I really don’t know too many BOs drawing a salary from boarding here. More seem to be going out of business due to lack of profitability.
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Same here except not $5M, but there are virtually no “new” boarding facilities - or at least none that have a large indoor and an outdoor arena, plus paddocks/pasture. There are a handful of larger facilities within 5-10 miles of the city, and they have been there…forever. Like probably when it was “way out” in the country, but now are in the middle of suburbs.
If they tried to build something like that now it would be impossible to cover their expenses.
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The cost of land is much lower here, but yeah - there’s virtually no profit in boarding unless you do lessons or training.
These numbers aren’t all that hard to crunch, so I’m always somewhat baffled when people imagine that boarders can somehow be made to pay for a fancy facility the owner couldn’t otherwise afford. And that, I think, is how a lot of fancy-looking boarding barns end up skimping on obvious necessities like hay and bedding: the BO simply doesn’t like the economic realities of the situation, and is pretty much running on wishful thinking alone.
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Me too! I always feel like I must be doing something wrong with the pellets since so many people seem to love them. They turn my barn into a dust bowl. I have tried flipping the whole stall and watering them periodically but still they are major dust producers. Also, my stalls tend to look dingy and dirty with pellets.
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They all went out of business here. They are selling off as private residences apparently.
I expect board prices to skyrocket locally if you want decent care and facilities.
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Two new barns opened here fairly recently, within the last year. Both are very nice with plenty of pasture turnout and large covered arenas along with outdoor. One is in the process of building a xc course. They are both about an hour from Seattle on the east side. Too far from me to consider but there are a number of barns in the north sound area that are similar. Of course a couple have closed but most barns are filled or near capacity.
I’d probably be on your wait list if I could do co-op.
I take my mare up to Maine every year for 4 or 5 day clinics (not last year, of course). I’m always amazed at how slow I am at cleaning up after her. She gets a stall with a run-in, mostly uses the stall to pee (because she hates getting splashed), but the BO requires that we pick the paddocks every morning, and have the poop/dirty bedding out in front of the gate ready to pick up by 7 or 7:30 a.m.
Of course part of the reason I’m slow is that my hands don’t work very well, and I can’t do much heavy lifting (e.g. I will carry two half-full water buckets, while most people seem to be able to carry 2 full ones.) But still…
Quietann, I get it. My body can’t do the heavy work much anymore either. But if we have an opening I’ll PM you. I don’t think you’re that far from me ( not stalking: we’ve met volunteering). 
Awwww, I appreciate that! I live in Andover, 40 minutes each way, so that’s an issue.
The mare is in Ipswich. I actually do not want to move her because she’s at a beautiful, expensive barn with great care, and in-season trails access that is hard to beat (easy ride to Julia Bird, Appleton, and Groton House when the river isn’t too high, Winthrop land, the Little’s place, even Bradley Palmer). In fact, when I thought I might have to retire her and look for another horse, DH told me to keep her there, even if I couldn’t do much with her, just to hold the stall until I got a new horse!
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Your DH gets a gold star!
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I have interviewed at several barns (not recently, probably 10+ years ago) that literally used a 5 gallon bucket of flake shavings per stall. Always with the explanation that ‘we have mats, using more bedding is a waste’. I would not even work there, nevermind boarding.
I use the TSC pellets, there are probably around 3 bags in my 10x12 at any given time. I would do more, BUT - more than 3 bags and it gets pushed/kicked out over the front lip (open front stall) and goes to waste. My pony poops in one general corner and always pees in the same spot, hay and buckets are in the opposite corner so I sweep back from there, and from the front a bit.
I haven’t had any dust issues with the pellets, except maybe in the dead heat of summer when I do nearly 24/7 turnout (pony likes to come in for an hour or two for breakfast and a nap). The TSC pine flake shavings are FAR worse for dust, absolutely unbearable.
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even if the owner is drawing a salary (and presumably pays their housing from that)
The salary is part of the cost of doing business.
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I think a lot depends on climate inside the barn and usage. It’s a fine line between dusty and perfect, and hot/dry summer months make it difficult at my barn, but most of the time it remains damp enough not to be too dusty. My stalls open up to the outside and inside, though, so they get moisture from rain as well as damp/wet horses when they come in/out.
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@S1969 my stalls open to the dry lot as well. I also live in a very humid environment. I don’t get it. Maybe because I run fans all summer? I wish I could make them work.
How are you managing them? A lot of people think the answer to dusty pellets is to add water, but that backfires in a big way, ime. The longer you can get pellets to stay pelleted the less dust you’ll have.
Some brands are absolutely terrible on the dust front, though. If you just can’t make it work, switching brands is worth a shot.
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On the topic of pellets, I’m using some pellets for the first time this winter/spring. I’ve been managing a few horses in the southeast, and I’ve been getting bedding from this brand out of NC called Nature’s. The fine flake shavings are awesome and come in 10 ft^3 bags for a reasonable price. I bed moderately deep and the stalls are 14x16. Even for the messy ones, it seems to contain the mess to bed more deeply and I have to strip less often. But there are a couple of horses who create lakes in their pee spots, so I got pellets from the same brand to use with the shavings. I don’t wet them since I also use shavings. They are great. I think they are a bit softer than some but don’t get too dusty.
The one that walks circles takes a while to clean, and at first I used sawdust for that one, but he’s got spring allergies to the point of developing secondary sinus infections and so I now bed him almost as deep as the others with the fine flakes to reduce dust.
When my guy has an in and out access, he will still prefer to pee and sleep on the shavings, just might poop more outside. He will occasionally nap outside but the deep sleep is always inside if he has the choice.
Hmm…I feel differently. The pellets that get crushed/ground tend to be very dusty so I water to fluff them up in advance.
That said - I think we each have an opinion about “dust” and how much is acceptable. I haven’t really found any bedding that is not dusty, but then again, it might be because my horses can come and go from the stone dust paddock. So there is always an element of dirt/dust/sawdust in my barn. In dry weather, it’s worse. In wet weather, I’m glad the pellets can help absorb some of the excess moisture that comes in and out with the horses.
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I’m going to say that this is PART of the reason why we made some major lifestyle changes 13 years ago. We were running a race training farm, with boarders, 25 stalls. It was getting harder and harder to even GET bedding for stalls… there just was none available. The pelleted bedding was just being introduced. It’s also used for pellet stoves, for heating houses. We were ourselves the regular barn workers (hire help and there goes any profit). So we were doing all feeding, most of the stall cleaning 7 days a week and it took up a lot of the day each day. We had a manure bin that had to be dumped ever 7 to 10 days, depending on our numbers of horses. It was expensive to both buy the bedding and pay for dumpage. Feed was expensive. Everything was expensive. And charging race horse rates, top quality feed, finding bedding (and paying for it) and manure dumping, AND the fact that we were working at it 7 days a week year round… well… we made some lifestyle changes. We sold, and moved to “horse country”, where the weather and the country and the room suits keeping horses in a healthy manner. And things are far easier here. I have a couple stalls, but don’t usually use them. My horses live outdoors, year round. This is “horse country”, which is an area where it is actually “suitable” to keep horses. If it rains (which it doesn’t do much), they get wet. They then dry out. I have weather proof blankets, which I sometimes use, if necessary (rarely). It snows in winter, and coats get thick. Snow blows off them, it’s dry and powdery, squeaks under their feet. They have shelter, but prefer the trees and natural windblocks. They live together, in a herd. I don’t ride in winter, it is -30C and not fun for anyone. And I won’t shave all the hair off a horse, and make it stand in a stall (about the coldest place and thing you can do for a horse), covered in multiple layers of blankets. I won’t ride a furry horse in winter, get them hot and sweaty in 10 minutes, when it is cold out. So we all take winter OFF, and they all get to be horses together, decompression time. There is no bedding here, other than pellets, which would only freeze solid in winter with the water to sprinkle on them to expand the pellets. And wood pellets are currently being shipped to Japan anyway for heating fuel… we are cutting our forests down for this purpose. The value of the pellets is high. It’s an ugly situation.
Since we have so much room, and so many options for cutting hay, and I’ve cleared out even more areas for hay production recently, I’ve got some areas that just grows crappy grass, which my horses WILL eat, but it’s not great, I’m going to cut and bale some of that for bedding, if/when I should use my stalls (which have paddocks attached). It’s free, other than my labour, which is minimal. If they eat some of it, that’s OK.
My point of this is this… perhaps it’s time to reconsider how you keep horses, and where you live. There are other possibilities for many people, if you stop to reconsider what is important, to you and to your horses. IS what you have been doing with yourself and your horses truly the best option? Are there other options? Land is far cheaper in many areas that ARE suitable for keeping horses, and away from civilization and cities, crowds of people and viruses. Working remotely from home is far more possible these days.
Just a thought for those who are tired of keeping horses a certain way, and paying the costs of that.
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Yeah, I very much disagree 
But we all have our own approaches.
If someone is watering their pellets, though, and finding them overly dusty, it’s worth trying a different method to see if that works better. I find pellets are MASSIVELY dusty if I water them first, and not really dusty at all if they’re added to the bed dry. I only water a couple bags when I start a bed from scratch.
Similarly, if someone isn’t watering, and that’s not working, it’s worthwhile to water and see if that works better.
Changing up brands can be another way to go. It’s easy to think of pellets as all the same since they really do all pretty much look the same, but different brands behave differently and some are better than others.
It’s all about finding your own sweet spot of method, brand, etc.
I’ve had the same experience. And just last week, realized it was the pellets causing my older geldings sheath to swell…switched back to shavings and swelling completely disappeared. I love how easy they are to clean, but HATE HATE HATE the dust.
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