How much would you charge for a owner with 38 pets?
A lady who owned 38 pets reached out to me over Rover. She had 1 horse, 2 turkeys, 2 pigs, 9 hens, 3 barn cats & 21 cats in something called a Cattery. She rescues cats that’s why she had so many. She wanted me to basically give all the animals food and water.
For the horse she wanted me to let out of the barn in the morning & bring back in in the afternoons.
For the pigs she wanted me to add water to the mud pit on hot days.
The hens she wanted me to let them out in the morning and bring back in during the evening. She said the chickens might take some herding.
The cats needed the litter dumped daily.
She wanted me to do a total of 6 drop-in visits over a 5 day period. So essentially 1-2 drop-ins each day. She informed me that it took 29 mins to do the cattery tasks & 15-20 min for the outside stuff. She said outside stuff could take longer in the afternoon due to herding chickens.
I knew this was going to be a lot of work and probably take me longer than what she would take due to not being use to that many animals and the animals aren’t familiar with me. I watched 6 pets before and it took me about 45mins and I was going fast so I know 38 animals was going to take me about 2 hours to complete each drop-in visit.
I first told her I was going to charge a total of $1,040 and she said that was too much so I was fine with negotiating. The lowest I went was a total of $600. She still thought that was too much and did not understand why I would need 2 hours to do all that work.
I would like to get other sitters’ opinion on this. Was I charging too high? What would you charge? Did 2 hours seem like a reasonable amount of time to do all the work she described to me? Please let me know your thoughts.
Have you decided yet? Just curious :D
Yes, she helped me decide lol. She basically said that $600 was too high and she thanked me for my time. I wasn’t going any lower than that. She gave me the impression that she wanted me to care for her many animals for dirt cheap.
I believe that farm rates should be set completely different from regular pet services rates such as drop ins, bordings, daycares, or walks, but upon researching, it seems a farmer currently range under $40k a year, charging this old lady $1,040 would be taking advantage of ones actual pay.
I personally don’t look up what I think a client earns on a yearly basis. They are paying me for a service, not a charitable hand out. Farm rates should be much higher than pet care rates. I own two horses… more poop, more food, more water, more care.