Advice on offering livery

I don't think you can make money from a 4 box livery yard.

I'd boot the DIY out and advertise the yard as a whole to a competition rider starting out.

If you do decide to do livery, I'd take 3 full liveries. Don't bother with DIY!
 
Nightmare before Christmas said:
Do you mean to cover costs of these things? They have already been paid off
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no as some one else said this is the 'rateable value' of your property

once multiplied by the multipier (£0.462), your business rates payable would come to £1380....really quite cheap!... we ended up with cost of over £5000!!!! :eek::eek::eek:

each week per livery (if you have 4) they would be paying £6.62 towards your business rates currently if you didnt expand!
it may not seem like a big cost...but it soon adds up!
 
I have 5 boxes in my yard (now - the other 2 are now a double field shelter & another pulled down).
My only livery is going this weekend (I gave notice as horse is a pain) so it will once again be my 2 only - or 1.5 as the 2nd is rather small.

I would never do livery again.

The only things that paid were breakers & schoolers & producing. I'm not saying I made money, but I did not lose money on them - and bonus was that I was doing them myself, so no yard full of people, their families & friends - ad well as numerous vehicles...... but I'm older & wiser these days :)
The breakers, schoolers & producers were run off the back of my successes at county level - I needed to keep my face out there & do well with what I had in to keep the new ones coming.

These days I prefer a quieter life, happy to potter around on my own, and if there is a pesky horse annoying me - its only going to be mine that does it :)

OP - I wish you well, but do make sure you have plenty of contingency plans, some serious funds for maintenance, insurance & rates - and water-tight contracts in place.

:)
 
Full livery to me is turn out, muck out, feed, hay, bedding, catch in, rugs. Anything else extra is charged for on my nearest competition yard so exercise, holding for vet or farrier, using the solarium or horsewalker etc. The YO lives on site, his grooms tend to do last check around 7pm.
 
I was on a yard which had about 20 stabled horses (out in day) and about 5 others that lived out. most were part livery (that meant all care done, except riding) but with rent payment I know she struggled to make any profit, was just doing it for the love of horses, technically managed to make ends meet.
the way she made vital extra money was from little extras, which all add up when you have a larger yard. for example, clipping services made quite a bit of profit, £60 for a full clip. she would charge £10 per lunge session which many wanted during the week to tick horse over. given that you wouldn't lunge for more than 30 mins tops that's a lot of money per hour!
also when you couldn't get up to feed (if no diy) it would be £2.50 for her to. its the little extras you have to remember to charge for to make a business work.
also trailer or boxes, as she had quite a large car park, were £10-20 a month, money for nothing really

agree with everyone else, can do it for love and a tiny bit of money, but wouldn't be decent profit. you would have to be very careful not to actually technically lose money when you think how many hours of labour you put in

in terms of someone always being there, any livery yard I know has someone on site from early in the morning to late afternoon and often does late night check as well. in part because it takes most of the day to get all the jobs done anyway. but if open about it, a few hours 'unsupervised' wouldn't bother people too much I don't think, as long as you were 'on-call' as that's the whole point of full livery.
 
Nightmare before Christmas said:
If I only have one itl be fine! Most people I know with 1 or 2 liveries dont have an issue
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As long as the council/ planning authority/ tax people don't catch you and a 'friend' never has an accident and makes a claim against you you're probably right.

I suspect people don't pay rates and insurance because they'd rather not have the money.
 
We have four horse stables and three pony stables, we had two horses and one pony of our own, so decided to do DIY for two people we knew fairly well from rc. We had 16 acres that were in lovely condition after having had sheep on for years previously.

It wasn't good! The land didn't stand up well (the two years we did livery, 2008 and 2009) were very wet, and the two livery horses were much more worry types that ran up and down fences a lot of mooched at gates. Lots more things got broken and you were always worried about snow and ice causing accidents etc. It really didn't make much, if any money at all. The only thing I miss about it is that my mare, who gets very attached to our other horse, was better as she had a bigger herd. We now have just two horses, we have since built another two portable stables on the yard, so now have nine stables. Every now and again I think about doing it again (I can't count the number of times people have asked to come on our yard) my husband gets a paniced look on his face, saying please don't put us through that again!

If I were you, I would keep your existing DIY that you get on with, perhaps add one more, then keep your remaining box for breaking/schooling/holiday livery. I would try and do it so that they pay you by mucking out your horse to save on rates.

I personally don't think you have enough land - in my opinion, even if you bought another four acres you would only have enough for six horses at the most. As things stand, and even more so if you built another ten boxes, no fields would ever get rested and it would soon become very horse sick or muddy - again off putting to horsey people.
 
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Honey08 said:
I personally don't think you have enough land - in my opinion, even if you bought another four acres you would only have enough for six horses at the most. As things stand, and even more so if you built another ten boxes, no fields would ever get rested and it would soon become very horse sick or muddy - again off putting to horsey people.
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The land is an issue. My own horses dont go out often, they are out more in the summer than winter.

If I had 10 stables at least 5 would be for me to buy and sell a few and have breakers and schoolers and so they wouldnt be going out very much so I dont get sued if injured!

;)
 
I think lack of turnout or limited turnout wold be a massive deal breaker for me even if my horse was on full livery. I think if you need to restrict turn out then you need to offer assistance for diy -ers who work
 
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