Working off board/horse care - an informal poll

[Texarkana]

TLDR: When working off board, riding privileges, or horse care, how do you structure it? Do you think it’s better to “earn” the expense hourly or by the task?

Backstory: (I have deleted like 10 novel-length drafts to try to keep this shorter, believe it or not this is the short version)

A friend’s daughter will be doing a low-key “work in exchange for board” arrangement on my farm. I spent my formative years in similar arrangements; they were very common where I grew up. Overall, I am beyond grateful for the experience. It allows me WAY more opportunity than I could otherwise afford and instilled great work ethic and horsemanship. However, I’ve seen and experienced these relationships going badly, too.

I don’t want my friend’s daughter to leave this relationship feeling poorly. I don’t want her to feel taken advantage of or “stuck” in a situation she doesn’t like/want.

So I’m trying to hash out some sort of plain-speak, informal contract. I’m more concerned about her, but also want a tiny bit of protection for myself that I don’t have my kindness used against me.

I know I don’t want her to feel like she has to work 7 days a week. I’d like her to learn the ins and outs of horse ownership- the girl has been in riding lessons since she was in elementary school but didn’t even know how to brush a horse when I met her. The biggest “benefit” I’d like to get out of this is farm-sitting and a person who can help me out in a pinch.

Above all, I want this to be a positive learning experience for her. This is my friend’s daughter and I don’t want to lose the friendship.

Anyway, just looking to bounce ideas on how people structure these arrangements. I’ve always been on the “worker” end of the deal and never the farm owner side of things!

[McGurk]

I think it’s very important to have the structure written down. Value her labor at minimum wage or a little above, and raise her rate as she becomes more capable. Have her keep track of her hours, and do a direct offset of her board and lesson cost. If her hours net out to less then her monthly bill, collect the money. If they net out to more, pay her.

In every one of these scenarios I was aware of the teenagers and the parents WAY underestimated how much the kid would have to work to net zero their horse expenses. For instance, if board plus lessons is $600 a month and you pay the kid $12./hour, that’s 50 hours a month or 12 hours a week. Or two hours 6 days a week. Or an 8 hour Saturday and 4 hour Sunday.

At this point in the discussion the parents or the kids would wail “But I/they won’t have time to ride/do homework/hang out with friends/!” I know, kid, I know. Wait until you find out about adult life.

The best way to make this work is for the kid to develop a few higher value skills, like mane pulling, trimming heads and legs, clipping or house/pet sitting.

[axl]

How old is she? Are they paying for food/sups/vet/farrier/bedding or is this just an open stall/field placement?

Since you ae looking for a potential farm-sitter and emergency helper, I would start her on one task at a time until she has it down perfectly. # of hours would depend on age and what costs YOU are incurring.

Schedule the days. It cannot just be a ‘work when you can’ situation.

“So your availability is Tu, W, Th after school for 2 hours, all day on Saturday? You will need to treat this as an actual job. I will depend on you for those times. I will need to be notified if there is a reason you can’t make it, as soon as you know. If you want to change days i.e. Prom or vacation or concert or something, you will be expected to make those hours back up, and I will expect you to let me know as soon as these plans arise.”

[HeartsDesireEventing]

I worked off board through college cleaning stalls at the boarding barn - the stalls were divided up into 5 ‘blocks’ and you got a specific amount off of your board for each block. It was an easy system, although reliant on everyone showing up to sign up for blocks - we had a meeting around the table in the barn every month for the sign ups. Obviously not an issue if you only have one worker, but I think the concept of a set dollar value for each task could keep things simple, although may require more tracking than you want to do depending on the variety of tasks you anticipate.

[Texarkana]

@axl

How old is she? Are they paying for food/sups/vet/farrier/bedding or is this just an open stall/field placement?

She’s 17, can drive.

I’m still trying to decide how I want to work this (we don’t have a horse for her yet) but I’m torn between two deals:

A) She “leases” the horse from me and works to pay for a flat rate that pays for its immediate care (feed/hay/farrier/maintenance vet care). Anything out of the ordinary falls on me.

Or

B) It’s her horse that she can remove from the farm at any time. I provide low cost full board at a rate that pays for the horses upkeep and she works off the cost of that. She and her family would pay for farrier and vet.

There are pros and cons to both. Part of it depends on what I find for her. I’m kind of leaning towards A with the option to turn it into B if they decide they want to commit to horse ownership. Because as I’ve told her mom, she’s at a bit of a crossroads in her life— who knows what will happen when she graduates next year and goes to college. She may or may not want to be saddled with a horse.

[axl]

Also, write it all down. A whiteboard may not be the best tool, maybe a notebook with tabs like:

A: Feeding: what everyone eats OBV, but also - feed Tigger first or he will kick the wall, etc.
B: Turnout: who goes where, and ~ Jack can be a jerk, use a chain shank
C: Horse care: Dobbin doesn’t like spray bottles, fly wipes are in the grooming box on his door

You get the gist. You should keep a list of things Susie has mastered, things she can do with supervision, things she still needs to learn.

I am making these suggestions specifically because you mentioned farm-sitting. When you are out of town, she should have an easy-to-reference well, reference, lol, so she doesn’t guess or panic or text you until she ruins your vacay

[luvmyhackney]

I prefer paying straight by the hour and then having them pay as a separate transaction.

Should all be written in a contract and agreed by both, including parents.

I suggest setting a monthly or bi-weekly schedule as things happen and school schedules change.

[FjordBCRF]

Do you have a feel for her work ethic?

In theory I prefer the minimum-ish wage to start with additional opportunities if things go well. I have seen people take advantage of this though to get in a few extra bucks by taking their sweet time. After not too long of that, the system changed to task based pay. You will know best on that given you know her.

[trubandloki]

When I have worked off board (or part of my board is a better way to describe it), I was paid by the chore. The barns around me still pay by the chore.
Stall cleaning is per stall, Turn out, Bringing in, etc.
But you have to make it clear what each thing includes.
One barn stall cleaning including adding bedding and sweeping, another barn it includes those things plus filling water buckets.
Turn out included feeding breakfast and then fly spray in the summer but nothing extra in the winter. Bringing in included feeding dinner. One of those included filling water troughs in turn out.
One place feeding was separate, but included water buckets.

I am just saying, you need to make sure your descriptions of what is expected are clear.

And as someone said above, they can not really be whenever she wants to do them, she has to agree to doing things and do them.

[Texarkana]

@FjordBCRF

Do you have a feel for her work ethic?

Yes. She’s been riding my horses for about a year now.

She is very, very green with horse care, even though she has been riding for many years. Her experience before me was basically show up to her lesson on a tacked-up horse.

She is eager to learn and wants to learn. Her mom really wants her to learn. But her mom is also the type to say things like, “you’re still going to feed your horses in this storm? Won’t they be ok until tomorrow when the weather is better?” They are animal lovers and do the right thing with their many pets, they just don’t always get it. I think daughter would learn to “get it” pretty quickly.

[trubandloki]

@Texarkana

Won’t they be ok until tomorrow when the weather is better?”

Such a weird and scary thing for someone to say about anything.

I am glad you are going to teach the daughter what being a good horse owner is like.

[Texarkana]

@trubandloki

@Texarkana

Won’t they be ok until tomorrow when the weather is better?”

Such a weird and scary thing for someone to say about anything.

I am glad you are going to teach the daughter what being a good horse owner is like.

She just doesn’t “get it.” Mom, who is a good friend of mine, is kind of a kept woman these days if you know what I mean. She defers all hard work to someone else when she can.

But she also rightly recognized they were paying a lot of money for riding lessons and the daughter wasn’t getting much in terms of horsemanship out of it.

[Texarkana]

@McGurk

The best way to make this work is for the kid to develop a few higher value skills, like mane pulling, trimming heads and legs, clipping or house/pet sitting.

Thanks for your input! When I read this at first, I thought, “well I don’t need those things done (mane-pulling, clipping, etc.).” But then I realized, OMG that is what people did to me as a kid.

I used to have to do the stupidest stuff to “pay” for my horses when I was a kid, like pull the retirees’ manes or go clip everyone’s fetlocks and bridle paths. I used to look back and think, “wow, they were just creating work for me.” But people were totally helping me develop those high value skills.

It’s brilliant, actually. I can’t believe I never saw it that way.

[Texarkana]

@axl

“So your availability is Tu, W, Th after school for 2 hours, all day on Saturday? You will need to treat this as an actual job. I will depend on you for those times. I will need to be notified if there is a reason you can’t make it, as soon as you know. If you want to change days i.e. Prom or vacation or concert or something, you will be expected to make those hours back up, and I will expect you to let me know as soon as these plans arise.”

I think this is a really good way to not only present it to her, but to mom.

Mom really wants this for her. But also, I can totally see mom being the wishy-washy one in the party… “oh, it’s hot out…you don’t need to do that today.”

[trubandloki]

@Texarkana

But she also rightly recognized they were paying a lot of money for riding lessons and the daughter wasn’t getting much in terms of horsemanship out of it.

Do you have an active pony club in your area?

[Texarkana]

@HeartsDesireEventing

I worked off board through college cleaning stalls at the boarding barn - the stalls were divided up into 5 ‘blocks’ and you got a specific amount off of your board for each block. It was an easy system, although reliant on everyone showing up to sign up for blocks - we had a meeting around the table in the barn every month for the sign ups. Obviously not an issue if you only have one worker, but I think the concept of a set dollar value for each task could keep things simple, although may require more tracking than you want to do depending on the variety of tasks you anticipate.

The block idea is interesting. Obviously I’m not that big of an operation nor do I plan on having a whole bunch of people doing this, but I’ve never had the work organized quite that way. Something to think about!

[Texarkana]

@luvmyhackney

I prefer paying straight by the hour and then having them pay as a separate transaction.

I totally understand this sentiment and I’ve done this before in my life.

But I’m also not a proper boarding barn, so I’m not sure I want to go taking money for services. Ya know?

[Texarkana]

@trubandloki

I am just saying, you need to make sure your descriptions of what is expected are clear.

And as someone said above, they can not really be whenever she wants to do them, she has to agree to doing things and do them.

I can tell you from first hand experience that I agree 100%.

I had more than a few blurry line situations in my college and immediately post-college years where the deal was, “the job just had to get done, didn’t matter when.” And that lead to a lot of bad blood between me and the farm owner. It was all just an epic failure in communication, but boy oh boy expectations need to be clear.

[Texarkana]

@trubandloki

@Texarkana

But she also rightly recognized they were paying a lot of money for riding lessons and the daughter wasn’t getting much in terms of horsemanship out of it.

Do you have an active pony club in your area?

We do, she’s not an English rider nor does she want to compete. But I recently bought her a pony club manual so she could read about all the billions of things horse people “know.”

[Simkie]

@Texarkana

It was all just an epic failure in communication, but boy oh boy expectations need to be clear.

I think this is the key! However you set it up, the absolute most important part is probably willingness for both sides to communicate back and forth. If anyone isn’t willing to talk, that’s a problem regardless of anything else. Maybe even set up a check in “meeting” every so often where you’re both free to discuss what’s going well and what’s not? Those can be tough conversations to initiate.

I don’t do the work off board etc thing, but pay by the job rather than by the hour. It’s just easier from an accounting perspective–they don’t have to keep track of hours, and I don’t have to verify hours. I do set it up pretty generously, both from the “these tasks take -x- time” perspective (because I have a level of fluency in the job that they don’t) and in the pay rate (because showing up for an hour or two is kind of a pita.)

Are you envisioning a training period? It seems like it would be worth less to you if you have to be right there supervising. Once she’s competent on her own, though, I’d “pay” her more than minimum wage. It’s just worth so much to have a trustworthy person who can step in!