September 13, 2003

$$ Home Sweet Home $$

If you do not own your own horse facilities, there are people out there that would like to take care of your horse. If you do own a horse and you go looking for a home for your horse, you will be concerned about the price per month for housing, feed and care, right?

Prices, I have heard, range from $150/mo. to $750/mo. That is quite a range to choose from. The differences will be more about facilities and time required for care.

The first thing that you should look for when shopping for a facility is the health and condition of the other animals that have spent some time at the facility. Proper feeding of the horse is a primary concern of your horse. The cost for feed and hay will be less than $100/mo. The difference between the best feed and poor feed will usually be less than $50/mo. When an owner is trying to trim expenses they will look to feed or hay as a place to cut costs and this soon shows up in the condition of the horses in the herd.

Another important issue to your horse is the air the horse is expected to breath. If the facility in enclosed, you should note the air when you first walk into the barn. If your eyes water or you detect ammonia smells, you should be concerned. Lung tissue is very sensitive and can be damaged with continuous inhaling of bad air. A warm barn is usually only for the human part of the equation and not the equine part. The cost of good air can be as simple as fans to move air. Your horse would rather have good clean cold air than warm moist dirty air. Outside horses have the best air usually.

We think a lot about a good drink of water in the heat of the summer. Many times people forget how important that good drink of water can be for your horse in the dead of winter. Water is very important to normal body functions and a healthy happy horse. You can observe how the facility makes water available to the horses. I prefer a clean automatic water fountain but an adequate supply of water fed in a bucket will work for your horse. Snow is not an adequate supply of water. Remember water is probably the cheapest part of your horse's diet.

We now have covered feed, water and air. Our costs so far are probably less than $125/mo. So how do we get up to $750/mo.? Believe me, after talking to owners it is not all profit! My point is that these are not the most expensive parts of keeping your horse. It is labor, facility cost, insurance and taxes that are the lion's share of those costs. What you choose in these areas will probably affect you more than the horse.

If you want a barn that is warm it will cost more money. If you want a facility that has an inside riding arena is will cost more money. If you want your horse to have an individual box stall and a private paddock available it will cost you more money. If you want a new, fancy facility it will cost you more money.

It is my opinion, the biggest cost to boarding a horse is the labor cost. The more services you demand will increase the cost of keeping your horse. I believe labor costs have creped up on barn owners more than any other variable cost. Even barns that have no hired labor need labor to care for your horse. If the owner does the work, they are not going to do it for nothing. The labor costs of the owner doing the work have increased in the cost of living. An owner that does their own work that hasn't increase their fees are taking away from their own life style to your benefit. A more efficient use of labor is desperately needed if we are going to enjoy reasonable costs to keep our horses.

This is important to you as a boarder. If the owner isn't efficient controlling labor costs, they will try to cut other costs to be able to pay bills. That's right, feed and cleaning costs are the first to get the axe.

When you go looking for a facility for your horse, ask yourself "If my horse was going to leave a tip for the waiter, what would they leave"? Better yet what kind of a tip would you leave if the waiter put your meal on the restroom floor, if they brought you a glass of dirty water or the room was filled with smoke?