Where do you find boarder requests?

In the main house office, open the Boarders binder. Community sources tie how many requests appear to your farm prestige.

Do boarders use stable slots?

Yes. Unlike some other horse games, boarders are individual horses that share your main stable capacity and need real care.

What are the three boarder types?

Part board (hay and mucking focus), full board (adds grooming, grain, and medical care), and schooling board (care plus training to contract stats).

How much do riding lessons pay?

Community guides report roughly 30 to 130 per lesson depending on performance; correcting rider posture drives the score.

Can staff run lessons while I train?

After hiring Julia, she teaches NPC lessons on horses you assign. You still must maintain those horses and rebuild stats they lose while teaching.

What happens if you neglect a boarder?

Guides warn of reduced payouts, possible fines near 500, and prestige loss—especially if contract care or schooling targets are missed.

Boarders & Lessons — Horses of Hoofprint Bay

Boarders and riding lessons are the farm’s steady cash engines once competitions alone cannot fund your next upgrade. They look like passive income on paper; in practice they are time contracts on the same horses, staff, and stable slots you use for your own /guides/training-guide/ goals and /horses/breeding-guide/ plans. This page is the canonical reference for how each system works and how to run both without burning out a round.

Screenshot: official Steam store page.

How boarders work

Finding and accepting contracts

Open the Boarders binder in the main house office. Available requests scale with prestige—the same reputation meter that unlocks better breeder stock and more daily offers according to community management notes.

Each accepted boarder is a real horse occupying a normal stable slot until the stay ends. That differs from games where boarders are abstract counters; here, neglect shows up as dirty coats, missed grain rules, or failed schooling targets on a living animal.

Boarder types and obligations

Two community sources (grindnstrat and TMQ) align on three contract types:

Type	You typically provide	Reported daily fee
Part board	Stable space, hay, water, mucking	50
Full board	Above plus grooming, grain, medical care	90
Schooling board	Full care plus training to required confidence, strength, and endurance	~90 daily plus a one-time schooling fee (~320 reported)

Part board is the lightest touch—good filler income if pasture and hay rhythm are already smooth.

Full board owners ride off-screen; they expect grain and grooming even when you never saddle the horse.

Schooling board pays for your training time (or trainer staff). Treat these as mini /guides/training-guide/ deadlines before the stay ends.

Payment arrives at the end of the stay, not as daily cash. Plan feed and staff salaries across the whole contract.

Boarders vs your own herd

Every boarder displaces a slot you might use for a competition mare or stud prospect. Early game, one reliable boarder can fund hay while you train your starter; mid game, three boarders can block breeding expansion unless your stable tier keeps pace (/farm/building-upgrade-order/).

If stable space is full, the town breeder may offer overflow boarding according to the TMQ comparison article—reported relief valve, not a substitute for planning.

How riding lessons work

Lessons are unique to Hoofprint Bay among many barn sims (called out explicitly in the TMQ vs Mein Pferdehof comparison). You use your horses as school mounts while NPC students ride.

Running a lesson manually

Start a lesson from the horse care flow (same entry points as training and trails in community descriptions). During the scene you correct leg, hand, and torso posture with on-screen prompts. Higher lesson tiers hide mistakes more subtly; uncorrected errors stack and lower pay.

Beginner lessons skip hand corrections—useful while learning the rhythm.

Reported payouts span 30–130 depending on score (grindnstrat table + TMQ income list).

Automating with Julia

After upgrading the main house to the tier that unlocks her (see /farm/staff-guide/), assign horses to Julia. She runs up to her reported daily lesson capacity on those mounts.

Automation does not remove upkeep:

Lesson horses lose strength and endurance from carrying students.
They still need grooming, grain rules, and injury checks like any boarder.

Schedule arena training between lesson-heavy days.

Facilities and staff you need

Need	Boarders	Lessons
Stable slots	One per horse	Horses you dedicate as lesson mounts
Pasture / hay rhythm	Part board still needs hay and water	Indirect (happy horses train faster)
Grooms	Strongly recommended at full or schooling tier	Helps when lesson horses must look show-ready
Trainers	Required for schooling contracts	Rebuild stats drained by teaching
Main house	Office binder + prestige	Julia unlock on higher house tier

Neither system requires a separate building, but both assume your riding arena exists for training recovery.

Time conflicts: breeding, training, and income

All activities draw from the same round (one in-game day). A schooling boarder due Friday competes with:

Your foal’s first confidence sessions,
A competition license run for show jumping,
Manual lessons on your best-paying mare.

Practical rules:

Cap concurrent schooling boarders at the number of horses you can train without exhausting exercise bars.
Rotate lesson horses—two mounts alternating days beat one burned-out teacher.
Pause new boarders during foal-heavy weeks unless yearling paddock space is online.
Use trainers to recover lesson losses while you handle boarder grooming—or hire grooms so you can train.

Income overview and broader money paths stay on /guides/make-money-guide/; this page covers execution details for these two lanes only.

Quick decision checklist

Accept a boarder when:

Empty stable slot exists for the full stay length.
You can meet the contract tier (schooling = training bandwidth).
Daily hay and staff costs are covered by expected payout.

Schedule lessons when:

Horse stats exceed minimum competition needs temporarily.
Julia has free capacity or you enjoy posture minigames.
You can retrain the mount before the next competition entry.

Skip both when:

Welfare warnings pile up (/guides/horse-care-guide/).
You are one slot away from a planned breeding cover.
Parking and arena upgrades still gate your main income.

Sources and verification

Compiled 2026-11-05 from grindnstrat, TMQ HoHB wiki, TMQ comparison, and the Steam store page. Items marked “reported” come from community guides and were not independently confirmed in-game.

Dual-sourced: boarder types and daily fees (50 / 90 / schooling structure), lesson pay band, boarders use real slots, lesson stat drain, prestige gating on requests. Single-source: schooling one-time fee ~320, fine ~500 for neglect, breeder overflow boarding.