More FAQs

In my last post I covered the frequently asked questions that we get in regards to starting a retirement farm.  We have another set of questions that we are asked multiple times per week as well, not in regards to starting a retirement farm, but in regards to what someone can do with a completely unrideable but otherwise healthy horse.  

1.  Are you a rescue?  No, we are not a rescue.  All of the horses retired with us are here because they have a loving owner who is willing to step up and pay for them to enjoy retirement.  Before you start sending me hate mail I'm not saying any horse owner who chooses not to retire their unrideable horse is a bad person so calm down. I am saying we are not a rescue, we are not a non-profit, all of the horses here have an owner who pays their bills and we will not support your horse for free.  If you want your horse to be retired at our lovely facility with excellent care you will have to make the choice to pay the board bill.

2.  What happens if someone does not pay the board bill?  We screen our clients carefully, as carefully as they screen us, and have never been faced with this decision.  However, if someone ever decided to stop paying the board bill for their retiree we would not continue to support the horse at our expense. That is a foolish decision on our part that could potentially affect our ability to care for the other horses retired with us.  If someone ever did abandon a horse in our care the horse would be euthanized. 

I am fully aware that the hate mail will start rolling in now that I have made that statement.  I would not enjoy it, I would cry a lot, and I would hate being forced into that decision by the horse's owner, but at the end of the day it is the most fair decision to us and the horse.  I am thankful none of our clients would ever dream of abandoning their horse. There are only two other options in this scenario, and they are attempt to place the horse with a rescue or try to find someone willing to take the horse. I think both of those options have the potential to have far worse outcomes for the horse than euthanasia.

3.  I love my horse but he can no longer be ridden. I cannot afford to pay retirement board, would you consider retiring him for free? This is another variation on question 1 above. The answer is no, we will not retire your horse for free or for a discounted rate. For further explanation see my answer to question 1 above. 

4.  I cannot afford to retire my horse and he can no longer be ridden, do you know of any potential homes for a companion horse?  My answer is always that I don't know of any potential companion homes because that is the truth. People ask me all the time if I know of someone looking for a companion horse. As of yet I've never had a single person ask me if I know of any free companion horses available. 

This question in itself does not bother me.  From time to time you can be the lucky person that finds a good companion home for your unrideable horse.  The part that kills me is that it is usually followed up with:  must be an excellent home, must have excellent vet and farrier references, must sign a contract that they will not sell or give away the horse away, blah blah.  It is all of these "must do" items that really make me shake me head.

OK, let's cut to the chase here. You could afford the horse when you could ride him, but now that you cannot ride the horse you can no longer afford him.  The reason is because you are planning to get another horse you can ride.  I absolutely do not blame anyone for wanting to get a horse they can ride.  However, if you don't want to pay the bill for the permanently broken horse any longer you need to man up and euthanize the horse. There are fates much worse than a peaceful passing. I cannot respect the fact that someone else MUST be willing to provide an EXCELLENT home of which you approve, agree to do it for the life of the horse, sign a contract in blood, pass all of your background checks . . . yet you yourself are unwilling to do all of these things. In other words promise to do everything I'm not willing to do for the horse, and promise to do it until he dies.

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Slinky, Walden, Lightning and Fabrizzio

Merlin

O'Reilly and Merlin 

Duesy and Lucky

Bruno

O'Reilly, Walden, Fabrizzio, Merlin and Hesse

Lightning, Bruno, Slinky and Duesy

Merlin in the lead followed by Bruno

Norman and Traveller

Kennedy was getting groomed by both Stormy and Clayton

Johnny and Murphy

Taco and Nemo

Alex and Blu

foggy morning view

pretty sunset

FAQs

We get asked all the time to provide free consulting on how to start a retirement farm.  By all the time I mean we are contacted on average 2-3 times per week asking for advice, guidance, etc. on starting and/or running a retirement farm. While I genuinely wish we had time to assist and answer all these inquiries we simply do not have the time it takes to provide detailed answers. It is not because we don't want to be helpful, it is because we are way too busy running our own farm and attempting to occasionally carve out some non-working family time.  

In the last few months it seems as if we have been contacted more than ever by people interested in running a retirement farm. Over the years we have essentially been asked some variation on the same core group of questions. Since we don't have time for anything but brief and basic correspondence with these inquiries I have tried to put helpful information on our website for people interested in running a retirement farm. However I thought I would expand a bit on the topic in this post. 

1. What do you charge for board?  I'm going to admit that this question always makes me shake my head, but I come from a business background.  This is the WRONG question to be asking, yet is almost always the first question.  What we charge for board should absolutely have nothing to do with whatever you charge for board.  Why is this?  The answer is in Business 101.  You have to determine your costs for land, infrastructure, feed, hay, bedding, other supplies, labor, equipment, etc. and THEN decide what you need to be charging for board in order to make it a reasonable endeavor. 

You may be able to charge less than we do, you might need to charge a lot more. It all depends on the costs that are specific to your geographical area, and it also depends on the types of facilities you have.  Land proximate to New York City is going to cost a lot more than land in rural Arkansas  Four board wood fencing is expensive, you might use a cheaper option.  Or maybe you want to build the Taj Mahal of barns which will obviously drive your costs up.  .  

2. I want to earn extra income by boarding retired horses, what do you think? Or another variation on this common question is similar to "I own 15 acres and I will be retiring soon.  I think boarding retired horses will be a great way to earn income, and at the same time I can enjoy taking care of and watching the horses.  What do you think?"  I think for most people asking this question it is probably a bad idea, especially given that most of the people who are asking this question have little to no experience with horses.  You are going to end up being very tied to your property, which  means your dreams of doing a lot of travel, visiting family more frequently, etc. are going to be hard to accomplish.  

It is much easier to do these things with no horses at your house and a regular 8-5 job with sick, holiday and vacation time.  The horses will need to be cared for 365 days per year, even on Christmas, even in the rain, the cold and the heat, even if you are sick with the flu (been there done that more than once), no matter who dies, even if your spouse is seriously ill or hurt and in the hospital . . . I could go on and on and on. The day after my father died I held horses for the farrier. I wanted to be with my mother and sister but taking care of living things, be it horses, people, etc. never stops.  

Do not misunderstand, I love what I do and that should be pretty evident to anyone who reads this blog, but for some reason people seriously romanticize the realities of running a retirement farm.  It is hard physical work, it is 24/7/365 (horses love to hurt themselves or get sick at the holidays, when you have plans, etc., trust me on this!!), you work outside no matter what the weather brings, you get dirty, the horses decide to be rude and uncooperative at the most inopportune times, and the same care has to be provided every day.  That means weekdays, weekends, holidays, EVERY DAY someone has to be out there doing the work. This is not like a herd of cows where you can put them out in the pasture with hay and water that you check every few days and they pretty much look after themselves.  You need to like being at home most of the time and you need to like being outside most of the time.

3.  I already run a  regular boarding facility but I want to change over to boarding retired horses.  How do I do this?  My answer to this will be short as this is a pretty straightforward question. I really only see two options.  The first one is to gradually phase over your business by having all new boarders be retirees and slowly change the focus of your business. Option two is an immediate change and as of X date you now only board retirees. This means any current boarders that are not retirees will need to leave.  

4.  How do I start a retirement farm? This is an awfully broad question but the good news is this is not rocket science.  Decide what type of care you want to provide and to how many horses, which in turn will determine the type of facilities and acreage you will need.   Now calculate your costs: land, facilities & infrastructure, feed, hay, bedding, insurance, equipment, maintenance (fences, buildings, equipment and land will all need maintenance), labor, routine supplies, marketing/advertising, taxes, utility bills, etc.  Once you know your costs you will know what you need to charge per horse to have a viable business.

5.  We've been asked a variation of this question several times and it always surprises me. It goes something like this:  I want to have a retirement farm and make a reasonable income, however I don't want to be tied to the farm. How can I do this?  I never quite know where to start with this one.  I'll answer a question with a question.  If you don't like the idea of being tied to your farm why do you want to do this?  

6.  How do I attract and keep clients?  As with most things getting started is the hardest part. Hopefully you have been involved with horses in some manner for awhile and thus have contacts and relationships in the horse world.  Let these people know what you are doing, word of mouth is the most powerful advertising.  Advertise in publications that go to your target audience, have a website, etc.  Once you have boarders you need to do what you said you would do. I cannot emphasize that sentence enough. Provide the care you promised to provide, even when you are sick, even when you have a family emergency, etc.  

Those are the answers to a few of our most frequently asked questions, I hope someone finds them  helpful. There is nothing ground breaking in any of these answers but this is a pretty straightforward business model.  

One thing I will add is when Jason and I were looking for land a few years ago, of all the "horsey" areas we looked at  in the southeast (middle Tennessee, Lexington, Tryon, Aiken, etc.) Lexington, KY had the most affordable real estate by a landslide.  We were blown away by the selling prices for turn-key horse farms.  We seriously considered moving ourselves and all the horses there, it would have been considerably more affordable than staying in middle Tennessee.  In the end Lexington gets way too much winter weather for me so we stayed in middle Tennessee, but it was a close call.  So I guess my one last bit of advice is if you are looking for land or a turn-key horse farm in a horsey area, you cannot beat Lexington, KY for affordability.

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Gus, Cocomo and Asterik

Lofty and Romeo

Stormy, Walon, Johnny, Oskar and Donovan

Moe and Levendi

Apollo and Thomas

Walden and Duesy

Timbit and Griselle

O'Reilly and Merlin

morning view

Hidden Costs

(post written by Jason) As I lay on my back under our big tractor changing fluids and filters a couple of days ago I had the thought that owning equipment was one of the costs in time and money that nobody thinks very much about when considering what it might cost to run an equine retirement farm. In the last month we put a new set of tires on the front of the big tractor ($1,000.00) and bought $168 worth of filters and another $75 worth of fluids. While these are all expected expenses they do add up and they help quantify that running equipment is far from free.

It may surprise you to learn that we actually estimate the cost of owning and running every major piece of equipment on this farm. We do this multiple times; the first time occurs before we purchase any piece of equipment. Then we do it again every year to compare actual expenses to budgeted expenses so that we can allocate adequate monies for repairs and/or replacement. In order to budget accurately we break the costs of ownership and usage down into a cost per hour of use, then multiply by the number of hours we typically use the piece of equipment per year. I thought it would be interesting to share with you what these (very accurate)  numbers look like for our bigger tractor. Keep in mind these numbers do NOT include any costs associated with running implements (hay mowers, bush hogs, balers, etc) pulled by this tractor. Also keep in mind that we have another tractor.

This tractor in question, 90 pto hp (for non tractor people that stands for power take-off and horse power), 4 wheel drive with a new loader, was purchased for $50,000 (including tax) some years ago. I expect that it will give me a useful life of roughly 5000 engine hours. I hope it will have some salvage value at the end of it's useful life but since I can't recoup this money until I sell the tractor it doesn't factor into the cash costs of owning this piece of equipment.

$50,000/5000 hours = $10.00 per hour ownership cost. The rule of thumb is to double this cost for repairs and over twenty years in farming tells me this number is almost exactly right. Thus we add another $10.00 per hour for repairs, bringing the total operating cost to $20.00 per hour. Unfortunately repairs do not include tire replacement. We budget a full replacement every 1000 engine hours; currently a full replacement costs $3,000 or $3.00 per hour.

Maintenance such as fluids and filters also are not included in the repair bill. Add another $2.00 per hour for this cost. We're now at $25.00 per hour.  We still haven't put fuel in the tractor. Over time the tractor averages roughly 2.5 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. At $3.50 per gallon you can add another $8.75 per hour to cost of ownership, bringing the total to $33.75.

It's been my experience that tractors don't run very well without operators, and it's also been my experience that you get what you pay for in terms of help.   Add another $15.00 per hour for wages to the person operating the tractor, bringing the total operating cost to $48.75 per hour.

In addition to using this figure to determine budgets and expenses this is also the figure I use when I'm running budgets to contemplate additional rented land for hay, crops, etc. At current use rates this tractor gets used roughly 300 hours per year. Thus the total operating cost of this one piece of equipment is $14,625.00 per year, before we factor in the cost of any piece of equipment that might be attached to the tractor.

Hope this has been interesting and informative post for all those who wonder about what it takes to own and operate an equine retirement farm.

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Calimba and MyLight

Cuffie and Dolly

Nemo and Taco on the run

Cocomo and Silver posing and playing while waiting to be fed

Largo, Kennedy and Donovan

Hemi shows us all the parts of a good roll. First you flop back and forth . . . 

. . . then you rest because that was so hard . . . 

. . . then you sit up . . . 

. . . and finally shake

River and Rocky grooming

George leading the way followed by Flyer and Gibson

Duesy and Merlin

More FAQs

In my last post I covered the frequently asked questions that we get in regards to starting a retirement farm.  We have another set of questions that we are asked multiple times per week as well, not in regards to starting a retirement farm, but in regards to what someone can do with a completely unrideable but otherwise healthy horse.  

1.  Are you a rescue?  No, we are not a rescue.  All of the horses retired with us are here because they have a loving owner who is willing to step up and pay for them to enjoy retirement.  (Before people start up with the hate mail I'm not saying any horse owner who chooses not to retire their unrideable horse is a bad person so calm down.) I am simply saying we are not a rescue, we are not a non-profit, and we will not support your horse for free.  If you want your horse to be retired at our lovely facility with excellent care you will have to make the choice to pay the board bill.

2.  What happens if someone does not pay the board bill?  We screen our clients carefully, as carefully as they screen us, and have never been faced with this decision, but if someone ever decided to stop paying the board bill for their retiree we would not continue to support the horse at our expense. That is a beyond foolish decision on our part that could potentially affect our ability to care for the other horses retired with us.  If someone ever did abandon a horse in our care the horse would be euthanized. Undoubtedly my inbox will be blown up with all the hate mail I will get for making that statement.  I would not enjoy it, I would cry a lot, and I would hate being forced into that decision by the horse's owner, but at the end of the day it is the most fair decision to us and the horse.  I am thankful none of our clients would ever dream of abandoning their horse.

3.  Another variation of question number one is "I love my horse dearly but he can no longer be ridden. I cannot afford to pay retirement board, would you consider retiring him for free?"  No. For further explanation see my answer to question 1 above. 

4.  I cannot afford to retire my horse and he can no longer be ridden, do you know of any potential homes for a companion horse?  My answer is always that I don't know of any potential companion homes because that is the truth. People ask me all the time if I know of someone looking for a companion horse but as of yet I've never had a single person ask me if I know of any free companion horses available. 

This question in itself does not bother me.  From time to time you can be the lucky person that finds a good companion home for your unrideable horse.  The part that kills me is that it is usually followed up with:  MUST be an EXCELLENT home, MUST have EXCELLENT vet and farrier references, MUST sign a contract that they will not sell or give away the horse away, blah blah.  That is the part that really irritates me.

OK, let's cut to the chase here. You could afford the horse when you could ride him, but now that you cannot ride the horse you can no longer afford him.  The reason is because you are planning to get another horse you can ride.  I absolutely do not blame anyone for wanting to get a horse they can ride.  However, if you don't want to pay the bill for the permanently broken horse any longer just man up and euthanize the horse.  I can respect that decision.  I cannot respect the fact that someone else MUST be willing to provide an EXCELLENT home of which you approve, agree to do it for the life of the horse, sign a contract in blood, pass all of your background checks . . . yet you yourself are unwilling to do all of these things. Do people seriously not see the massive double standard in this, or am I simply being judgemental and cranky?

Well, that is it for this round of FAQs. It turned a bit into Melissa getting on her soapbox and ranting at the end, but when you are asked this stuff several times a week it starts to get old, and I'm only human.  

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Johnny and Lighty

Clayton

Cinnamon and MyLight

Largo and Rocky

Sebastian

Murphy and Sam (we're in that blankets on, blankets off time of year)

Noble and Merlin

Thomas, Moe and Homer

View of the front 1/2 of the farm that you can only get when the leaves are off the trees (there are 2 barns and 3 run-in sheds in this picture)

Tony, Leo and Chance highlight this view of the buildings at the back of the farm; another barn and 3 more run-in sheds