Cooperative Boarding or Exchange Labor
With horse care costs rising and incomes sinking, many horse owners and boarding facilities are looking for ways to reduce costs. Cooperative boarding or exchange labor may be the answer for small- to medium-sized boarding businesses.
Boarders are responsible for upkeep chores, such as mucking out stalls, feeding, and turnout, in exchange for discounted boarding rates.
You determine which chores the boarders can be responsible for. Mucking out the stalls and changing the bedding might be reasonable chores to begin with. If boarders want more ways to defray costs, you can expand the list of daily or weekly chores they can take on.
Assess a value for each chore, based on the hourly rate you'd charge if you (or a hired hand) had to do the work. Each boarder's fee will be based on how many chores he or she has done each month, deducted from whatever the full board rate is. Make sure that exchange laborers know that if they don't do their agreed-upon chores, you (or a hired hand) will do the labor and their boarding fee will reflect that cost.
Make the assigned chore routine, so that it becomes a habit: If Jen mucks out stalls every Wednesday morning, she won't forget from one week to another.
Have an easy way for your boarders to log the chores they complete every week, and use that as the "ultimate authority" if disputes come up. If a boarder didn't fill in the log, he or she may not get credit for doing the chore when monthly fees are calculated.
If your boarders are responsible for helping out with barn chores, that should be in their boarding contract, along with the value of each assigned chore.
To avoid resentment or unintentionally creating a two-tier system at your barn, you may want to advertise your business as a cooperative barn and only take in boarders who will do chores, rather than have some boarders who do and some who don't.
Assess insurance coverage. Most homeowner policies don't cover commercial enterprises run from the home, so you'll need to purchase additional insurance to protect yourself from potential liability issues. To be on the safe side, consider a commercial equine liability insurance policy that is written specifically for your boarding business. Yes, it'll increase your overhead, but the cost of insurance can be factored into your boarders' monthly charges.
Full-service versus co-op. Assess how many hours you can afford to spend on your boarding business, including monthly billing and buying supplies. Then estimate how much time it will take to muck out all the stalls daily; water and feed all the horses; turn them out; blanket them; etc.
You may decide to do all the labor yourself, or hire some help, or have boarders pitch in (see the sidebar on cooperative boarding). No matter which scenario you choose, spell it out in writing and specify what each service will cost-make it part of the boarding contract.
Create a boarding contract. Boarding contracts protect both you and your boarders by laying out the terms of what you'll provide, what the boarders' responsibilities are, and when payments are due. Hiring a lawyer to draw up your boarding contract is money well spent, because a good lawyer should help you think about "what ifs" that you might not otherwise consider. What if a boarder stops paying her fees? What if a boarder's horse colics and dies? A well-written contract should provide solutions to these sorts of scenarios.
Evaluate your facility. Make sure that your barn, paddocks, fencing, and gates are all in tip-top condition. Maintaining your facility will reduce your liability should an accident occur. And a well-kept barn will translate into happy boarders who are willing to pay for a clean and safe facility.
Maintenance will be ongoing, so you'll need to identify who will be responsible for upkeep. Can you do it yourself, or will you need to pay a handyman (or woman) to do the work for you?
Plan pasture management. Managing your pastures is a crucial component for a boarding facility. Increased numbers of horses in your pastures translates into increased soil erosion and the very real potential for overgrazing. Not only is this bad for your property, but it's bad for business. Nobody wants their horses eating poor-quality grass. Savvy planning means talking with your county extension agency to design a rotation-grazing scheme that's effective and simple to follow.
Organize manure disposal. You'll also need to find ways to dispose of the increased amounts of manure and urine-soaked bedding your business will generate. A horse produces about 50 pounds of manure daily, which equals about 350 pounds of manure per week. Multiply that by the number of horses you'll board, and you've got the potential for a lot of smelly, fly-enticing stuff that will soon overwhelm your capacity to store or use it. If you live out in the country, you may be able to compost the manure on site without causing complaints from your neighbors. But it's likely that-either now or later-you'll need to find a recycling operation that will haul the waste away periodically.
Manure hauling sometimes is a service performed by landscape companies or sand and gravel companies; sometimes it's done by companies that specialize in hauling manure. You'll have to search the Internet, ask around at local feed suppliers, check with your horse-keeping neighbors, and make many phone calls to find local solutions and compare prices.
Provide bathroom facilities. If your barn doesn't have toilet facilities, you may want to lease a portable toilet or build an outhouse rather than inviting boarders into your house to use your bathroom. Add this cost (and its periodic clean-out) to the budget for your business and to the boarders' fee.
Create a secure tack room. Lastly, your boarders need a safe place to store tack. If all the tack will be in one room, make sure the space is organized and labeled so that tack doesn't "wander." Better yet, if you have room to provide individual lockable storage compartments, your boarders might never squabble over missing gear and supplements! Make sure that the outside door to the tack room can be locked for security.
Opening your barn to boarders could be a wonderful way to turn your avocation into a profitable business. If you see it as a labor of love, rather than just a solution to hard times, it may be the right choice for you.
