Free tool
What one lesson slot really earns you
Put in the price, the group size, the instructor rate and the cost of the horses in that hour, and see what the slot leaves behind.
Free tool, no sign up
Can your school string carry this week
Compare the horse hours your schedule demands with the hours your sound horses can honestly give before anyone gets sour.
Every lesson hour on the board is one or more horse hours off the string. Most barns never total those up, which is why a schedule that looks full and healthy in March turns into three lame horses and a canceled Saturday in July. The arithmetic is simple, it just has to be done before the season rather than after.
This planner totals the horse hours your week needs, including camps, leases and schooling rides, then compares that with what your sound horses can supply at the weekly ceiling you set for each of them. A negative headroom number means the schedule is borrowing hours from the horses, and the horses always collect.
Your result
Horse hours the week demands
113
Total working hours your string has to supply for this schedule.
Horse hours you actually have
120
Sound horses on the property multiplied by the ceiling you set for each one.
Hours per sound horse per week
11.3
The real weekly load carried by each horse still in work.
Headroom before the ceiling
7.0
A negative number means the week is being paid for out of the horses.
Run this for your busiest week of the year, not an average one, because that is the week the string gets damaged.
Why the average hides the horse that is drowning
Hours per sound horse is an average, and no string works like an average. In most barns three or four honest, quiet horses take the beginners, the nervous adults and every makeup lesson, while two green ones and an opinionated pony sit at half the load. The average can look fine at ten hours while your best packer is at eighteen.
That is why the per horse ceiling matters more than the total. Use this planner to see whether the week fits at all, then look at hours per individual horse for the two or three animals everyone asks for by name. If those horses are over, the string is over, regardless of what the total says.
Building headroom into the season before June
Healthy headroom is not zero. Aim for a cushion of roughly a tenth to a fifth of your available hours, because a school string always has something going on: an abscess, a bruised sole, a horse who needs two weeks off after a bad fall in the arena. Without cushion, every one of those turns into a rider you have to call.
The ways to buy headroom are limited and they are all decisions you make in the office. Add a horse, cap the number of lessons in the hottest weeks, move some beginner riders onto a wider rotation of horses, or say no to the camp week that wants your whole string for five days. Doing nothing is also a decision, and it gets paid for in July.
Questions about this calculator
What is a reasonable weekly ceiling for a school horse?
Most sound, fit horses in their prime carry somewhere near ten to fourteen hours of lesson work a week when the work is varied and the footing is good. Older horses, heavier rider loads, hard ground and repetitive up down work all push that number down. Set it per horse rather than across the string.
Do walk only beginner lessons count as a full hour?
They count as time on his back and time being caught, tacked and cooled out, but the physical load is lower than an hour of jumping. Some barns count a beginner walk trot hour as three quarters. Be careful with that discount, because the mental load of tense beginners is real even when the physical work is light.
How do I count a horse who is leased out part time?
Put those hours into the non lesson field so they show against the same ceiling. A lease that runs three rides a week is a meaningful share of a horse's working capacity, and it is the most commonly forgotten load when barns wonder why a horse is dull in his lessons.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The school horse work card
One page per horse that tells any instructor in your barn what he does, who can ride him, how much he works and when to stop.
Make that horse hour ceiling hold in July
The figure on this screen is true until the next makeup lesson goes up on the whiteboard. In BarnBooked the ceiling you just used becomes the rule that declines the ninth hour for that horse, per animal, at ten at night with nobody in the office. Send your inputs over and we will walk them through a live week so you can see where this schedule is borrowing hours.