually know that a realistic price is untenable in your area, you just think it might be…but also think that daily line item billing will change that?
You’re also not boarding yourself and aren’t sure you want to get back into it…so you’re…what? Proposing an expensive and labor intensive billing package to sell to other barns? One that will require 100% staff compliance?
How does any of this solve the problem?
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