I mean, really care? Are they concerned about the fate of your horse business? Do they put forth the maximum effort in their quest for extraordinary results?

If not, your people aren’t good for your horse business.

Take stall cleaning, for example. I once knew the best stall cleaner in the world. He was the fastest at mucking stalls, and when he was done the shavings were evenly distributed, the pee spots were gone and not a piece of manure could be seen.

If he walked out the stall door just as the horse decided to relieve himself, he went back in and re-mucked the area. Because he cared.

It is your job to hire horse business employees who will not only get the job done, but will take their responsibilities to the next level. They will identify solutions to problems, take the initiative on new programs, and go back in that stall to make sure the job is done right.

If you have horse business employees who don’t fit this mold, it might be time for some turnover.

Related posts:

1. Managing Stable Employees
2. Interviews for Horse Business Employees
3. Interview Questions for
   Horse Business Employees

We talk a lot about safety here at RIU Central, but your definition of barn safety might be different from mine. I’ve known lots of sticklers in the horse business, and I’ve known relaxed equestrian professionals who don’t sweat the small stuff.

Bottom line, however, is that horse business owners are responsible for barn safety. They must create an environment in which people and horses are unlikely to get hurt, and they have to keep their eyes open for problems.

We might quibble about the details, but here are five barn safety tips without which your stable just can’t survive.

Barn Safety Tip #1: Post Emergency Contact Information

You might live, breathe and sleep horses, but you can’t be at the stable all the time. If something happens when you’re not around, the people at your barn need to know what to do.

Post an emergency contact information sheet in your barn office, tack room, aisleway—wherever it can be easily found. It is best to post it in multiple locations, one of which should be near a phone.

I’ve created a template that you can use for emergency contact information. It includes space for phone numbers of important contacts (some of which are included, such as barn owner, ambulance, fire, etc.) as well as a section for instructions (e.g. always call barn owner first)and for the barn information. Remember that the person handling the emergency might not know the address or phone number of the stable.

Download Emergency Contact Information template (pdf)

Barn Safety Tip #2: Create Designated Areas

This is something that few barns do, and I wish they would change their ways. You can’t assume that everyone who steps foot on your property knows how to behave around horses, or what certain areas are for. If you post signs designating areas of the barn, accidents are less likely to happen.

Number or letter your arenas, for example, if you have more than one, and the same goes for the barn. Let people know when they’ve arrived at the wash racks, the stocks, the tack room, the feed room and the equipment shed, so no one is caught off-guard.

Furthermore, you should post signs warning visitors/clients that they are not to enter certain areas. You might want to restrict hay barns, tool sheds, boarding barns, foaling areas and other places at your facility to employees and/or clients only. Make sure people know what they are and are not allowed to use.

Barn Safety Tip #3: Establish Barn Rules

Every equestrian facility needs a set of rules. These rules clients and visitors exactly what is expected of them, which maintains order at your stable.

Post the barn rules in a highly visible location, then print a copy for each of your clients and get them to sign it before they can participate in barn activities. This way, they can’t later claim that they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to ride double in halters and lead ropes or climb on the spreader.

Barn Safety Tip #4: Keep Track of Kids and Pets

Most barns and overrun with both kids and pets (of the non-horse variety), and your stable needs to take a stand on this issue. Are boarders and other clients allowed to bring their dogs to the barn? How old must children be to visit your stable? And how must adults keep track of kids and pets?

Some barns, for example, require that children be at least ten years of age if they are left unsupervised at the stable. Others might increase or decrease the age, but make sure you have sufficient resources in the way of staff to keep track of the kids on your property.

The same goes for dogs. If you will allow people to bring their pets, require that the animals stay on a leash or impose some other rule that will keep them under control. Furthermore, you must reserve the right to tell a client that his or her dog is no longer welcome at the barn if the animal creates a problem.

Barn Safety Tip #5: Show Visitors the Way

Visitors who come to the barn with their friends or relatives are not necessarily familiar with the equestrian lifestyle. Therefore, they require specific and special instruction.

Have a place for visitors to congregate where they can watch their friends ride or chat amongst themselves. Keep them away from the horses so no one gets hurt, and make sure they don’t enter areas designated for employees and clients.

Related posts:

1. Safety Tips for Teaching
   the Fearful Rider
2. Farm Freebies: Barn Rules
3. Keeping Kids Safe at the Barn

Cleaning stalls is probably not high on your list of favorite things to do on any given day, but it’s a necessary chore. And maybe you never clean stalls; you hire someone else to do it while you tend to other business.

Whatever the case, every barn manager needs to determine how often they should clean stalls. It’s an integral part of the horse business.

Clean stalls make horses happy, which in turn makes their owners happy. And the owners are the ones you need to impress. If you don’t clean stalls often enough, you’ll find that the horses in your care develop illnesses much more easily. Plus, no one wants to walk into a barn that smells heavily of manure.

Unfortunately, there is no magic number to help you determine how often you should clean stalls. It depends on the culture of your barn and the needs of your horses.

For example, some stable managers turn the horses in the care out in the pasture for eight to twelve hours a day, or even longer. If this is the case for your barn, the stalls don’t have a chance to get as dirty as they would if the horses were always in the stable.

And believe it or not, some horses produce more manure than others. This will impact how often you need to clean stalls.

I tell my clients that twice a day is a good, round number. It ensures that stalls are as clean as possible during the day, and that horses aren’t standing in their urine and feces overnight. Good system.

At some performance stables where horses are in their stalls unless they’re being ridden, three times a day might not be too excessive. And at barns where horses spend the majority of the day outside, once might suffice.

Talk to your clients to find out if they are satisfied with the frequency with which you clean stalls. If they aren’t, you know you need to increase the frequency to keep them happy.

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Have you ever walked into a store and searched in vain for a sales associate who can help you find what you need? It’s a frustrating experience, and it usually happens because when the employees at the store see you waiting for some help, they tell themselves, “It’s not my job to help her.”

This creates a total break-down in the business model of the store. If no sales associates are available to help customers, those customers are going to patronize a store where the employees actually seem to give a damn.

You might think that your horse business is immune to this particular flub, but you’d be wrong. Just because you don’t operate a retail store doesn’t mean you can neglect assigning jobs.

A horse business runs smoothly only when every aspect of stable management is planned out from top to bottom. Your employees must understand their job descriptions, and every task must be covered by someone.

In a retail store there is a hierarchy of positions. You’ve got the district manager, for example, who is responsible for coordinating all the storefronts in a particular area. Then you have the store manager, the assistant store manager, the sales associates—and on down the line.

In order for the hierarchy to work, the district manager must know his job, and must take care of all his store managers. The same works for all the other managerial positions, and the non-managerial workers must focus on doing their jobs correctly and learning their duties as assigned.

In the horse business, you must create a similar hierarchy of positions, and assign each position a set of duties. Your stable’s hierarchy might look something like this:

Each of the colors represents a position in the overall company, and each box represents a person holding a specific job in that position. Once you’ve figured this out, you must assign duties to each specific person.

Whether it’s cleaning stalls, teaching riding lessons, training horses or mixing grain, every task must be covered if you want your horse business to survive. Proper stable management requires structure—as much as you might detest it—.

If you don’t, your horse business will be like that retail store, and your clients are going to go elsewhere.

Stay tuned next week for more about stable management organization.

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Related posts:

1. Horse Business Plans 101:
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2. Managing Stable Employees
3. Horse Business Owners are Salespeople

You want to help the environment at the same time you make a living in the horse business. It’s an admirable goal, and there are ways to make your horse farm more green.

The challenge is to avoid overdoing it. Horse farms need things like electricity, water and gasoline, and trying to rid yourself of these necessities will harm both you and your horses. If you want to run a green horse farm, you’ve got to exercise moderation.

Slashing Electricity Usage

Barn lights are probably the most liberal use of electricity on a horse farm. This includes the overhead lights in the barn aisle ways, the lights in the tack room and other areas, and the arena lights. You probably have outdoor lamps in your parking lot and near your pastures, as well.

The key to developing a green horse farm is to use lights only when they are absolutely necessary. In other words, don’t sacrifice the safety of your boarders, employees and friends just because you want to save the world, but don’t leave lights on just because.

Schedule horse training sessions and riding lessons during the day when arena lights aren’t necessary, and shut off the barn lights on bright sunny days when sufficient illumination comes through the doors and stall windows.

And most importantly, install energy-efficient light sources wherever possible. The tack room, barn office, feed room, bathrooms and other areas used exclusively by people, for example, can be equipped with CFLs to save electricity.

It is also important to watch other types of electricity usage if you want to operate a green horse farm. For example, stall fans are a necessity during Texas summers, but they don’t need to be running while the horses are outside in the paddocks. And climate-controlled areas can be kept on moderate settings to conserve energy.

Conserving Water

Horses drink a lot of water. The grass on your horse farm must be watered. And the animals need baths every now and again.

What I’ve found is that water is used inefficiently rather than for unnecessary reasons.

For example, consider buying smaller water troughs and buckets for your green horse farm. You’ll have to fill them more often, but you won’t have to dump several dozen gallons of water when you need to clean out the containers.

When you’re giving your horses baths, use shampoos and conditioners that wash out easily, and turn off the water while you’re scrubbing your horse’s coat or detangling his mane and tail.

Most importantly, however, think about water conservation. Most people don’t realize they’re wasting water or electricity; it isn’t a malicious thing.

Building Green

Whether you’re developing a green horse farm from the ground up or making small changes around the property, buy green materials. Repurposed wood, for example, is an excellent way to save trees.

Focus on light construction for your green horse farm. Your best bet is to find environmentally-friendly contractors in your area; this will increase the chances that you’re living behind a smaller footprint.

I’ll probably come back to this topic in the future, but for now I’d like to hear your ideas. What do you think makes for a green horse farm? And what are you doing in your horse business to benefit the environment?

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Your employees in the horse business are a reflection of your facility. Your customers interact with them, your horses depend on them and your business will rise or sink based on how they perform.

Quite a load they bear, isn’t it?

Many horse business owners make the mistake of taking too relaxed an approach to managing employees. It isn’t necessary to adopt a Nazi-like attitude toward stable workers, but giving them free rein will result in the sinking we just talked about.

Staff Meetings

Communication is the key to managing a successful stable (and successful employees). If they don’t know what they’re doing right or wrong, they can’t improve and they might get worse. Staff meetings are a great way to keep the lines of communication open.

Set a date each week for staff meetings. Prepare for them the night before and decide exactly what you want to discuss.

Staff meetings are a great time to talk about:

• Client complaints
• Upcoming events (and preparation for them)
• Changes to the schedule
• Ways in which stable employees could do their jobs better
• Client praise
• New additions to the staff

A staff meeting doesn’t have to last longer than ten or fifteen minutes, and it doesn’t have to be formal. Just ask everyone to gather in the tack room or barn office, and you’re all set.

Turn-over

Turn-over is a big problem in the horse business, and your stable employees need to be able to adjust to changes in the staff line-up.

Make it clear that you expect veteran employees to help out newcomers any way they can. This might mean giving tours, explaining policy or helping out with confusing tasks.

Employee Training

This is an area that is severely lacking in many stable management program. Neglecting employee training creates all types of problems:

• Misunderstandings between employees and supervisors
• Substandard work (that will be noticed by clients)
• High turn-over (see above)
• Neglected animals

Most stable management employees have not chosen this as their profession in life. They might be between jobs and looking for a way to pull in extra cash, or they might be interested in better opportunities down the road, such as riding instruction or horse training.

This means that your stable employees are not necessarily well-versed in their job duties. It is therefore your responsibility to ensure they understand every facet of their job description.

Look for more next week on stable employees, including tips on how to pay staff members and how to create efficient schedules.

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A few years ago, I was teaching riding lessons at a barn in Houston, Texas, when a hurricane came through. As you can imagine, the yards and pastures surrounding the barn were soaked, and the outdoor arena looked like a deep, albeit sandy, lake. In this situation, the indoor arena was a savior.

Since some of our retired horses lived in their pastures rather than in stalls, the hurricane essentially rendered them homeless. We had to set up temporary stalls so they would be safe from the water, and the only place we could safely do that was the indoor arena.

Dry as a bone, and perfect for temporary stalls.

This is only one reason among many why you must have an indoor arena. This isn’t a “might be nice” or “maybe someday” investment; if you teach riding lessons, you need an indoor arena as soon as possible.

Torrential Rains Ahead

In the above-described situation with the hurricane, teaching riding lessons and schooling our horses were the furthest things from our minds. But I think we can all agree that a plain-Jane rain storm is inconvenient as well.

When you have an indoor arena, you can teach riding lessons regardless of the weather, so long as there isn’t any thunder or lightening. It can actually be quite soothing to ride in an indoor arena while it’s raining outside, and you don’t have to wait for the outdoor to dry up.

Common business sense dictates that you can make more money as a riding instructor if you don’t have to cancel lessons every few weeks. Your students are happier and the money continues rolling in.

Plus, you don’t have to mess with annoying make-up lessons that totally screw up your schedule.

Then the Sun Came Up

In Texas, and in other areas of the world, sunlight can be as much a blessing as a curse. The summer months are scorching hot, and both humans and horses can suffer debilitating sunburns when exposed for too long.

Not to mention heat exhaustion, compromised immune systems and unbearable lethargy.

If you have an indoor arena, you don’t have to schedule riding lessons at 4 a.m. or 9 p.m. just to avoid the sun’s punishing rays. Sometimes, the difference between shade and direct sunlight can be 10 or 20 degrees—your horses and your riders will thank you.

The Winds Howled

Have you ever tried to teach a riding lesson in high winds? The noise from the whooshing air is sufficient to drown out the loudest instructor’s commands, and the sand pelting you in the face can make you wonder why you don’t just move to the desert and get it over with.

Wind can be as troublesome as rain and sunlight, and an indoor arena will significantly reduce the consequences. Even if you’re teaching under a covered arena with no side protection, the wind’s effects will diminish at least slightly.

Some Riders Aren’t Fearless

An indoor arena is not inherently safer than an outdoor arena, but it makes timid students feel safe, and that’s what matters. When young or nervous students are enclosed in a smaller area with boundaries on all sides, they feel more confident.

If you don’t have an indoor arena, you will eventually lose students who do not have the confidence to ride in a large outdoor space. This will severely limit your income potential in the future.

Covered vs. Indoor

Throughout this article, I’ve referred to an indoor arena, which technically means a fully enclosed arena with walls on all sides and a roof overhead. A covered arena, by contrast, usually has fences on all sides and a roof overhead, but is open between the top of the fence and the roof.

A covered arena is far more expensive to build than an indoor arena, but offers several disadvantages. For example, a covered arena will not block wind and water nearly as efficiently as an indoor arena, and may not be as sturdy in a natural disaster.

However, an indoor arena is more practical in some areas of the world than in others. In Texas, for example, covered arenas are more common because we don’t have to deal with snow, sleet and frigid temperatures. However, a barn without an indoor arena in Alaska would be placed at a significant disadvantage.

If you are interested in building or installing an indoor arena, you have several options. You can purchase pre-fabricated structures that are relatively inexpensive and easy to install, or you can hire a construction company to build from the ground up.

Whatever the case, an investment in an indoor or covered arena is will worth the expense, and I urge you to consider it.

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Still struggling? Riding Instructor University can help! In addition to publishing these fantastic free blog posts, I also offer horse business consulting for riding instructors and other equestrian professionals. Get the answers to all your questions and we’ll conquer any obstacles you’re facing together!

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If you don’t want to make the worst mistake in the horse boarding business, it’s time to set up a screening process for applicants. Before you let a horse move in, you need to make sure his Mom and/or Dad will be financially and physically responsible.

This doesn’t mean you need to fingerprint potential boarders or subject them to a polygraph examination. However, a thorough screening process will protect your horse boarding business from clients who don’t pay.

Step One: The Interview

We don’t talk very often about your gut here at RIU, but it can be a very valuable tool. If you trust your instincts you’ll find that you can avert several different types of dangerous situations.

Never admit a new boarder to your business without meeting him or her first. Set up a time for the applicant to tour your facility, during which time you can ask important questions and get a feel for his or her personality.

Your horse boarding business has a culture all its own, and you want to make sure new boarders will fit into that culture. For example, if you run a performance barn where all clients are serious competitors, a guy who just likes to trail ride might not fit in. This doesn’t mean you should turn him away, but that information will fit into your broader evaluation.

During the interview, you should ask questions that will help you decide if he or she is a good fit for your horse boarding business. For example:

• How many horses are you bringing?
• Any plans to purchase more horses in the future?
• What type of riding do you participate in?
• Where did you board before?
• Why do you want to switch barns?
• How long have you owned your horses?
• Do your animals have any bad habits I should know about?
• How do your horses get along with other animals?
• Do you have any other pets?
• Will you bring in any professionals (teachers, trainers, farriers, vets, etc.)?

You can set this up as a formal interview or you can work in questions conversationally. Just make sure to cover any issues that might come up over the course of your boarding agreement.

Step Two: The Equine Evaluation

Your primary job in the horse boarding business is to keep your clients’ horses safe and healthy. To do this, you need to know as much about those horses as possible.

At the bottom of this post you’ll find a template for an equine evaluation. This is something you should have all potential boarders fill out, and you should keep the information on file. Every year, make sure clients update that form with any new information.

You want to make sure the horse has received proper veterinary care. You need to know if the horse has any special dietary requirements and whether there is a history of disease or injury.

You can use the template below or you can develop your own form. Just make sure you have it.

Step Three: Background Check

The final stage in screening applicants for your horse boarding business is the background check, which can be as superficial or as complex as you wish. Just keep in mind that obtaining this information might not be free.

The background check is important for two primary reasons: 1) To make sure applicants are free of any serious criminal history; and 2) To verify that applicants can afford to board at your facility.

I once worked with a horse boarding business and riding academy where most clients were children. The kids either took riding lessons or boarded their horses, or both. The owners of the business discovered six months after a boarder moved in that he was a convicted child molester and registered sex offender.

Do you see why this is so important? Not only must you protect yourself and your business, but you are also obligated to protect your other boarders. You can’t foresee every possible problem, but you can prevent the worst of them.

My advice is to partner with a company, such as Renters Check, that specializes in running background checks for renters. They will check a variety of information, including creditworthiness and criminal history.

Your Screening Process

Use the information in this article as a guideline and develop your own applicant screening process. Your horse boarding business is different than anyone else’s, and therefore you have to make your own decisions.

You might include a more rigorous screening process than the one described above, or you might take a less diligent approach. It is entirely up to you.

Horse Boarding Equine Evaluation (pdf)

This template will help you evaluate horses that might be moving into your barn. I’ve left a few fields blank so you can add other criteria you feel is important—you guys are super creative, and I’m sure I’ve missed important details. Feel free to use this template as you wish, or to give it to others who might benefit from it.

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In order to examine the worst mistake you can make in your horse boarding business, it is necessary to examine the worst headache for this business model. And that’s non-paying customers.

I’ve never met an owner of a horse boarding business who didn’t have (at least) occasional difficulty collecting from his or her customers. It’s a fact of the industry, and it can destroy your horse business with horrifying efficiency.

When your customers don’t pay, you can’t purchase grain, hay, electricity, water, insurance or any of the other necessities. You might have to fire important maintenance workers or cut down on costs in other detrimental ways. Your customer service initiatives take a dive and you’re left with no customers at all.

Bummer, right?

I’m not saying you can eliminate non-paying boarders entirely, but you can decrease them considerably and give your horse boarding business a real shot. You do this by screening your clients before they actually move in.

Think about the last time you rented an apartment or any other dwelling. Before the owners gave you the keys you had to:

• Fill out an application
• Pass a background check
• Provide proof of income
• Submit to a credit check

And that’s just for starters. Many landlords have far more stringent guidelines for renting to tenants, and if you fail to comply with these guidelines or if you don’t pass the background, your application is denied.

There is absolutely no reason why your horse boarding business shouldn’t operate in the same fashion. You are offering a place for a horse to stay, and in return you want documentation to prove that the owner of that horse is capable of satisfying his monthly bill.

The worst mistake you can make in the horse boarding business is failing to screen applicants. This simple safety precaution can save you thousands of dollars, and it might prevent the need to evict horses from your barn.

This preventative measure doesn’t guard against a client losing his job or simply deciding not to pay, but pre-screening customers will definitely decrease the headaches.

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Since I started writing for Suite101 and this Web site, I have received a lot of questions about my feelings on whips, spurs and other artificial aids. This is a serious point of contention in the horse business, with some professionals swearing by them and others swearing them off.

I could give you my opinion on whips and spurs, or outline the benefits and drawbacks of artificial aids, but that wouldn’t help you at all. You already know how you feel about these tools, and my opinion isn’t going to change your fundamental belief structure. Nor should it.

However, it is important for all horse business owners to take a stand on whips and spurs and the like, and to decide how they want to deal with them in day-to-day life. You are responsible for what goes on at your barn or stable, so you don’t want to neglect this issue.

Riding instructors, for example, must decide if their students are allowed to use whips, spurs and other artificial aids in lessons. Some riding teachers have bins full of aids of different sizes and shapes that their students can use, while others prohibit these tools entirely.

Equestrian professionals who train horses or board horses must also take a stand on whips and spurs. Are these tools allowed at your facility? What happens if a client is caught abusing these tools? And if a client has a preference on whether you use whips and spurs in your horse business, do you honor that request?

A Question of Ethics

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Using whips, spurs and other artificial aids does not constitute abuse. A rider or trainer can strap on a pair of spurs or carry a whip without hurting the horse, and it is important not to judge those who do utilize these tools.

The ethical issues surrounding whips and spurs are not related to their use but to their misuse.

Whips and spurs are intended as supplements to natural aids: hands, voice, seat, legs. If a rider relies exclusively on artificial aids to communicate with his horse, he is more likely to cause injury to the horse—or at least screw up his training.

Some riders and trainers also use whips and spurs for punishment. This is not the intended use of these artificial aids in conventional and ethical training, and in many cases leads to abuse. Artificial aids can make natural aids stronger, but they shouldn’t be used to punish the horse.

And finally, you have different types of whips, spurs and other artificial aids. Tom thumb spurs, for example, can’t do much damage to a horse, even if used incorrectly. The same goes for a plain-jane bat with a wide leather loop; it isn’t often going to harm the horse.

However, there are whips and spurs that can inflict serious damage. Spurs with pointed spokes and whips with metal attached to the ends, for example, come under the category of weapon rather than aid.

When setting and enforcing a policy on artificial aids, it is important to consider these ethical issues and address them accordingly. In the horse business, you will encounter two types of clients and colleagues who use whips and spurs incorrectly: 1) abusers; and 2) people who just don’t know any better. You must prepare for each type of individual.

Legislating the Use of Artificial Aids

If you are going to implement a policy or directive about the use of artificial aids, you have to decide if you have that authority and how important it is to you to enforce it. In some types of horse businesses, it is possible to control whether and how artificial aids are used; in others it is not.

Riding instructors have perhaps the greatest duty to legislate the use of artificial aids. If your students are using whips and spurs, you are duty-bound to teach them how to use these tools correctly; if they are not, you must still teach them about these tools and why they aren’t used in your business.

If you have a moral or ethical opposition to artificial aids, make that clear. Explain your reasons behind this opinion and provide sound logic to back it up. Some riding instructors have no such opposition; they simply believe that riders should learn to cue with natural aids first so that they only use artificial aids in specific situations.

My tenth-grade English teacher and I got into an argument one day about the use of fragmented sentences. I held the opinion that fragments could be used to great effect when placed deliberately in a text for artistic purposes. If we used fragments in our essays, however, she would deduct five points from our score.

She explained that yes, professional writers sometimes broke grammar rules with artistic license. However, she would not permit her students to break these rules until she was satisfied we had mastered them. This made perfect sense to me, and I conceded her point.

This is an excellent philosophy for riding instructors, and many of my clients and colleagues have adopted it. Teach students how to ride without artificial aids and they will be less likely to abuse them later on.

Other horse business owners don’t always have this luxury. If you are allowing horse owners to board their animals at your stable, for example, you don’t have much control over how they ride their horses as long as no abuse is involved. However, you can take a stand against whips and spurs if you so choose.

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