Those who have horses at home

[Tootsie4U]

Money is a senstive subject, but how much money do you save by having your horses at home? Forget convenience - I need actual numbers or at least round about figures.

OH is panicing - baby on the way - money is tight and the options are for Tootsie to go back to work right after the baby's born or to sell the horse. Board is too expensive.

Thanks for sharing guys, I need some real live case scenarios to soothe hubby's worries. (hopefully! :eek: )

[Aphrodite]

Sorry, I can't help. My horse is on DIY.

Best of luck. :)

[Wally]

Not sure what livery is these days.

I have my lot at home, the only thing I pay for is haylage and a bit of feed. I have them on rubber mats so no bedding.

I do my own shoeing, but you'd need to pay for shoes if you use them.

Horses don't need a fortune spending on them.

[kirsty1]

i keep my horse at home. all i have to pay for is farrier, few vet bills. my dad makes or buys silage and hay. so doesnt cost much. hope you can keep your horse. :o

[KarinUS]

I am not going to much help either since having the horses home just gives me better ideas on what else they need.
I remember per my old calculations we ended up with one horse for free. Like before we paid 500 for both of them boarded and now we pay 250 for both of them home.

I don't envy you. Raising my kids myself (no daycare) is my dream. Just a couple more years of paying school loans and then we are ready to have a little one. Then I can stay home with the kids and the horses.

[Tootsie4U]

So would you say costs are cut in half?

Right now I pay $300 for full board. If we build the barn as planned, the loan payment will be $300 but thats a fixed cost. To ease the pain a little, we're looking at reducing the size of the barn and/or building an altered turn out shelter that will have hay/grain/tack storage for just a few thousand bucks.

Bonfire wont *need* anything other than supplemental hay so other than initial costs of building the structure, I dont see how it could be so overly expensive.

No bedding Wally? So what catches the pee? How do you handle hock scrapes then? Sorry, being nosy :D

[Tootsie4U]

Another Question:

Hay doesnt grow year round up here so we need to have enough stored to last the winter. How do you know how much hay to store? Trial and error?

[KarinUS]

Not really. I can store 60 bales in my hay barn. That lasts my 2 about 2 months.
I just called the farmer this morning to let him know Ray is coming to get more on Monday. That will of course be last year's hay. Texas is warm but we still don't grow hay year round. The hay farmers have big hay barns and it's their problem to store it where it doesn't get moldy, etc.

This one will be a new supplier for me so this time I will only buy a months worth and see how we like it. The protein analysis looks very good. If they eat it I will be happy. :)
But I would't build any kind of larger hay storage facilities unless you produce your own hay?

[lisae]

We had the up front cost of building the barn (20 x 24) hemlock fir board and batten and that was $3000 five years ago with lumber costs up since then. Factor in our cheap fencing (1/2" electric white tape, 3 strand which now looks awful because step in posts fall over after a while) which was about $400 to enclose two acres. (If you want to seed down a field properly, think about hiring someone with the right equipment, Jim put in a horse pasture for someone and 9 acres was $ 2,000 but that included everything from plowing it up to drilling the seed in, and soil enhancements and testing.) Annually, we trim 3 horses @ 7 times a year @ $25/horse = $525.00. Hay we used to grow but Jim has no time at this new job so that was $ 375.00 and I'm about to run out! so that will be another $375 to get me to June. Feeds and supps are running about $500 year. Bedding @ $400 but I never did rubber mats and could save there if I bought them @ $200 investment. Vet work is annual vacs and Coggins if they are going anywhere and that is usually $ 200 minimum and factor in another $300 for the little stuff (minor eye injury, infrequent colics, the unexpected such as the chiro).

So the first year won't be any great savings but thereafter you will be in better shape.

We sold our horses when the twins were born and I was happy to be rid of the responsibility, I loved them dearly but they faded in my interest level the bigger I got. Both horses went to good homes and no regrets. I didn't regain an interest until the kids were old enough to have their own things going on, it was too much to think about. I worry about my animals too much and I didn't have the capacity to do babies and horses at the same time.

[Tootsie4U]

Bon is and has been such a huge part of my life for the last three years that he has really become part of my identity. I feel that if I would give up horses I'd be giving up a part of myself.

Ideally, I have this picture in my head of little bambino in tow, plopped in her carriage in the isleway while I muck stalls. Then we go out in the sunshine and picnic while we watch the horses graze. At this point in time (not even thru my first trimester yet), I dont want to separate the two.

However, reality kicks in and hubby says I can't have my cake and eat it too...

So, figure a bale a day per horse?

Thanks for the help so far:)

:eek: Look what I just did up there! Have been trying to avoid gender preferences and had been doing so well! I said HER :eek: :D

[jUmPingIsLifE]

I know that we in no way could EVER afford board somewhere so its a good thing we are able to have our horses at home! we sent tahoe to my trainers for a month, and since it was training board it was more but still that took all our funds and we will never be able to do it again haha.

[lisae]

You've got a hungry horsie! We're feeding a bale a day to three, they are 900lbs, 800lbs and 750lbs. respectively. They are also splitting a pound of Hunter mix a day, which is a high fat, high fiber forage supplement with vitamins and minerals.

[Tootsie4U]

Eek, I did the math wrong. Working by Karin's figures

60 bales lasts her 2 horses 2 months...

So, more like a half a bale a day.

[TWH Addict]

Around about £120 per month to include feed, straw, hay, blacksmith, and vet. Thats averaged over 12 months for one fat, greedy mare :) Price doesnt include new rugs (shredded frequently), tack and trips to the doctor when i fall off or she bites or kicks me!! :p

[Tootsie4U]

TWH Addict - how does 120 compare to the average cost of full livery in your area? Just trying to get a hold on how much people actually save by having their horses home.

[laura jeanne]

Tootsie, I said "her" twice and was right both times (before ultrasound testing).

I imagine it's a hard decision to know whether to stay home with babies or not. After you work so hard to establish a profession, do you just give it up? And putting a profession aside, do you work and get a caretaker or just live on less money?

I've thought about this, I did the live on less money option. I enjoyed staying home with my kids- I was never bored, it was something different all the time.

Maybe I don't understand your options, but both sound like they will cost $300 a month and they would both be fixed costs wouldn't they?

You'd be surprised how much money you can save per month if you look at every little thing you spend money on!! Coffee, magazines, etc.- keep track for a month or two and you'll see what I mean.

[KarinUS]

So, figure a bale a day per horse?


Woah! No way. :)
TWO horses get one bale TOGETHER and they may not even eat that much if the weather is nice and there's stuff to pick elsewhere.
A friend of mine has Arabians and she says she feeds her two 1 1/2 bale a day. That's quite a bit. 45 pounds of hay per horse?
I guess mine end up with about 30 pounds of hay per horse.

Everybody figures something else. A bale around here is around 65 pounds. Most horse books will tell you something like this:
For proper digestive tract function, horses require a minimum of one percent of their body weight per day in forage plant dry matter. Therefore an average horse of 1200 lbs. would require about 14 lbs.

A bale would last this horse 4 days!

Hey, this might be a great opportunity to get Bon started on some regular hay and see how he does when he is not on a 20% alfalfa protein diet! :)

[Tootsie4U]

Laura Jeanne - our first plans were to build a barn for around $35,000 (only a two stall barn with a garage area - alot of money!) which would end up being a $300 month payment on the loan. With baby on the way, even $300 a month is not so do-able if I stay home and raise the baby. So, the options are to decrease the barn size or forgoe the barn altogether and just have a field shelter. The field shelter option could be arranged with little to no financing so therefore no monthly payment - only the cost of keeping the horse. However, we *need* storage space for hay, most importantly so nothing can be *just* a field shelter.

Bottom line, Im trying to get #s together to show hubby that having the horse home will HELP the budget, minus intial costs of building. Im trying to have my cake and eat it too :D

[TWH Addict]

My local livery yard charges £145 per 4 week livery to include turn out, mucking out, and all hard feed. (plus unlimited access to haylage) Full use of sandschool and 15% discount at their tack shop. Price doesnt include rugging, grooming, picking out of feet which is all extra if you require. Prices rise if you have a mare in foal as feed costs increase or you have a stallion that requires lunging. My mare was there all over last xmas and new year and was very well cared for. Its certainly cheaper at home, but was lovely to have someone else mucking out your stall for a bit :)

[Tootsie4U]

Karin, actually, I dropped the Trotter pellets and went out and bought my own feed for him. Purina Strategy. It did the trick! Even with the alfalfa hay he's getting. I've heard good things about Strategy from Arab people, saying its like a calmer. I dont know what they put in it, but it worked for me!

[galadriel]

I figure that anything like dewormer, vaccinations, etc will be the same no matter where you are, right? So all you're calculating is the cost of board vs the direct costs of taking care of the horse.

I can't help with the mortgage numbers, of course. (Although do keep in mind that you don't need anything elaborate at all--perhaps a run in shed with a small room for feed/tack might do you at first?)

I'd allocate about half a bale per horse per day, too. If you can get decent round bales, and get a setup which will allow you to preserve it (round bale feeder lifted off ground and covered), then you can feed free-choice hay much less expensively. Remember the cost of water, either electricity for a well or city water. It's probably small, but it's there. If you wire for electricity you're going to use it, so consider that cost too. Also consider insurance, if you are planning to use it (property and.or liability).

If you can work it out with a hay grower, you can sometimes purchase hay in advance, then go pick it up in small amounts. That way you can buy enough hay for the whole winter, but only have to store a week or so at once.

You can also (in a different direction) sometimes get a big discount on hay if you can pick it up out of the field. So while hay might cost me $3.50 a bale, I might be able to get a load of it for $2.50 a bale if I can be there the day they're baling, and pick it up myself. You would, of course, have to store that hay yourself, so this can't be used in conjunction with the benefits of the previous paragraph. Save on storage space, or save on the hay itself...

Remember that if you go out of town, you may need to hire someone to take care of the horses. That's an additional cost that you don't have when you're boarding. You may, however, be able to find someone who's willing to swap out vacations--you watch their horses for a week, they'll watch yours for a week in return. This is also a concern if you're ill, and your OH is not able to handle the horses.

You'll be responsible for property maintenance. Trees coming down, fences needing repair, well springing a leak, burst pipes, etc. (Insurance is a good thing.) If you can manage all the labor yourself, you'll only have to worry about cost of supplies. If you can't, then you'll need to factor the labor in too. Think about what you spend on home maintenance (I think you own not rent, right?) and you may be able to estimate what property maintenance might cost you.

I will say that keeping the horses at home definitely saves us money, significantly.

[lisae]

Toots, we sold some acres to a couple who bought a ready made shelter for their daughter's Paint gelding. It has a 10 x 12 stall on one side and a 10' x 10' tack room on the other, it was brought in and leveled on the land all for one price. PM me if you want the name of the company and I can look into it for you. It was very reasonable and quite nice looking. I think they have hay brought in every two weeks or so.

[xine]

when i had to board a few years ago, it was $200 per month for each. i'm sure it's higher now. but for my 4, that would be at least 800 a month. my hay runs around $300 a month for 4. all the extras like farrier, vet, equine senior, equine junior, worm paste, etc are additional costs, but they were extra costs when i boarded. so now i pick up the poop myself, but it is cheaper at home, and i love having them right by me.

[chev]

The absolute cheapest livery (board) we can get is £10 per week per horse. That's without feed, stabling, hay or any help. That would cost me £280 per month for ours before I even started on the rest. For full livery the average is around £40 per week per horse - which would cost me £1120 for ours, per month.

I pay £200 per month rent on twelve acres, and £60 a month for haylage.

So yes, even renting our land, we save a huge amount of money. I honestly couldn't afford them if we didn't. And I stay at home with the kids (I earn a little from freelance work but not enough to pay tax) so I got my cake and ate it! We worked out that the cost of childcare if I went out to work now would actually mean (given that my earning potential in the workforce is not that great!) that we were worse off.