When I have had stalls held, I paid full board and I think that’s reasonable. However, if you do fill the stall I don’t think it’s fair to charge twice for the same space.
Costs are not zero…opportunity costs are real.
I think regular price minus feed & shavings is a deal, and full board is not unreasonable.
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It appears that the OP is planning on renting out the stal(s) in question to temporary winter boarders so she isn’t going to be subsidizing anything. In fact, since the stall of the client who is in FLA is going to be occupied by a full paying person, you could argue that the FLA client who is paying for the “hold” is subsidizing the BO at home.
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[QUOTE=Linny;6620671]
It appears that the OP is planning on renting out the stal(s) in question to temporary winter boarders so she isn’t going to be subsidizing anything. In fact, since the stall of the client who is in FLA is going to be occupied by a full paying person, you could argue that the FLA client who is paying for the “hold” is subsidizing the BO at home.[/QUOTE]
Yes, she may be paying for the hold and “subsidizing” the BO, that is a fair price to pay for the guarantee that the BO has not found a permanent boarder to take her place. If the boarder going off to Florida for the winter wants the convenience of having their stall back when they return, then they should be willing to pay for that convenience.
As others have pointed out, the fixed costs don’t change when a boarder takes their horse away for a month. The BO still has to pay the same mortgage on the facility, taxes, insurance, electric, maintenance & repairs, wages, payroll taxes, workman’s comp, etc. Although it may be “less work” to have one less horse to take care of, it really isn’t that much of a savings…the groom is already walking down the aisle with the feed cart & hay, etc. Plus, most workers expect a pretty routine number of hours and otherwise it can be hard to keep good help. The only thing that might change is feed and bedding, However, if the BO bought hay during the summer/fall based on an expected winter occupancy, there might not be any savings on that, just bedding and grain. Bedding and grain usually is not a lot of money. This is why many barns still charge the full rate when a horse is away.
As far as finding a temporary boarder to take the stall, that may or may not be a good deal for the BO. It may take extra advertising, extra phone calls, extra time showing people the barn, and even then it may not work out. It’s a new horse and person to get settled in, more paperwork, etc. A temporary boarder may or may not have the same interest in keeping the facility nice and being a good citizen around the barn. Yes, it would be nice if it worked out that there was someone who was willing to take the other person’s place for the period of time they were gone, but it isn’t the same as if the other person/horse never left, and so I think it would be reasonable for the BO to still charge something to guarantee the stall.
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Full rent as if the horse were there. If they want it guaranteed they need to pay for it-it’s not your fault they want to go to FL.
OP-Am I correct assuming that the boarders won’t be training with you or one of your staff in FL? If not, I’d say full board for an empty stall and half for a sublet stall.
If your business is getting paid for training & care in FL, I’d go straight to the half.
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Resurrecting an old thread… I keep my horse at a 3-horse private barn. I am the only boarder. I do his stall every day and supply his ration balancer and bedding, and pay a lump sump for hay. I used to pay by the bale, but that evolved into just a lump sum every month. Owner feeds ration balancer and hay, waters, turns out and in, and loves on and pays attention to my fella. It’s a really fortunate situation for us and I appreciate it hugely. The only thing it’s missing is an indoor… In order to have the BO hold my stall for two months while I go hide out at a barn with an indoor, I should pay the BO my regular rate, and if anything, only reduce my payment by the lump sump I have been paying for hay, correct?
BO is no help 
– she is world’s nicest person and is saying she won’t charge at all. I tell her that this philosophy is unsustainable and she has to be a businessperson first, or else she’ll start to hate having a boarder.
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Yes, in this situation where you feel you are getting a good deal and want it to continue, I’d offer to pay the board rate and then graciously accept a reasonable discount when the owner insists. I have paid half board for this kind of thing in the past, but I feel like 75% of the original cost (or a 25% discount) is more reasonable given that farms do not magically stop costing money when one horse disappears for a brief period.
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First winter I paid full board to hold stall. Second winter, another facility, I paid about 2/3 board - this was because owner moved a school horse from the farther away barn for the time I was gone. He really didn’t need to give me the discount, but I appreciated it!
I agree in that full board, or board minus cost of hay and bedding while the horse is gone is completely reasonable.
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The help still wants its pay. The fences still need to be up, electric and insurance, etc. still cost. Putting a winter boarder in the stall has settling in aggravations to cope with.
I’d reduce the board by the cost of hay, grain and bedding.
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Realize this was part of the original 2002 thread and not the newer posts, but I would not want my BO to fill my stall temporarily if I am paying anything to hold it. Even if the plan is to be gone for the entire circuit, things can happen. I would want to be able to come back at any point if, say, something happened to me or my horse that cut the show season off unexpectedly. That could be problematic if the stall has been promised to someone else for some period of time.
My barn owner is far, far too nice. The past 2 years she has wanted to charge me nothing (gone 2-4 weeks). I have to force her to take a dry stall rate. I love my little barn so much that I would pay whatever it took to keep my stalls!
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Maybe pay the regular rate with the suggestion of putting the hay money in a separate account to be used towards any increases in hay prices or some sort of barn maintenance fund
It depends - are they regular clients and you’re sending them off with another trainer or are they boarders who are heading south. Board encompasses the services you provide daily for the care of the horse - bedding, feed and hay, mucking, turning out, blanketing?. The clients will not be benefiting from any of those services while they’re away so how can you charge them for feed or hay or shavings or labor?
I think it’s absolutely wonderful in that you are willing to offer to bill just to hold stalls versus full board. I think you have to determine what costs you wont have plus whatever labor and maintenance issues you won’t have and subtract that from what the total board is. You certainly don’t want to be over generous and sell yourself short either.
Agreed. If I’m paying full board, which I would have no problem doing to hold a stall, the stall is mine to use, whether or not my horse is in it. If BO agreed to charge me board minus hay/grain/bedding to hold the stall, the stall is still mine to use. I would be quite unhappy for it to be used for someone else. If the BO only charged me a small deposit to guarantee me a stall upon my return date, then sure, put a temporary boarder in. As a BO, I would not “temporarily fill” a stall someone else paid for.
It’s always rather astounding to me that people complain about boarding and barn owners all the time for skimping and cutting corners and being less then pleasant.
Sure, we barn owners, we work for free, just like everyone else. I mean we love horses so we of course should be thankful we get to work with horses and shut up and accept whatever our clients want us to accept.
Only in the horse world would anyone think you get a discount cause the service you want to maintain but not use just this second, shouldn’t cost you.
I see good horse professionals get squeezed all the time… good people who are so scared of loosing a client they take the financial hit… but who helps them? Over time they start to skimp or cut corners cause they have to make it up somewhere. Then clients don’t like the cut backs and leave anyway.
Here’s a thought, pay what it costs to keep your horse; pay what it costs to keep your Equine professionals in business! Not breaking even, actually pay what it costs to keep a BUSINESS open.
Go try to ask your storage place this or your boat storage place. Ask the car park in NYC… they would laugh you out of there. Horse people live on the edge of making any money, but hey give me a discount cause I want to take my horse to Florida for the winter. Wow the height of short sightedness and self interest.
Sorry I’ve had a bad day… but really does ANYONE want the horse industry to survive? If yes then take care of your equine professionals or you will all soon need to buy and build your own farms with all the amenities.
I am so blessed myself to have amazing clients who don’t shortchange me… don’t nickel and dime me… and i wish that others were so lucky as I watch them struggle.
I have done something recently that I have never done before since I started 19 years ago. I’ve allowed outside trainers to haul in and use my indoor for a very small fee cause I see them getting screwed by their clients(and to be frank other farm owners) I encourage them to raise their rates and tell them their services are worth it (decades of knowledge are worth paying for).
What a mess we are making of the future of our sport…
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