I’m a dork and always time myself when doing chores 
:
It tends to take me 30 minutes per horse for ALL chores. So, for my three at home right now, cleaning stalls and dry lots, refilling hay and water, prepping pm feed, adding shavings, dumping manure, and blowing or sweeping the aisle takes me just under an hour and a half.
I don’t bed super deep, but I don’t skimp either…stalls are 16x10 and each takes me around 10 mins to pick.
Five minutes a stall is just the cleaning & dumping the wheelbarrow for me.
Entire routine:
Clean stalls and runs
Dump waste
Add bedding (as necessary)
Fill hay nets
Collect buckets
Prep grain
Fill water tubs (dump/scrub as necessary)
Feed & water chickens
Takes about 60 mins all in. Four horses.
I am beyond impressed. I’m also a bit flummoxed as to why it takes me so long. I have two horses. Each morning I feed, turn out onto grass, put hay (already in nets) in dry lot, drag hose to dry lot and fill water bucket, take water buckets out of stalls and scrub, clean stalls, move one horse from grass to dry lot after 30 min, dump manure, add new bedding to stalls, sweep aisle, stuff hay nets for later and start soaking, move other horse from grass to dry lot. That takes me almost two hours. 
I bed semi-deep but leave empty space under the water bucket, hay, door area. I start with 6 bags of shavings and 1 bag of pellets in the middle, my stalls are 12x12, then I add on average 1 bag a week. So other than my initial bedding, it’s not terrible to maintain. Mine are out during the day and in at night.
Takes me 30 minutes to muck, fill hay bags, empty water buckets, dump my muck cart, prepare next feeding for my two. I can do it in 20 minutes if I really rush, and break a sweat.
That doesn’t include the 10 minutes for them to eat or 5 minutes to turn them out or bring them in.
Interesting topic. I manage my barn (11 horses, 9 boarders) as a co-op with an emphasis on cooperation. Given that the horses need care am and pm, the average number of shifts per month is 60 (30 days x 2). Every month we meet and shifts are assigned. Each shift feeds and resets feed, blankets/ unblankets, turns in or out and cleans half of the stalls. If a boarder decides their horse needs 6 inches or more of bedding they have to clean that stall every day. We sweep back the front 1/3 of each stall, turn every bit of bedding, put the oldest bedding on the wet spots and add clean shavings where needed up to a max of 3 bales per week. In truth usage is more like 1 1/2 or 2 bales of shavings per week on average. The horses are out either all day or all night (summer = bugs!).
This amount of bedding is sustainable in terms of acquisition costs, disposal costs and almost more important, physical costs. We are all ladies, some of us of a certain age. Heck I’m 69. It is hard on the body to have lots of bedding in each stall to flip and pick. I can still do a 13x13 stall in about 10 min, but others can’t. Dumping full buckets of water is another joint stressor. So we try to give each horse what they need and a little more, not a lot to waste. Same with hay. We feed a hay based diet, augmented with seasonal grass fields. No horse is skinny (some are quite chunky), but I won’t put up with throwing them hay that gets wasted. It’s a fine line that is observed and titrated carefully.
Happy to try to answer any questions. This would never, ever work if we didn’t have the best group of people/ horsewomen participating. One is a vet, one a barefoot trimmer, two are vet techs, two more are in medical fields. They’ve helped create a really exceptional barn culture, and I’m proud to call them my friends.
PS: We have a waiting list for the barn. 
I have a boarding barn with 12 horses and a mini-donk. Chores take me around 3 hours a day FWIW.
Bedding is as expensive as feed in winter, as everyone can stay out more in summer. I bed around 3-4 inches.
But when people want to complain about fees…you have no idea where the money can go. I just paid my $6k insurance bill (for boarding, I don’t train), bought $1800 worth of MAG flakes to deal with dust, and am trying to get mirrors but can’t seem to find a place to make it happen on a short side of my indoor for less than $7500 all in. I spent $400 on paint supplies to make one of the barns nicer, but we did all the work ourselves. Two nights last week I was painting past midnight.
The fixed costs are so much more than anyone thinks, and boarders have to share in that cost. It is absolutely part of the cost. For instance, I spend 6 hours a week on the mower. That isn’t a “cost” to you if you think about what your horse eats and soils, but it is a cost, in fuel, wear and tear, and my time. As a lawyer I make a lot more per hour, that is for sure.
I love my farm and my barn family. I am very grateful they know what goes into it, and don’t complain.
Thats really interesting. Does it give you an idea of how long the tasks take? I’m sure you have an average plus maximum and minimum times.
My barn is a true self board though you can pay someone to do jobs, trade work with a friend, or have a half leaser who does the chores the days they ride.
Some folks want to putter about their chores, especially if they have a retired horse. Some of us are super efficient. I have an electric hay drop with four shelves so I only need to visit once a day. Other people use hay nets or have someone feed breakfast or dinner as needed. I agree with figuring out water so you aren’t dumping full tubs, and hay going to waste makes me crazy.
Folks are free to buy and use as much bagged bedding as they want. But the hog fuel mulch for the paddocks is free, bought by the club, and there’s been some effort to limit people using too much, which I don’t really agree with. I hate wet or mucky paddocks.
OK I am embarrassed. It usually takes me 2 hours in the AM to do 3 horses. Cleaning stalls is more than half of it.
Now back to the rant. I have one mare that is neat ( most of the time). She is in a 12x25 stall and I keep it bedded pretty deep. Unless she is in one of her moods it is easy to clean her stall because everything is undisturbed and it is obvious where she has peed. I never strip her stall. I just move the older shavings to the back of her stall where she pees and put clean ones where she eats and sleeps.
The other one has a in/out situation with a large pasture. She NEVER sleeps in her stall. She is a huge pig no matter how many shavings are in her stall. She seems to be unable to poop outdoors. She will run across the pasture to poop in her stall and then kick the pile all over and head back outside. She doesn’t get very many shavings. If I did she would refuse to pee outside too. I pretty much have to strip her stall daily. Just take the shovel and pull together the 100 pounds of poop and shovel it out.
Back when I was a kid there were lots of sawmills that let you shovel shavings into your truck for free. They aren’t there anymore. I did have a source of free shavings/ sawdust that I shoveled myself but they were so dusty I got horrible bronchitis every Fall. So they really weren’t free. So now I have a deal to buy the rejects bags of shavings that cannot be sold normally. Not cheap but better than retail. So time and shavings prices are driving these boarding decisions.
Scribbler I don’t really get involved in how much time it takes other folks. When we’re interviewing a potential new boarder, we tell them to expect 2-3 hours at least until they figure out how to do it more quickly without sacrificing efficacy. We had a boarder at one point who put on rubber gloves and would hand sift the bedding in her horses stall taking out every teeny tiny bit of manure. She didn’t last long: our standards simply couldn’t meet hers. And that’s ok.
Maybe I need an egg timer or something. Fairly sure I’m out there lollygagging around
It’s fun to know your own best possible time and then you can make a conscious choice how to spend your time.
The general standard at good barns in my area is maybe 5 bags of shavings to start in a 12 x 12 matted stall. Bedding is swept back off the front 1/4 upon cleaning. Stall cleaning pace averages 2 hours for 15 stalls. These are generally sport horse barns where board is $900-1200, run by upper level trainers. It may be different in the truly top tier barns.
Personally, I eyeball it & generally land at around 5 bags. I pick as needed but like to turn all of the bedding over once a day. I’m picky about ammonia smells with all of my animals’ habitats. I don’t like the bedding too sparse, but only bed super deep if I have a stall with an unmatted concrete floor. The matting provides the bulk of the cushioning.
That said, I despise Stufex type pelleted bedding. Horrible dust that just coated everything, including you. When I worked at a place that used it, I would strip in my mud room because my clothes were that smelly & dusty . And the allergies! 
Well that’s half the fun of having your horses at home! You can take your sweet time 
I’m in a pretty fancy show barn in the northeast and at first, I felt our bedding was slightly skimpy compared to the traditional shavings bedding I was familiar with—then I learned that we use Bededge, which just overall requires less bedding to create a clean, fluffy stall (plus, we have Stall Mattresses underneath). Our stalls get fully cleaned in the AM while the horses are outside and then picked again in the afternoon after dinner.
I will say that I was aghasted to see my shavings charge at a recent show—17 bags at $10 a bag for a week-long show. Those bags must’ve been the size of Tic-Tac dispensers. 
People who have always boarded and never kept their horses at home or do self care don’t realize how much it costs to “do it right” and what all is involved. And prices continue to go up. Yet the same people often aren’t willing to pay board rates that can cover the constant increase in expenses .
As mentioned above, it’s not just the price of shavings it’s the cost of manure disposal as well. My removal at first increased by 50% then another 25% on top of that in less than 2 years.
I bed deep because my guys are very old and they’re not comfortable sleeping outside. I have to adjust my budget to make sure I can get what I need.
I’ve owned horses for more than 40 years, but I’ve made the decision that when these guys are gone, I’m out of horses for good. The cost of bedding/feed/meds/vets/farriers, etc. has continued to go up at a rate that makes it hard to justify the expense anymore and I’m unwilling to cut costs to the point that they affect my horses health and happiness.
I make an extremely good living but I’m feeling the pinch in all areas of my life, not just the horses. The cost of everything has gone up significantly. And I can’t work even more hours than I already do to offset the increases.
@Gainer, your post made me sad. Clearly you love horses, and your dear venerable ones especially. That you would say “no more” because of costs is just sad. Totally understandable, but nonetheless sad.
It’s because being in the barn doing chores is meditative! LOL.
I am a self-care boarder, and I buy my own bedding so can do as much as I want to spend! If I’m in a hurry I can feed breakfast, prep dinner/next day breakfast (bucket meals), turnout, clean, in ‘about’ 40 minutes. Usually takes me a solid hour, because I putz. I have 2 stalls to clean, but neither of them is all that messy. Plus, once you are used to your horses’ stall habits, finding the pee and poop is quick. As for volume, I am using a muck tub and basically fill it. And that is with a mix of shavings/sawdust. Miss maresy always waits til I bring her in at night to pee (go figure)!
But, regarding the other boarded horses (full care), yes the bedding is light and the cleaning is…let’s just say not my standard. BO buys bagged shavings, always has. Why they didn’t build a shavings area, I will never understand. And yes, costs are going way up. I am worried about what hay is going to be like this fall, and I am bracing myself for bedding cost/shortages soon.
I looked into building a shavings area so that I could use bulk shavings. My rough estimate for the concrete, lumber and labor exceeded 10 grand. I can buy a lot of bags of pellets for 10k.
And to go along with the crazy price of the storage building, in lots of areas the supply of bulk shavings is either not cheap (like it used to be) and/or limited availability.
No kidding, right?? And then shavings take so much longer to compost than pellets, and take up more room in the pile, so figure a bunch more space for that (or more frequent removal.)
It’s more $$ in so many different aspects.
I love pellets for their ease of storage (2-3 months of bedding on a single pallet!!), ease in cleaning, and quick compost time. Really tough to turn that all in for shavings!
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