Exit strategy?

[JillA]

Just trying to get my head around how I downsize/detach myself a little from daily horse care. At the age of 71 I am finding it hard going, especially at this time of year when I always seem to get run down, and although I have help one morning and one afternoon a week it still feels more like a chore than pleasure. Plus since I stopped riding I have found other interests, holidays, painting etc - there is more to life than horses.

I have two retired horses, both special needs lol - one an opinionated 23 year old with PPID, the other a 21 yr old ex chaser who struggles to put weight on, both on my own land 400 yds away from the house. And I am on my own so no-one to take up the slack when it comes to dealing with stuff. Especially a house move!

Choices are:
1.sell up and find somewhere with a few acres and house one site - have been looking for a year or more but small enough house and price tag isn't that easy to find, and the thought of moving is really daunting (again, could be late winter blues) or:-

2.put the two horses in retirement livery and sell my land - but they both need special diets and I'm not sure how happy I would be to have little or no involvement after over 50 years with horses to do or:-

3pay my current helper (who is not very experienced but has an abundance of common sense) to do three or four times as much - but there are no guarantees she will be able to or still be around in a year or two.

Only the first and the second involve burning bridges, the third keeps options open to a degree except savings will be depleted.

So..................difficult one, I don't really think it's fair to ask wwyd but any suggestions?

 

[Pearlsasinger]

I do think that your greatest problem is that your land is separate from your house. I think, as both your horses are elderly, I would ask your helper if she can do a few more days/times per week for now. Being brutally honest your horses aren't going to be around for ever and if your helper tells you in a year or two that she can't continue, there might be a different decision to be made - or events might have taken the decision out of your hands by then.

I do sympathise though, our horses are at home, we have our last two with us now (barring catastrophe), we lost 2 to PPID last winter and have noticed how much easier everything is with just 2 this year - the weather is also helping, this winter!

 

[SEL]

I'd see if the helper could do a bit more too. What is it that's the most exhausting / time consuming bit for you?

 

[Red-1]

I would go with the helper doing more too. That way it is a start in detaching some of the closeness, whilst staying in control.

TBF OH and I are feeling it, and we are only in our 50s. I expect in a few years we *may* look at moving and putting the animals on livery. It is not just doing the horses, it is the fencing, ditches, deliveries etc.

 

[JillA]

I'd see if the helper could do a bit more too. What is it that's the most exhausting / time consuming bit for you?

Poo picking, lugging hay out to the fields/or mucking out if they are stabled. There is a lot to be said for staying put - yard cats and hens won't have to move for starters. I'm going to view a couple of properties in the next week, I'll see how I feel about them - I have a purchaser for my house and another for the land so that bit of the equation is sorted. If I stay they'll have to look elsewhere! I'm just wondering if moving to a house with land and yard just moves the problem around a bit.

Thanks for the input so far - kind of confirms what I was thinking, and saves me £thousands over moving or retirement livery

 

[Roxylola]

Do you actually want to move house? I understand life would be easier if you didn't have a distance between home and horses, but if it weren't for that would you actually want to move? If you wouldn't move without the need to combine land and home I wouldn't look to move personally, either moving or retirement livery is going to cost you but if you are happy where you are then I'd go with asking your helper to do more with retirement livery as a back up plan

 

[ihatework]

It doesn’t sound like moving to a house with land is really going to solve the issue. You will still be tied to the horses with almost as much work.

So you either sell up and move to a smaller property minus land, freeing up cash, some of which can fund retirement livery. Or you stay put and pay for more freelance support until the horses have gone and then asses your options then.

I wouldn’t rule out the former. Get the right livery and it will really ease the burden and allow you to do other things.

 

[paddy555]

400 yards is not very far so I think buying a house with land is, as you say, just moving the problem around a bit. As we get older we try to cut out the work. From what you have commented have you considered machinery? For example we no longer muck out into a wheel barrow and lug it to the heap and empty it. We have a very small tractor (about the size of a ride on mower) It has tipping box on the back and we muck out into it and drive onto the dung heap. It is no quicker but cuts out lifting. For the hay you could put it on the back or in bins in the box and drive to the field. If getting off for gates is a pain put a strand of electric fence (not live) and duck under it as you drive. If you want to poo pick the field then drive around so no pushing barrows. Ours is hydrostatic drive so no worries about changing gear, it is just pedal forward or pedal backwards to reverse. Ours is very low so it is basically step on and off, not climbing off like a larger tractor.
If you need something done such as mucking out deep litter you don't really need a horse person. Are there any retired people looking for a few hours work? It would be costly to move house for what could only be a very few years then you will be thinking you cannot cope with a house and land so you will have the cost of moving again or the problem of letting out the land etc.
I would try to work "smarter" and look at ways to improve your workload. Perhaps look very critically at your whole set up. Can you manage the horses differently, put hay in a different place, get all the work together and get someone in for a couple of hours a week to do that physical work. I am very critical about the way we do things, 9 horses so I have to be, and often you can make small improvements.

 

[monkeymad]

I would think getting a freelance groom in would work out cheaper than moving to retirement livery.

 

[The Fuzzy Furry]

Jill, my yard is 3.5 miles away from home.
My long term plan is (when I catch up with you age wise, as am late 50s, or when I find chores are too onerous) to rehome or pts any that might require it. Rent out yard and use funds from rent to pay for livery for my ridden one.

If am not riding at that point, then will sell yard, rent house and bugger off on long holiday to mull over what I might really want to do, or where I want to live.

YO next but 1 rents her lovely yard, it belongs to a friend of my late mother, the rent she gets pays for her holidays

 

[JillA]

Thanks all. One of the drawbacks of the distance is having to keep my quad at home in the garage, too risky leaving it at the yard. Unless any of you know an infallible means of securing it where the buildings are unattended, albeit overlooked? It's a PITA having to ride it down the road whenever I want to use it, the reason I bought it was for the convenience of not having to book contractors. Small point but it would be much easier to keep it there
FF that will be an option when my elderly chaps are no more, but TBH by the time I get to that stage the capital will be nice. I have had problems with tenants.

 

[Roxylola]

Nothing is infallible - if someone wants it badly enough they will find a way, but the best bike security stuff I have had has come from Almax http://www.almax-security-chains.co.uk/ their stuff is seriously solid, one of those with a good ground anchor would certainly put casual thieves off

 

[oldie48]

I'd pay for more help unless you really want to move. I'm 70 and still riding, OH is slightly younger but we do find looking after our property a bit onerous at times. I'm lucky to have help 5 days a week so I don't have to muck out every day but at some point we will move and my mare will go into livery and the companion mare will go home to her owner. I'm not quite ready and we have MIL who is over a 100 living with us but when she goes I know OH will start raising the question of moving. I feel you should make your life as comfortable and easy as you can reasonably afford and keep assessing the situation, especially when one of your horses goes. TBH I'm not sure moving to a smaller house with land is the answer.

 

[Rowreach]

It seems to me that if you move to somewhere with land attached, you will still need to pay for additional help, and come the time when age has caught up with the horses, you will be left with land/stables that are redundant, and with capital tied up in them.

I think if I were you, I would stay put and pay your helper to do a bit more in the interim, and sell your land when you no longer need it, thus replenishing your savings and enabling you (and the cats and chickens) to stay in the house you obviously like.

 

[planete]

I am the same age as you. My retired horse is at grass livery with a neighbour who has her own horses. I only need to go once a week to pamper the horse and check him over. I make all the decisions regarding his management. Looking after land and being out in all weathers every day was no longer and option for me. As you have a helper I would make the most of her and perhaps find somebody to ride your quad and look after the land too even if only from time to time so you have somebody you trust to do it if you cannot do it for any reason one of these days. I have had to admit I am less resilient than I used to be and my arrangement has freed me to go on enjoying a life that is no longer a struggle.

 

[Lurfy]

I understand how you feel not wanting to give up control of your much loved horses to a retirement livery, but I think it is worth investigating. I did it and have not looked back. My aged ex racehorse who also has a special diet and has unique requirements is very well looked after at his full care livery. If you can find a good retirement livery that is within reasonable driving distance it may liberate you and your horses may be fine. I visited my horse daily until I could see that all was well and I could trust that he was getting all his supplements and special feeds etc. The thing I realised is that many horses have special needs and mine is pretty standard. This livery caters for all of them. They have individual feeding and turn out/rugging tailored specifically to the specific horse. It is all written up for each horse and staff follow it. I visit a couple of times a week and hand walk him around and groom etc and we really enjoy it. The downside is it is not cheap. Good luck with your decision.

 

[Spottyappy]

Re the quad, you can cement an anchor hook into the ground, and then secure the quad with a padlock and chain such as mentioned by Roxy.
I think to ask the current groom to do more would be sensible, and then reassess if she does move on,tbh.

 

[Leo Walker]

Get an Almax chain and ground anchor and put the quad in a locked building and then insure it. it almost certainly will get broken in at some point, but if anything will stop them it will be one of those Almax chains. it foiled people stealing my motorbike 3 times without so much as a scratch on it. Mines about 10yrs old now and still going strong.

 

[splashgirl45]

i am 72, shortly 73 and gave up my loan horse for exactly the reasons you have said. if i could afford a house with land and could pay for the hard work to be done, i would still have a horse and be riding,, i found it was the twice a day,every day during the winter which finally made me realise that i am too old and infirm to carry on putting myself through that workout of mucking out, poo picking etc.if you can afford to have help for more days i would do that and stay in your house. moving to a smaller house with land wont solve your problem IMO and as your horses are older you may want to give up completely in the future and could then sell the land to make life easier.

 

[JillA]

Thank you everyone - your thoughts have really crystallised what I was coming around to anyway, especially those who have or are about to experience similar. It will cost me about £30k in fees/stamp duty alone to move and I can buy a lot of help for that.
One teeny outside possibility is I haven't quite given up on the possibility of building on my land, under a special exception for people with strong local connections. It's an uphill struggle evidencing those local connections but Planning Consultant and I are having a meeting with the planners a week on Tuesday and should have a clearer idea of the likelihood then.
Meanwhile I am thinking about spending some of the money on improvements to my current house, and about to discuss with my helper whether she is available to do significantly more.
And I will still view the two properties next week - well, I can dream can't I?

 

[Myloubylou]

Do you have enough land to offer free grazing in exchange for some help? Probably brings another set of complications!

 

[JillA]

Do you have enough land to offer free grazing in exchange for some help? Probably brings another set of complications!

Thanks - I did that last year and no-one took up the offer. Current helper has just said she is happy to do considerably more - she has a zero hours cleaning contract and they have just reduced her hours on that so she is happy to take up the slack. And she is good, knows the routine and the cats and hens

 

[Pearlsasinger]

Thanks - I did that last year and no-one took up the offer. Current helper has just said she is happy to do considerably more - she has a zero hours cleaning contract and they have just reduced her hours on that so she is happy to take up the slack. And she is good, knows the routine and the cats and hens

That sounds like a good way forward for now, at least. Moving house is always extremely expensive and best avoided imho.