How much help do you have?

[Altamont Sport Horses]

As I read about the number of foals people are expecting (some 12, 13, etc.) I have to wonder "How do you do it?" How much help do you have...employees, family members, working students, etc.? And how many hours a week do they help you out? Do you have a full-time job off the farm or is horse breeding your only occupation?

I have one full-time worker and occasional help by his wife. I'm concerned about having more than 4 foals next year but I also hate to leave broodmares standing around doing nothing for a year (again). I had 4 foals last year and I was completely taxed but I didn't have any help on the farm either. For that reason I only bred 2 mares for 2008, although now I could easily handle more.

So, how much help do you have?

[genevieveg17]

I have 10 mares and usually 6 foals a year. I do most of the work from day to day cleaning, feeding and maintenence to breeding, foaling etc.
I have a 20 y.o. daughter who helps me with stalls 2 mornings a week and my 18 y.o daughter will occasionally lend a hand when mares need to be switched from pasture to pasture or into the barn.
Basically I enjoy doing the majority of the stuff myself.
It is my full time job.

[camohn]

As I read about the number of foals people are expecting (some 12, 13, etc.) I have to wonder "How do you do it?" How much help do you have...employees, family members, working students, etc.? And how many hours a week do they help you out? Do you have a full-time job off the farm or is horse breeding your only occupation?

I have one full-time worker and occasional help by his wife. I'm concerned about having more than 4 foals next year but I also hate to leave broodmares standing around doing nothing for a year (again). I had 4 foals last year and I was completely taxed but I didn't have any help on the farm either. For that reason I only bred 2 mares for 2008, although now I could easily handle more.

So, how much help do you have?
Hubby works full time, I work part time and do the bulk of the actual horsecare...all of it during the week and he helps on weekends. Hubby likes driving the tractor (pasture mowing) and fixing fences on weekends. During the summer we have a local teenager that helps part time for a summer job (helps keep the trained horses fit and do occasional other stuff like painting and mowing), no employees the rest of the year. We have 2 foals due, I am the foaling attendant (hubby is NOT good with medical/blood related stuff...I work in the medical field and he works in an office for a reason!) and after a week of foal watch (and neither foal has arrived yet) I am starting to get a bit bleary eyed at work.
Addendum: total equine population is 12. We have one 10 YO daughter at home. Hubby's 2 older kids are grown. One is married/moved to VA and one is in his last semester of college.

[Daydream Believer]

Oh...what a timely topic! Up until March, I had my parents living here and the did a lot of the maintenance, mowing, putting out hay, etc... a huge help to me. Due to health insurance problems (trying to switch from one company to another and preexisting conditions), they had to move back to Ohio...so they left...right before foaling/breeding season. I have a couple of working boarders and they help mainly at chores time and moving horses back and forth from stall to pasture, etc. They do a couple of stalls but the majority is for me.

I am mucking about 13 stalls a day with an occasional break on the weekend when a boarder HS girl is out of school and helps. This weekend she did not bother to call nor show up so I was left until the last minute not realizing I had stalls to do. :-( This morning I was up at 6 am., ate breakfast, fed and turned out, rode my stallion, collected the client stallion, held mares for vet to inseminate, shuttled them out to pasture, mucked stalls, visited with clients, then about 2 p.m I finally got lunch and then some bookwork. I am headed out shortly to do some fence maintenance and then evening chores. I have foaled out 6 of 11 mares so far and that is without help. Thank God for foaling monitors and web cams.

We have 47 horses on the farm right now...21 or so are mine and live outside and the rest boarders. We have 21 horses in stalls overnight. Anyone want a job? :-O Oh..I forgot the mowing and maintenance for 30 acres...UGH....

I'm supposed to have a working student coming in in July. She will live in our barn apartment and keep a horse here in exchange for work. I think I will cry if she doesn't come.

Right now the farm is my full time plus job. I still try to put in some hours at the office part time and also work from home. I was working two days a week and that is now down to about 3 hours a week.

[misita]

I have 7 mares and am having 5 foals this year. I have 3 children ages 19 (girl) and 2 boys aged 18 and 13. I make my kids help with everything. I do the morning chores and make my 13 year old son, Joey, help with evening chores. My kids feel terribly abused at times and feel they work a thousand times harder than ALL the others kids.

We usually all spend the night for foaling but I have a friend, Roxanne, who also breeds. So we do sleep overs for each others foals. Roxanne and I also help each other with tedious chores, like hotwire and also take care of each others chores when we're out of town. It's great having a breeding buddy.

I do plan to keep my breeding program no bigger than it already is, or I would have to hire help. I'm going to school full time since my Mortgage business is temporarily in the tank.

[FriesianX]

Oh, I wish I had more help... One person once weekly comes in and strips stalls, does a day of heavy cleaning. In between it is me on my own. We have about 20 horses, roughly 10 broodmares, a couple of pasture ornaments, a handful of babies at various ages, and my stallions. All horses are out on pasture about 11 months of the year. The broodies come in for about a month for foaling. So, luckily not a ton of stalls to clean.

My husband works full time, I work about 30 hours/week most of the year, but cut way back during foaling time (self-employed, so able to do that). I've been looking for some help in just handling babies. Sometimes it all seems so overwhelming! Sent my stallion out for training this year, and that took a big load off my daily time demands - EXCEPT everytime he needs to be collected, it is 2 hours of trailering added to the day.

It is a lot of work. Very rewarding, but... It has been four years since I last had a vacation :eek:

[Daydream Believer]

It is a lot of work. Very rewarding, but... It has been four years since I last had a vacation :eek:

What is a vacation? :lol:;)

[county]

I have 11 mares foaling and had 24 cows calf, also have 328 acres of crop land and pastures to plant and maintain. And I work a 50 hour job in town as a machinist although I take summers off. Help? My wife helps a great deal but other then that its just me. But I've always gone on vacations it would get very boring if I didn't. When I go I have a neighbor that checks on things and in the summer the livestock is on pasture winters I put out enough round bales till I get back.

Here we own the livestock the livestock doesn't own us.

[Hillside H Ranch]

I usually have 2-3 foals a year; this year I'm planning on 5. My husband and I own our own business (a vet clinic; small animal and equine). I work at the clinic from 9-4 M-F; this time of year my husband basically works around the clock. We have 130 acres; we do all the maintanece ourselves. We have a small herd of cattle (about 24) and we have about 20 horses not including our recipient mare herd. We usually have most of our stalls full of client horses, instead of our own horses. We handle all the breeding and foaling ourselves. He does the morning feeding and I do the evenings. We have two girls who clean stalls, they alternate days so all 7 days are covered. I occassionally do stalls on the weekend to give the girls a break. I do all the mowing, landscaping, barn maintenance,etc. My husband does all the field maintanence, fencing, haying and cattle care. We actually enjoy being out with the animals and working on the farm. We do take several weekend vacations in the fall, when business quiets down. Right now we are often up a few times every night, ultrasounding client mare for frozen semen breedings or foaling out mares (clients and ours). I actually love it and wouldn't have it any other way. Oh, we also have a 2 year old daughter and live two hours away from any of our family!

[VirginiaBred]

We have anywhere from 17 - 24 horses and ponies here. Currently it's 17 (YAY) and we are expecting 4 foals this year. We never (intentionally) have more than 4, and that many can make me crazy and worried......
I have a 21 year old daughter that is the #1 helper and a 18 year old son that is awesome with barn work. Will sure miss him when he goes away to school.

[Daydream Believer]

Here we own the livestock the livestock doesn't own us.

:lol::D When I only had my own horses here I did like you...had someone check them daily, put out lots of hay and would go. Now, as a service oriented barn, I just can't do that for someone's prize show horse or broodmare.

I think, come hell or high water, we will have a vacation this Fall/Winter....somewhere warm and quiet! :cool:

[rideagoldenpony]

Here, it's just my husband and I. My parents also live here on the farm, but do not participate at all in the actual day to day stuff we do with the ponies. My mom, however, is great at giving me a break during night time foal watch! My parents are also great about feeding/taking care of the farm when we are away at shows.

Everything we do happens HERE at the farm. We have an office building here and I do some office work for my dad on my own schedule, and also do web site design on a very small scale (select clients) on the side. My husband trains horses -- though mostly we've just been turning them away in droves, as I'm sick of dealing with it all and we have plenty to do here anyway.

We have 100 acres at the main farm, lots of ponies, and just purchased an additional 60+ acres of hay ground. June will be interesting this year at hay time....

We normally have somewhere in the range of 4-8 foals. This year it is 8 foals. I do all the foal watch -- though as mentioned above, if I let my mom know, she'll help me watch too so I can get some sleep. My husband will always come out with me, as long as he is here, when the mares are actually foaling.

We have two kids, but they are gone so much at school (their school is not close to home), so while my son does evening feeding on the evenings he doesn't work, and my daughter waters, there are no other set responsibilities as far as what they do.

If I could afford an employee, I'd kill to have someone clean stalls. It just takes so much time that could be devoted to other, more productive, projects. That's my biggest gripe.

[Clarion]

If I could afford an employee, I'd kill to have someone clean stalls. It just takes so much time that could be devoted to other, more productive, projects. That's my biggest gripe.

Oh, I hear ya! If I could have all those stall cleaning hours back! Here it's just my husband and I. We both have jobs off the farm--I have a 45-50 minute commute each way to my "regular job", my husband has to commute over an hour and half(Usually ends up being two hours each way). Cleaning stalls and general care doesn't leave much time for anything else in our lives. My husband helps a lot (if with LOTS of grumbling), but he never gets home before nine at night, so that limits how much he is around to lend a hand. We have anywhere from 11 to 15 horses here, depending on whether the babies have sold yet or not. We shoot for four foals a year, but it doesn't always work out that way--last year we bred four and will only be having two foals this year.

Oh, and our last vacation was in 1997--the same year we got back into horses and bought the first two members of our, now much larger, herd...:sigh:

[classicsporthorses]

We have 40 horses here with more coming in (between training horses and mares to be bred to our stallions). There is my husband (who works and is partially disabled), my 14 year old daughter and me. I also work full time (but with a very flexible schedule). I have 6 foals due and we have a 20 stall barn.

The horses know the routine and I am up early getting things going. In the winter nearly all of the horses all wear blankets too and thankfully they are all easy to blanket, even the youngsters. Heck, even our dogs, we have 5, know how the day goes. Occassionally we have a boarder or two help but we usually relegate them to watering and/or throwing hay, NOT graining.

[Altamont Sport Horses]

Sometimes I suspect my other "horse friends" think I'm crazy for doing all that I do, primarily by myself. Well, at least now I know I'm not the ONLY crazy one! :winkgrin:

Riding? Anyone heard of that? Ever get to do it? :lol: