What should you really charge per horse? Free, no signup.
Board barns are the rare business where most owners break even or lose money. This tool shows what each horse actually costs you so you can price above it.
Presets fill typical per-horse costs below. Every number is an editable starting point for your barn and your market.
Include the labor you do yourself. Unpaid hours are why most barns never turn a profit.
These fixed costs get divided across your filled stalls, which is why occupancy matters as much as price.
Same costs spread over fewer stalls. A barn at half capacity needs a higher board rate or it subsidizes empty stalls.
Horse boarding dies on unpaid labor. A $600 board rate looks fine until hay, grain, bedding, 12 hours of your own stall work, and the facility mortgage quietly add up past the price, so this calculator finds the true monthly cost per horse first. Start with your bar: a target profit margin on costs (15 percent default) and stalls filled this month. Pick a board type: Full stall, Pasture, or Partial, each filling per-horse hay bales, grain bags, supplements, bedding, care hours, and extras as editable starting points. The feed card takes hay bales per month times cost per bale, grain bags times cost per bag, and supplements. The care card takes bedding, your care hours valued at your own hourly rate and extras like blanketing and fly spray. Facility costs for the whole barn, mortgage, insurance, utilities, and maintenance, get divided across your filled stalls, which is why occupancy matters as much as price. Results show the true cost per horse and the price needed to clear your margin, rounded to $25. The gut check grades the rate you would have charged. Planning estimates only, not professional advice. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Full stall preset at a 15% margin: hay 10 x 7 = $70, grain 4 x 22 = $88, supplements $20, bedding $60, labor 12 x 25 = $300, extras $25, for $563 in direct cost. Facility costs of 1,200 + 250 + 300 + 200 = $1,950 divided across 8 filled stalls = $243.75 per horse. True cost = 563 + 243.75 = $806.75. The price needed is 806.75 x 1.15 = $927.76, rounded to $950. A $600 gut quote is under true cost by 806.75 - 600 = $206.75 per horse per month. At 8 stalls, revenue is 950 x 8 = $7,600 against true cost of $6,454, for $1,146 in barn profit. At only 4 filled, revenue is $3,800 against cost of 563 x 4 + 1,950 = $4,202, so the barn loses money.
**Q** Why do I have to value my own labor?
Because it is a real cost. Twelve hours per horse per month at $25 is $300 of labor per horse. Leave it at zero and the price looks profitable while you work for free.
**Q** How do fixed costs change the per-horse price?
The whole barn's mortgage, insurance, utilities, and maintenance get divided by filled stalls. Fewer stalls means each horse carries a bigger share, which is why a half-full barn can lose money at the same board rate.
**Q** What margin should a boarding barn target?
The tool defaults to 15 percent and warns that a 0 percent margin means every price spike comes out of your pocket. Enter whatever your barn needs; the math only measures whether the rate clears it.
**Q** How do I handle partial or pasture board?
The presets fill different feed, bedding, and care-hour lines for each board type. Pasture board drops bedding to zero and cuts care hours, so the true cost and the quote both fall.
**Q** What does the occupancy card tell me?
Whether the barn survives at lower fill. The example shows $1,146 of monthly profit at 8 stalls turning into a loss at 4, which is the argument for raising the rate instead of chasing more boarders at a losing price.