DIY livery yard hay prices

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EllieAA

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Hi all, was really curious to find out what price people have to pay for their hay/haylage if they're at a yard where the only option is buying Y/O supply. I recently moved yards, old yard was a bargain, £40 a big bale of hay medium quality which for herts is.. nice. But this place.. i found out today after paying a huge DIY livery bill that ive spent over £120 on hay this month alone. It comes in sets of 2 quite big slices, for £7! Is it me or is this quite a lot of money? My boys on box rest and the girls not been out as much as i'd like so theyve been eating 2 slices between them every 2 or so days, no wonder its cost so much :( The haylage is £5 per slice. I asked if im allowed to buy any horsehage etc which would work out cheaper for me as 1 £7ish bale lasts me 3-4 days but ofc they said no, and got angry that i was making a fuss about the price. So now im having to double net my hay and look into replacers because thats insane money imo. Whats prices like at your yards? And am i being crazy or is £7 for 2 slices a lot of money? If the big bale they take it from has say 20 slices that puts it at 70 pounds a bale right.....?!?
 
We charge £47 for a 320kg bale (very good quality!), which is same as everywhere around here selling hay. Most of the liveries use one bale per month per horse, maybe a more if they eat a lot/or are in a lot.

Yes, that seems an awful lot!!!! Plus selling it by the slice is ridiculous as the slices in our bales vary greatly. I think they should sell it by the kg if they're not selling it by the bale.
 
Thanks for your reply. Thats a good idea about selling by the kg, i know exactly how many i would need as i weigh my nets every day, it would be much more accurate. Youre right about the slices varying, once we got floor chaff instead of slices in the bag, all the sweepings from the hay barn, and another was 2 tiny slices. It just seems so expensive and we're trapped into paying it
 
That seems a huge amount to me. My horses live at home so I am not so sure about livery but I buy the very large haylege bales at £25 each delivered, sorry I don't know the weight but they are the biggest bales possible.
 
Sounds a lot, where I used to be it was £3.50 per small bale of hay, haylage was big bales split between everyone who used it worked out between £50 and £70ish a month I think depending how much they were in during day (in at night all year). Some people were on big bales of hay split as well but for some reason i was on small ones. We could buy our own in but had so little storage space it pretty much made it impossible as only room to store 4 maybe 5 small bales.

Round here its about £25 for a round bale of haylage and I pay £4.50 for small square bales equivalant to between 1.5 and 2 normal small bales.
 
Ours is small bales at £4.50 each. I'm going through 7 bales a week for my two at the mo so paying similar to what you've been charged in a month. Our haylage is priced as small bale equivalents so I'd be paying the Sam eif we were on big bales.

Roll on summer!!
 
I pay £3.50 a conventional bale delivered and he'll help stack it as well. But my daughter got the best bargain, two round bales hay, two heston straw bales £80.00. They had to go and pick it up but still a bargain, and we bought off the field in the summer for £2.50 a bale. I have been at yards where they supplied hay and straw, came in with the DIY livery, one was £21 and then £35 a week. The most expensive was £55 a week but included either a turnout or bring in 5 days a week.
 
Ali2 said:
Ours is small bales at £4.50 each. I'm going through 7 bales a week for my two at the mo so paying similar to what you've been charged in a month. Our haylage is priced as small bale equivalents so I'd be paying the Sam eif we were on big bales.

Roll on summer!!
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Same for us too. Our yard's small bales are so loosely packed that I'm using a £4.50 bale a day for 2 horses stabled overnight.
Works out at around £135 a month. Those on haylege are spending the same amount.
 
I tnink its easy for yards to rip people off with hay and straw as every crop is different and quanlity does vary significantly it also depends what area your in my yards fab thought we have to buy hay , haylage and straw off them however are welcome to source our own bedding if we don't use straw, small bales are as follows:
Hay £4
Straw £3
Haylage £6

Big bales:
Hay £45
Straw £20
Haylage £60. All fab quality and nice compacted bales which really fluff up :)
 
I'm on 2 different yards, one yard provides haylage and it is included all year round in the price of the livery if that makes sense, there is no limit in how much you can give your horse but they don't like you to put it out in the field.

The other yard, a farm I guess more than a yard, charges by the bale, he has put by quite a few big ones in a pole barn for us, they do get a bit exposed if the wind is blowing the wrong way, he hasn't yet told us how much he wants us to pay for them but imagine it wouldn't be more than £30

I once looked at a yard which was very nice in all respects except that they charged for hay by the net, whether you had a little diddy net or a big fat one, that seemed a bit odd to me, and probably caused a lot of arguments
 
We grow some of our own hay but have to buy in also.

2012 was good for yield. What we grow costs about 20 euros a half ton bale, which last 14 horses 5 days.

What we buy in costs 55 euros for a large round bale, about 4 days. However, what we buy is delivered and stored as we don't have enough space in our barn for the whole winter. We ordered when we all suffered a drought!! We now have enough hay for part of next winter.

It means our hay cost for the worst of winter Nov-March works out at about £1,000 for the whole winter for 14 horses - that includes our own costs for fertiliser and weed killer for hay fields.
 
In the Southeast (right on the Hants/Berks border) we pay £55 per bale for the huge bales of hay (YO buys them in at £50 and puts £5 on top for "storage") . . . b/c I'm currently stuck with an inflexible fieldmate who insists on bringing in at 2.30 in the afternoon, a big bale is only lasting me about 2 weeks. Will be moving fields as soon as I can and roll on Spring. If I choose to not buy from YO, a lovely friendly farmer up the road has small bales of good quality hay for £3/bale . . . however I can't store them in the barn and must put them in my feed bay which means I can only store relatively small amounts.

P
 
We pay £30 for a large round bale of good quality haylage. Handy as its always deposited on our pallet outside our stables minutes after we've asked for it. I also think this is quite cheap. We normally only use 2 bales maximum a month when they are in quite alot in bad weather.
 
£7 for two slices is IMO very expensive and to a captive market - nice work if you can get it!

Last winter I was buying in hay for my own yard, it came direct from my landlord, bought on an "as needed" basis. I was paying £50 per bale for a six string heston bale which fed four horses for about 10 to 14 days depending on how much turnout they got.

Currently have one horse on DIY livery where we were paying £30 per bale for smaller bales. We are no longer able to buy hay by the bale and now have to purchase from the yard owner on a per horse per week basis. TBH there is not a huge amount of difference in cost. The price list is structured into 9 different categories based on horse/pony size and reflects a fair market price.

I appreciate that yards are running businesses but there is a fine line between making a profit and the customer feeling they are getting value for money and ripping people off thereby causing bad feeling.
 
I think if a yard is insisting on clients buying the hay/straw/haylage from them, then there should be a limited mark up on it (cost price plus delivery and business rates charge of bringing it in and storing it plus a bit for their trouble.

If (not the case here) the client has a free choice whether to get it from them, then they can price it how they want.

I would also suggest that if they are going to insist on theirs being bought, then a per kilo charge would be fairer, and also it should be at a reasonable level - it may be helping to keep the headline livery charge down by making up monies elsewhere but it isnt really fair to have that much of a markup.
 
Thanks for your replies everyone, I'm glad it wasnt just me who thought it was a bit much for normal hay! Still paying it, no choice really, i darent try the haylage as it looks, smells and acts like silage, every other bale is pure mould and its scouring half the yard, so i wont be going near it. Not that they like the hay and i have found ragwort now and again and random junk in it but its better than that haylage. We're struggling with turnout and restrictions as usual argh... As a sidenote my girl took a swipe at the YO when he walked behind her today :D I think she's protesting how much she hates the place, but hey, if he walks behind strange horses without checking first....;)
 
I am in herts and pay £5 per bale for hay off YO, my pony lives out and is on a diet I bought one bale of hay a month ago and still have at least half of it left, though I bought him in let him have some hay today due to snow.

You don't have to buy hay from YO but I think everyone does as it is probably cheaper than being indepent as by ordering in bulk and regularly she can get a better deal than one person might be able to get.
 
EllieAA said:
Thanks for your replies everyone, I'm glad it wasnt just me who thought it was a bit much for normal hay! Still paying it, no choice really, i darent try the haylage as it looks, smells and acts like silage, every other bale is pure mould and its scouring half the yard, so i wont be going near it. Not that they like the hay and i have found ragwort now and again and random junk in it but its better than that haylage. We're struggling with turnout and restrictions as usual argh... As a sidenote my girl took a swipe at the YO when he walked behind her today :D I think she's protesting how much she hates the place, but hey, if he walks behind strange horses without checking first....;)
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If there is ragwort in the hay then Trading Standards can take action if it is reported to them , as it automatically renders it unfit for purpose and selling it or supplying it for livestock especially horse hay would be an offence.
 
I'm a YO and since new year, things have gone from bad to worse!
We originally were charging £11 per horse per week ab lib, as we have managed to do for years (less for ponies)... than just after new year, all the farmers announced they had ran out in the area....
We managed to source 30 large rectangular bales... but by the time we had them transported to us they worked out at £40 a bale! We gave the liveries the option.... buy a full bale at £40 or per week but the cost had to rise to £16pw for horses. Most have bought bales but they ran out last week.....
We managed to get a few round bales at £39 a bale.... then this week... we had what seems a tiny square bale delivered for £46!
this very day last year.... horses started to live out 24/7 if the owners wanted..... today.... we were white over this morning hence they wont be turned out full time for a few weeks yet!
We managed to have a field cut for hay last year.... so thankfully we still have some hay left for the lami types... We charge £4 a bale for that, i believe local feed stores are charging £6 a bale at the moment.

We now also seem to be hitting a straw problem also, but the farmer is calling around as we prefer the smaller bales rather than the massive ones. We've been selling straw for £3.50 a bale.
 
I am a DIY Livery Yard owner, and I used to supply hay for my liveries - I thought that I was helping them out. It wasn't profit making exercise, but unfortunately Clients always feel that they are being ripped off or complain about the quality etc... I quickly decided that it really wasn't worth the extra hassle or expense. I got fed up with giving up half my weekend, to source, buy, transport and stack good quality hay just for an extra 50p per bale (handling charge). Now I tell my liveries to get their own hay or haylage. I just purchase for my own horses and I have a much easier life :)
 
I think we have a great deal at our yard - hay is £1 a net for occasional use. £30 a month if horse in overnight and £16 a month if they come in for hay in the day. We fill nets and use what we want for those prices. YO makes the hay and is fanatical about ragwort and making good hay.
 
I pay £4 for a small bale of hay and £2 for straw from the farmer who owns the small DIY where I'm at.

I did leave a large yard once when the final straw was that they were going to charge me £30 a month for hay in the field during the day when I knew my horse wouldn't get much of it as he was at the bottom of the pecking order.
 
My horse is on livery and hay is included in the price. Mores the pity as I'd rather buy it myself and give him more! When he was on DIY I'd buy a gigantic square Bale for £55 and that would easily last a month. That was feeding him two big haynets at night plus a small haynet in the field. I think £ 120 is totally ridiculous, especially considering the quality. That would drive me crazy!
 
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