horse_boarding_stable_operations v1.0.0

name: "horse_boarding_stable_operations" description: "Run a horse boarding stable so every horse and owner gets what the contract promised: per-horse feed and turnout charts changed only in writing, barn-wide vet, farrier, and deworming tracking, boarder billing that separates board, services, supplies, and pass-through charges, a fixed facility maintenance round, and incident and medication logs any staff member can read cold. Use when setting up or fixing boarding barn operations, building feed charts, planning preventive care days, billing boarders, or handling a barn emergency like a colic night."

Horse Boarding Stable Operations

Purpose

A boarding barn sells a promise: this horse gets this feed, this turnout, this care, every day, whoever is on shift. The promise breaks in predictable places. Feed changes get passed along verbally and drift. Preventive care lives in one person's head. Invoices mix board, labour, goods, and the vet's bill into one unexplained number. An emergency at night leaves no record the morning vet can use.

This skill runs the barn on five paper systems that fix those breaks: a per-horse chart with written change control, a barn-wide health tracker, a four-bucket billing ledger, a weekly facility round, and logs written for a cold reader. Barn management apps that list horses and stalls do not ship any of this. The charts, the billing method, and the proof habit are the product here.

Workflow

1. Build the per-horse chart at intake, from the owner's written instructions. One row per horse: stall, AM and PM hay and grain by weight and product, supplements with amount and timing, soaking or special prep, turnout group and hours, blanket rule, water note. Horses need forage at 1.5 to 2.0 percent of body weight per day as the base of the ration, and feed is weighed, not counted in flakes or scoops. A 1,100 lb horse at 1.75 percent needs about 19 lb of forage a day before grain is even discussed. Post the chart where feeding happens. Template in references/templates.md.

1. Change the chart only in writing. Any feed, supplement, turnout, or blanket change needs a dated change slip: old amount, new amount, reason, start feeding, owner signature or their dated email or text attached, manager initials. Update the chart, bump its version date, file the old version. Verbal changes do not exist. If it is not on the chart, staff do not feed it, and that rule protects staff as much as horses.

1. Track preventive care barn-wide, on one sheet, with one owner of the sheet. Columns per horse: last farrier date, last fecal egg count and result, Coggins date, last dental exam, core vaccine date, risk-based vaccine dates, next deworming action. Run scripts/health_due.py health.csv weekly. Standards behind the intervals: farrier work every 6 to 8 weeks; core vaccines annually for every horse (Eastern and Western equine encephalomyelitis, tetanus, West Nile virus, rabies); risk-based vaccines such as influenza and equine herpesvirus by exposure and travel, often every 6 months for horses that show; dental exam at least annually; Coggins current for any horse that travels.

1. Deworm by test result, not by calendar habit. Current AAEP parasite control guidance ends fixed-interval rotation for the whole barn. Run fecal egg counts once or twice a year, classify horses as low shedders (0 to 200 eggs per gram), moderate (200 to 500), or high (over 500). Give every horse the baseline one or two treatments a year, including tapeworm cover once a year in late fall or early winter, and target extra treatments at high shedders on the veterinarian's instruction. Run a fecal egg count reduction test yearly to confirm the products in use still work on your pasture population. Record the result on the health sheet, not in an inbox.

1. Quarantine every new arrival. AAEP biosecurity guidance: isolate new horses for 2 to 3 weeks, no nose to nose contact with residents, dedicated buckets and tools, handle them last in every chore round, temperature twice daily. A temperature over 101.5 F, cough, nasal discharge, or a horse that is not acting right gets reported to the manager and the vet the same day. Returning show horses get a risk-based version of the same routine, set by the barn vet.

1. Bill in four buckets, from a ledger, never from memory. Every charge lands in exactly one bucket the day it happens: board (contracted rate and board plans), service (work barn staff performed, at contract rates), supply (goods one horse consumed), pass-through (vet, farrier, or lab charges the barn paid and rebills at cost, always with a receipt reference). Run scripts/barn_billing.py ledger.csv --month YYYY-MM at month end. The script refuses to invoice a pass-through line with no receipt reference, and refuses a bad bucket. That refusal is the audit. If the boarding contract does not list a service and its rate, the barn does not charge for it after the fact.

1. Walk the facility round weekly, same order, tick or flag. Water flow and cleanliness, fences and gate latches, arena footing depth and wet spots, lighting, feed room dates and rodent sign, hay storage condition, extinguishers, first aid kit, night access for a vet truck. A flagged item gets a name and a date to fix, and the next round checks last week's flags first. Template in references/templates.md.

1. Log incidents and medication for a cold reader. The incident log records facts only: time found, who found it, what was observed, vitals if taken, action taken, vet called at what time, owner notified at what time and how. Staff write observations, not diagnoses. The medication log takes one line per dose at the time it is given, including missed doses marked as missed. End of shift, each horse gets a proof row initialled by the person who did the work: fed, watered, turnout, stall, night check.

1. Run a colic night by the book. Signs that start the protocol: pawing, looking at the flank, refusing feed, reduced or absent manure, rolling, repeated lying down and getting up, sweating. Steps: remove feed, take vitals (normal adult resting ranges: temperature 99.0 to 101.5 F, heart rate 28 to 44 beats per minute, respiratory rate 8 to 16 breaths per minute, capillary refill 1 to 2 seconds), log manure count and water intake, and call the veterinarian immediately with those numbers plus the horse's colic and deworming history. Give nothing by mouth or injection unless the veterinarian instructs it. Constant walking is not required; a calm horse can rest while you wait. Follow the vet's written recheck schedule through the night and log every check with a time and initials. Call the owner early with the facts. The full night, with billing, is worked end to end in references/worked-barn-month.md.

1. Close the month on paper. Reconcile the ledger against the charts and logs before invoices go out: every service line should trace to a log entry or a signed request, every supply line to a chart, every pass-through to a receipt. Send the invoice with bucket subtotals visible. Then run the health-due check for the coming month and notify owners about anything expiring, Coggins and vaccines first, before it lapses.

Output Contract

Work with this skill produces some or all of:

• A posted per-horse feed and turnout chart with a version date, plus filed change slips for every change.
• A barn health sheet covering farrier, fecal egg counts, deworming actions, Coggins, dental, and vaccines, with a dated due and overdue list.
• A monthly invoice per owner with four visible subtotals: board, service, supply, pass-through, each pass-through line carrying a receipt reference.
• A weekly facility round checklist with flags, owners, and fix dates.
• Incident and medication logs that a vet, an owner, or a new staff member can read cold and act on.
• For a new barn or a barn being fixed: an intake packet checklist and a quarantine routine in writing.

Operating Rules

• Feed by weight. A flake is not a unit, and a scoop is not a unit, until someone has weighed them and written the weight on the chart.
• No chart change without a slip. This rule has no exception for owners who are in a hurry, and no exception for staff who are sure they will remember.
• The barn does not diagnose. Staff observe, record, and call. Treatment decisions belong to the veterinarian, and medication is given only on a written order or a logged vet instruction.
• Never give a colicking horse oral or injectable medication on barn initiative. It can mask signs the vet needs and conflict with treatment.
• Pass-through means at cost, with the receipt available. Marking up a vet bill without saying so in the contract ends trust faster than any other billing move.
• Charge only what the contract lists. A service performed in an emergency gets logged first; whether it is billable is read off the contract, not decided during the emergency.
• Quarantine is not optional for a friendly horse from a good barn. Disease does not check references.
• Initials mean the person did the work and saw the horse. Proof rows filled in advance or for someone else break the whole system, and the barn treats it that way.
• Keep old chart versions, old health sheets, and logs. They are the barn's memory in any dispute about what a horse was fed or given, and when.
• Rates, intervals, and vaccine choices get set with the barn's veterinarian and written into contracts. This skill supplies the system; the vet supplies the medicine.