Curiosity… ownership costs

My monthly outgoings are tiny but I have a retired pony on our own land. I pay livery/rent to my mother of £75 a month. His hay bill is about £250 annually. Worm egg counts x 2 annually. One vet visit yearly for teeth (sedation), jabs, bloods for tape and redworm. Trims every 6 weeks (£45) though I used to trim him myself when I was healthier. 3rd party insurance (BHS membership). BUT... the land cost £45k, I've spent at least 20k on it and I have few of the extra expenses of a ridden horse, so either way it costs an arm and a leg.
 
The bigger the horse, the more feed/bedding you use. The fancier the facilities and the closer to London you are, the more your livery costs. And so on…

20 years ago it cost me £350 per month for one horse in the South East on DIY livery (stable and decent year-round grazing with a large well maintained arena) I’d guess double that now?

It costs me nothing like that today, but I have downgraded as it were from a Thoroughbred to native ponies, from a livery yard to a field…and nothing I own is over 13.3hh!
 
maya2008 said:
The bigger the horse, the more feed/bedding you use. The fancier the facilities and the closer to London you are, the more your livery costs. And so on…

20 years ago it cost me £350 per month for one horse in the South East on DIY livery (stable and decent year-round grazing with a large well maintained arena) I’d guess double that now?

It costs me nothing like that today, but I have downgraded as it were from a Thoroughbred to native ponies, from a livery yard to a field…and nothing I own is over 13.3hh!
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DIY at our yard is £270, so you'd be in for a lot more than £350pm by the time you paid £45 per big bale hay and £11 per bale of shavings (assumed you got a pallet of them)!
 
Riding with Rhi on Instagram/tiktok runs “equestrian money diaries” which is basically like a long running database of real people’s horse-owning costs up & down the country (poss abroad too) in various scenarios. It’s quite an eye opening & v interesting project! It would deffo be helpful for the potential horse owner to have an idea of general costs in their area 😀
 
Before even looking at money, horses cost you your time, your sleep and your peace of mind. They can cost you your health, your heart and your soul.
They do not however cost you your sanity, because whoever makes that trade for hard labour in all weather, a soft muzzle to kiss, the sound of peaceful munching and a few fleeting moments of perfect connexion was clearly not sane to begin with. Titchy Pony, insane and proud to be it.
 
It does depend on area. There are a couple of places near me - North Yorkshire - which are £150 DIY per month. One in particular has great facilities, great hacking and good all year turnout to boot. Even if no bedding or hay is included in that, it is very different from some of the livery charges on this thread.
 
For a 14hh native on DIY livery, I'd say I spend c.£450-500 a month on basics (plus a lesson a month) in the SE. I'm not extravagant but could still do things more cheaply if I wanted, I think. I've been on variations of DIY grass livery, DIY, Assisted DIY right through to 7 day part livery so paid a full spectrum over the years.

Monthly Essentials:
£200 DIY livery
£55 -75 on assistance services (on average, some months higher but some months less)
£48 insurance
£45 hay - I buy in bulk so not a monthly expense but I've averaged it out.
£20 bedding - ditto
£19 feed - ditto
£30 supplements - ditto
Misc. spending - could be anything from £0 to a few hundred depending on what I need or need to replace. I've only needed a flymask this month, which I bought second hand on Ebay.

Monthly extra's or nice to have:
£60 for a lesson with regular trainer
£0-80(ish) on average on extra lessons, arena hires or competition entries. This month I've spent £12!

More than once a month to every 3 months basics:
£9 for worm egg counts (plus additional cost of wormer when required)
£60 barefoot trimmer
£35 sports massage

More than every three months to annual basics:
£120 Vaccinations
£65 Dentist
£70 Saddle fitter
£200 riding permits to access further off road hacking
 
ihatework said:
In addition to the keep costs do not underestimate the extra training/help you will need as a new owner. This is very expensive, you will spend more on training for you and horse than you would currently at a riding school!
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I'm glad you said this. For me, the jump from RS to own horse on DIY would be too big I think. I've had a little sharing experience and rather than increase my confidence that I could go DIY with a first horse, it showed me even more of the help I would need!
 
MuddyMonster said:
For a 14hh native on DIY livery, I'd say I spend c.£450-500 a month on basics (plus a lesson a month) in the SE. I'm not extravagant but could still do things more cheaply if I wanted, I think. I've been on variations of DIY grass livery, DIY, Assisted DIY right through to 7 day part livery so paid a full spectrum over the years.

Monthly Essentials:
£200 DIY livery
£55 -75 on assistance services (on average, some months higher but some months less)
£48 insurance
£45 hay - I buy in bulk so not a monthly expense but I've averaged it out.
£20 bedding - ditto
£19 feed - ditto
£30 supplements - ditto
Misc. spending - could be anything from £0 to a few hundred depending on what I need or need to replace. I've only needed a flymask this month, which I bought second hand on Ebay.

Monthly extra's or nice to have:
£60 for a lesson with regular trainer
£0-80(ish) on average on extra lessons, arena hires or competition entries. This month I've spent £12!

More than once a month to every 3 months basics:
£9 for worm egg counts (plus additional cost of wormer when required)
£60 barefoot trimmer
£35 sports massage

More than every three months to annual basics:
£120 Vaccinations
£65 Dentist
£70 Saddle fitter
£200 riding permits to access further off road hacking
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As a comparison to the other end of the scale. I have a 13.2 native on full livery includes exercise 3 times a week and it is about 1500 a month. My insurance alone is £125 a month. Hi

On grass livery DIY I recon it was about 350-400 a month but that was 10 years ago.

I am in London so any yards accessible from here are going to be higher costs than other areas of the country.

I would also say my circumstances have changed quite a lot over the years in what support I have needed due to work, family and mental health.
 
Morton90 said:
Hi,
I’m an adult beginner rider, at my lesson today the instructor commented about people starting riding to maybe have their own horse one day.

Although owning a horse feels like a very (very) far away dream right now, I’m curious about the average monthly cost of owning/ caring for a horse- including full livery/ DIY? : )
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My research told me £6,000 plus vet bills per year
 
I have two (retired 20 year old and rising 2 year old) on a DIY livery and my costs are roughly as below :

Monthly Costs :

Livery - £230.00 per month
Haylage - £40.00 per month (I buy a big round bale from my local suppliers and have it delivered - I go through a whole bale per month roughly although in winter this doubles to £80.00 per month as I feed ad lib, so naturally some goes to waste with them pooping/peeing on it etc)
Feed (basic chaff, low calorie mash and mix) - £80.00 per month (the rising 2 year old eats a hell of a lot 🤣)
Bedding - £125.00 per month (I like massive beds for my stable floor to be nicely covered and I was always taught that you should be able to drop a pitchfork on the ground in random areas and not hear the tines hit the floor to make sure you have adequate bedding. I also only do one full muck out of wet etc per month - I usually use Burlybed Lite which is £9.00 ish per bale)
Supplements - £50.00 per month (mixture of Boswellia, Turmeric, Yucca, MSM, Vit E, Vit C, Linseed, Garlic, Rosehips, Oregano, Mint and Thyme - although I buy these in bulk so have averaged out the cost)
Misc. Spending - £100.00 per month ( again this is averaged out to a monthly cost as sometimes I go months without needing anything and then it all hits at once!)


2 to 3 Monthly Costs:

Trim (both are barefoot) - £70.00 every 8 weeks
Wormer - £40.00 (when it is needed)
Worm egg count - £20.00 for both boys

Annual Basics:

Vaccinations - £250.00 ( my retired lad can be a knob to inject so the actual injections are around £200.00 but I always buy some choccies, bottle of wine for the vet, plus a big box of biscuits for the vet staff as a thank you!)
Dentist - £350.00 - I pay for my vets to do both my boys so it is more expensive doing it that way but I've always used the vets as I find it easier to keep track of when they were last done etc

As a side note :

Insurance - I self insure by having a credit card with a set limit and a savings account which is topped up ever so often so can't give a figure for this. However, I wouldn't recommend this and only go down this route as my retired lad has been deemed "uninsurable" due to his various health issues and my rising 2 year old is quite sensible. I'm also quite pragmatic and do have a line in the sand for things I will and won't treat. Personally if a horse colic's/ breaks a bone I won't put them through surgery as the risk of something happening in the recovery process is too high for my liking - again I'm aware that everyone is different so please take my view with a pinch of salt x

I don't have lessons at the moment as I don't have anything to ride so I save there and the same with competition costs - but I expect as my rising 2 year old progresses we might pop out to a few here and there for experience.


On a different note - welcome to the horsey world and I hope you're having a whale of a time learning to ride! x
 
I’m amazed by some of these. Insurance as low as £25 a month. My hay bill for a hardy highland is £48 a month. A lot more than many of you. I’m so lucky to have cheap livery which is grass livery so no stables not even a tap but only £60! I do pay for trimming £40 vet bills and wormers. Feed is very minimal as he doesn’t need much at all. He’s very happy with this set up and more luxury to me would be less nice to him I think! Wish we had decent fencing though not barbed wire!
 
I calculated far more. Full livery was £30 a day so £10,000 a year and the cost of buying probably the same.
I would share the cost as I intended to find a sharer for weekends. I planned to ride 3 days a week, finding 4 days too much to fit in with work.
None of this horsey dream ever came true as I was too attached to my Connie RS hack and to two subsequent share horses. It did seem as if fate or God provided me a horse whenever I needed one. And it has always been cheaper to ride twice a week on a shared horse who is exercised by other riders. My riding has cost about £5,000 a year over the last 20 years , so less that half the cost of owning.
 
Just done a month at our new place, 6 minute drive from home. West Yorkshire city.

• DIY Livery: £22 pw / ~£96 pcm (24/7 summer turnout / daily winter turnout anything from 8-15 hours depending on weather/work schedules, as we have a turn out/bring in rota, 2 ‘shifts’ each a week means we only need to visit 1 x day. 7 horses. Great fields and rotated paddocks. Grass all winter, minimal mud. Auto troughs in field. Stables aren’t high end but they are fine, covered in small barn, safe and do the job. Locked tack room. Small school, summer jump paddock, nice hacking straight off the yard and we have a fancy bridlepath, ELOR, nearby).
• Lessons: £25 pw (on site with YM who also has her horse there and is a freelance groom/instructor).
• Hay: £32 bale (gorgeous quality, still figuring out how much mine needs as we were previously on a communal round included in livery cost. He’s finished 1.5 big square bales in 4 weeks with ad lib (AKA loads of) hay at night in stable).
• Bedding: £7 bag (fine, dust extracted chopped straw from same supplier of hay, ~1 bag a week through winter months)
• Feed: £20 bag ~3 weeks (Pure ‘Easy’).
• Farrier: £62.50 ~6 weeks (full trim, two front shoes, £1.25 each road nails).
• Annual jabs: £50 (last one was a yard visit).
• Teeth: £40 (last one was a yard visit).
• Vet Bills Insurance: £44 pcm (medium coverage for a 4-year-old with purchase price of less than £5k).
• BHS Gold Riders Insurance: £8 pcm.

I’m not even going into tack, rugs, grooming, clipping, worm counts, wormer, physio/bodywork, lotions and potions, herbs I add to feed, etc etc etc…
 
AShetlandBitMeOnce said:
These are just the basic monthly costs:

£625 - 5 day part livery
£23.90 - Horse insurance
£102.50 - Farrier (every 5 weeks)
£29.80 - Feed (bag of chaff, bag of low priced mash)
£30.99 - basic vits & mins because he'll otherwise chew the fence, 3 months' supply
£15.75 - Marigolds supplement, 1 month supply (lympatic support)
£30 - bodywork session to make sure all okay

Then also the not every month costs:

£95 - saddle fitter (6 monthly)
£45 - 45 min lesson (weekly for me)
£65 - dentist (annually)
£117 - vaccinations if not on a zone day, £50 if zone day
£50 - trailer storage for the month
£5 - turnout or bring in at the weekend
£18 - full weekend day if needed
£10 - extra shavings bale if needed on top of livery
£320 - annual trailer insurance

In the two years since I bought him there has been maybe 2-3 months that he cost me less than £1000
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oh dear, accountant with a spreadsheet again :D:D:D:D I know that's the case because you've included pence :D:D

I reckon if you have to use livery (rather than free grazing etc at home) then it is £1000 a month. So for £12k pa how many riding holidays or lessons could you have with absolutely no worry about your poorly horse. :rolleyes:
 
I track everything horse related (except petrol! Good tip @Sanversera!) and worked out my yearly for 2024 not long ago, ~£7k for an easy pony with no new saddles or major vet bills, no shoes, no competing or travel and minimal lessons so very quiet year. I think livery is generally cheaper then England where I am too. 2025 is going to hurt like a b in comparison when/ if I do that SUM function 💀
 
I've owned coblet for 2 years and he's been lame for 10 months of that but still cost me!

Monthly costs

£140 DIY livery (very basic) stable and turnout
£30 assistance eg daily turnout M-F
£40 bedding
£40 hay
£30 feed (mash and chaff)
£30 farrier (barefoot)
£60 insurance
Average £30 Misc (rugs, teeth, vets, tack, fly sprays, grooming kit, back lady)

Coblet is now retired and going to live out 24/7 for the summer and I'm also cancelling his insurance so hoping to save myself about £150/month (grass livery, no assistance, no bedding, less hay and feed) but some will be offset by the extra petrol money travelling to see him!!
 
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