Useless Barn help...major rant

[kdow]

[QUOTE=Stormers85;7769743]

This girl has 15 stalls to do and sometimes comes in the morning and sometimes not until late in the afternoon. She brings her dog and even sometimes brings her 4 year old who she then asks boarders to “watch for a minute” while she drives the tractor to get more bedding or dump manure. She stands there and talks about how awful it is to do this kind of work, how the evening feed person gives too much hay and the horses make a mess of it, and of course, how messy my horse is.[/QUOTE]

Okay - “hey, I have noticed horse makes a big mess of his hay and is wasting a lot of it because it ends up inedible, have you tried nibble net/tub/whatever?” Or “you know, I heard using some x type bedding helps in stalls with horses who pee a lot, do you think it is worth trying? He makes his stall messy quickly and might be more comfortable overnight if the bedding soaked up the pee better?” Both seem okay to me, provided they are suggestions that would fly with BO. Just complaining a horse is messy seems stupid. Some horses are messy, some aren’t. Are you supposed to clicker train him to use a toilet or something?

[Albertabound]

Don’t leave my horse out because you don’t want to clean the stall!

I left a barn once because the barn help didn’t like cleaning stalls, so they just left my horse out. If I wanted pasture board I would have paid for pasture board!:mad:

[Stormers85]

[QUOTE=kdow;7769764]
Are you supposed to clicker train him to use a toilet or something?[/QUOTE]

Ha, apparently!

[merrygoround]

[QUOTE=gray17htb;7769141]
I just want you to know, THAT YOU WERE CORRECT TO TAKE THE REINS OVER THE HORSES HEAD TO LEAD!..I don’t care what discipline ,ALWAYS take the reins over the horses head when leading on the ground. Hope that makes you feel better after all this time :)[/QUOTE]

If it’s my horse I kill if the reins are up, if it’s their horse, I gently remind them that if a horse misbehaves, you have a lot more control with the reins down.

Of course some horses NEVER act up! :lol: :lol:

[merrygoround]

[QUOTE=Ladylexie;7768661]
This is true, but, I don’t see anything wrong with leaving horses outside to keep stalls cleaner? I also like to gab as I work??? I’m wondering if you are being a tiny bit hard nosed…[/QUOTE]

You obviously have never had boarders. You also have little experience with horses. But then I guess I am hard nose too.

OP, I sympathize. And Yes, they do hire on expecting to “pet the Ponies”.

[copper1]

After over 40 years in this business and a good many as a manager or owner I have a lot of stores to tell!
Word of mouth is often the best way to find help. Putting an ad in the local paper just saying “barn help wanted, experience preferred but will train” can being in a lot of responses that you have to weed thru but sometimes starting someone from scratch is the best. I hired an experienced girl who I had known for sometime and she had owned horses her whole life. That obviously means nothing since she mucked out only what she could see and then only replaced bedding in those spots, never shaking or rearranging the whole stall and looking for those hidden spots-you can well imagine the smell from not so clean stalls of late term broodmares! She also did not feel the need to clean water buckets until you couldn’t see the bottom!
Explain the hours well and be sure they realize sometimes they go over. Had another gal then when her three hours were up, she was gone, whether there was a colic or a blacksmith visit or anything else!

Explain right from the beginning, EXACTLLY what is wanted of them from the minute they arrive to the minute they leave:DETAILS are important!

No smoking on the property, anywhere! I had one gal who would disappear several times during her 3 hour shift and I couldn’t find her. She would go to her car to smoke!

No kids. I like kids as much as the next person but they can be a liability even if they are horse experienced. There can be exceptions but generally, no.

We only allow dogs that are well behaved and under control. I do not want a dog that if it has to be confined in anyway, barks non stop or digs and scratches.

I am a bit reluctant to allow horses because often times that horse gets more attention than the ones that are paying for the care. If I do have a boarder that wants to work, they still pay the board and then I pay their salary-less problems that way.

We all could go on and on but honestly, there are quite a few great workers out there and if you find one you must also treat them well, with patience and respect!

[Equibrit]

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

[Zu_Zu]

YES ~ I understand this problem all too well ~

Yes ! I understand this problem all too well :eek::lol:

Good Luck ! Jingles & AO !

[gray17htb]

[QUOTE=Equibrit;7770487]
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.[/QUOTE]

I have found that I get FOR THIS JOB…PAY RATE DOES NOT = WORKER
QUALITY
WHETHER THEY get $8/hr, $10/hr or paid by the job(morning shift)…NOTHING changes the worker. So paying more does nothing but cost ME MORE MONEY. What ever the worker starts as, is usually (sad to say) the BEST that they will ever offer at this position. The first week they try to do the best job, to impress…

[Capall]

10 years on, my former boss still occasionally asks if I have any intentions of moving back to the area so I can work for her again :lol:

[WorkingDrive]

This doesn’t have to do with the OP’s barn (as I don’t know the OP,) but more in ads I see online or at the feed store all the time in the Help Wanted sections.

Riddle me this: a barn has 30 stalled horses and the ad says morning turn out, feeding, and mucking of the stalls for the 30 horses and then feeding of the 20 pasture horses should “only take about an hour.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I am meticulous when it comes to cleaning stalls, and it sure as heck would take me longer than an hour to do all of that.

Then these same barns complain about not being able to find quality help.

[Field_of_Dreams_Mini]

^^^ Good grief. Just feeding takes me almost an hour. (That’s watering, too.)

[LittleMissBigTime]

Yikes. I’ve been the barn help at two farms now.

I can’t imagine doing sub par work, complaining, or blowing things off.

The first situation was managing a 30 stall barn & horses on my own in exchange for free rent on the apartment above the barn.

The second and current situation is working 4X a week in exchange for a free stall. I provide everything for my horse, but I still think it’s a pretty sweet deal. She typically charges $350 for others to have partial care. All I do any differently than those folks is clean my own stall.

The work entails cleaning stalls, dumping shavings, turning out 11 horses, feeding, and riding her guys when she doesn’t have time. Nothing that takes more than an hour or so to complete.

This is a much more laid back situation than what OP is dealing with, I get that.

I guess having $350 free in board motivates me enough to stay punctual and maintain a good work ethic, even in the dead of summer Florida heat, because without it, I’d not be able to afford my horse very easily.

I think the key is finding someone who has a great work ethic, and a NEED to work. Tough to do, but I promise they are out there!

[kdow]

[QUOTE=Stormers85;7770139]
Ha, apparently![/QUOTE]

Maybe that is how I should fund my horsey desires. Come up with some scheme to convince people you can clicker train a horse to use a toilet…

[Zipsmom]

OP-I do sympathize! I board at a rough board facility where you can opt to pay someone to clean stalls or do it yourself. Let’s just say that there are a few owners who are not stellar in their stall cleaning and every now and then notices go up on the bulletin board and/or BO lays into them. Things improve for awhile…

As far as the reins over head- that’s what I’ve always done. I can see that if the horse bolts it could get caught up. But I would think the reins would break-obviously not in that case…

[billiebob]

I’m so with the OP here. I worked at busy lesson barns for over 10 years and sometimes it was like a revolving door of help. I can count on one hand the number of people I enjoyed working with and didn’t have to clean up after. It seemed in a lot of cases the more experience they had, the worse they were! Some thought that since one job included teaching lessons that mucking was beneath them (no) or that barn kids working off extra lessons or riding time were there to be their personal assistants (NO).

OP, you would love me…I’m not the fastest mucker but I regularly had clients, vets, and farriers tell me how nice it was to come to such a clean barn. I was hired at my first barn with very little experience but I worked under a great BM who was pretty particular but very fair. When I moved on to the second barn, I had a great BO who was VERY particular but again, very fair. I don’t mind someone being tough on me if they practice what they preach.

[KSquared]

I must work in heaven… I work on a 22 horse Arab farm and its 24/7 turn out… I clean the pastures. I take my wheelbarrow, a broom, shovel and pick fork and I clean the pens.

It takes me 3 hours by myself to clean all the pens, some horses are messier than others, some are just plain pigs. The stallions though are the cleanest.

While I clean the FO is with me either cleaning with me, or cleaning water buckets or refilling waters, which takes about as long to do as it does cleaning the pens.

I have my three horses boarded there and they get cleaned in the rotation, but they get no special treatment or worked until I am told to get one of them.

I go in between 8 and 9 and around noon when I am done we go out to lunch, run some errands. When we return we start working horses. Right now we are working horses going to the last and biggest show of the season, so we are riding twice a day, about an hour at a time. I work in all sorts of weather and I do ‘complain’ in a joking manner mostly. However, when it rains, we don’t work. Its hard to sweep and clean pens in the rain. I also work the farm horses first before I work my own. For my time and hard work I get board, feed and lessons… anything left over I get in check form. I also get all the water I can drink.

I didn’t work yesterday or today because it rained overnight and was too wet to pick… so I am going to go ride my horse this afternoon and tomorrow I will go and help the weekend girls clean since I haven’t cleaned in 2 days. I don’t need too, I wasn’t asked too, I offered to come help them clean what I couldn’t do over the last few days.

[Hulk]

OP please rant away. I feel for yah. This is why I just do it all myself. Its just a way of life for me, always has been. But I do admit I have wild daydreams from time to time about hiring out the stall mucking. Then reality crashes in, I pull on my boots, and head to the barn.

[RLastInstallment]

Working in someone else’s barn = not for everyone. Not for… most people, actually. Prior to my surgery, we went through applicant, after applicant, after applicant to find a temporary replacement. We finally found someone who fit the bill, I went off for my surgery, came back after two months off, and BO said, “Oh, I fired her after a couple of weeks.”

I’ve been at current barn for 3 years, going on 4, and will be leaving in a month. BO goes through help like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. Most of them, she runs off - the majority just can’t tolerate her personality; some of them quit after a nice screaming match. The rest just don’t meet her standards. We don’t always get along, and most people I talk to are surprised “you’re STILL there?!?!” :lol:

I stop to talk on occasion… I also adjust my hours accordingly.

Seriously, though, you know what you’re getting into when you start. Don’t take the job if you’re just going to complain about the chores. The only time I ever get frustrated is when I frequently get interrupted during chores. But that’s part of it, too.

[Griffyn]

oh God no. Thats why I write the check. SO I can gab, and drink coffee and repick my horses stall at a leisurely pace!