Horsey Business!?

Hi, Me and my friends want to start a small business where we go around our area and look after peoples horses. We are all 12 & 13 but we are members of Pony Club in the top group, we know everything about horses =D the services includes a bath (optional) a full groom and turnout and then muck out of the stable. If you think we should do more services and how much we should charge, it would be really helpful. Thanks!! xx

and can you tell me what we will need? we all have full grooming kits but if you could give me a little checklist also it would be great! x

Can you come to my place???? Would 25 bucks per horse work for you? Should I pay more? Tell me what you want and I'll see if I can afford you.. For that price, a pretty well maintained horse and a normal stall that doesn't have a winter's worth of poop shouldn't be too tough. Charge more for a really grubby horse. Mine go out of their stalls right into the pasture, so that's going to be pretty cheap as even I can manage that one. If the customer does not have the proper grooming supplies, have a kit they can buy. Don't share stuff between horses and/or barns. The kit should have a bucket to hold the stuff and to use for bathing, a sponge, clean toweling, a curry, soft, medium and hard brushes, a comb, a scraper. You will want to have shampoos and conditioners, whitening products, detanglers, hair bands or string. Clip jobs can be extra. I pay 60 bucks for a grooming plus clip at the training barn. Charge for show braiding, maybe 25 bucks a horse [these prices may be higher now, it's been a couple years since I needed this..]

I would think that most people would want you to use their grooming kit because of the possibility of spreading skin infections ( most owners are pretty paranoid)
Can you pull manes ? You could offer that service as a lot of people would like it but simply don't have the time.
Offering to poo pick fields and weed pulling would probably be popular as well for the same reason.
Painting stables maybe ???

As to how much you should charge - sorry I honestly have no idea - I tend to get my own kids to do those jobs and they will usually work for cake and icecream !

i dobut that ya'll know everything about horses LOL but nice try. charge the least you possible and provide more services, tht way you will get more buisness and that = more money than just a few ppl paying more. :D
good luck

This sounds like a lot of fun but be careful. Just because you know a lot about horses you are still kids and may not be as horse savvy as you think. Do your parents think this is a good idea?

It's great that you want to start up your own business type deal, but trust me...at 12 or 13 years of age, you do not know everything there is to know about horses. Even if you have been around them/riding them since you were literally born, there is probably much still to learn. Even people who are retired and had/been around horses all their life know that they do not know everything there is to know about horses.

It sounds like you guys would be in it for the longhaul that's for sure...I saw someone mentioned about people wanting you to use their own brushes instead of your own and that is true because using different brushes on different horses can cause things like scurf (sp?) and many skin-related diseases.

Also, make sure you aren't overworking yourself. Turnout, grooming and mucking in itself CAN be a full days job (I work at a barn currently and some days we have 25 horses to feed/turnout/muck stalls and it takes 2-3 of us to get it over and done with in a few hours).

I'm really not trying to discourage you at all, but you are only young once and what you guys are wanting to do can lead to being a handful. You could add services such as braiding, pulling manes, clipping/trimming feathers, and other grooming responsibilities.