Failing and Dangerous Livery Yards

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PeterNatt

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It was reported in last weeks Horse and Hound 26 November 2009 Page 6 that WHW (World Horse Welfare) had carried out a survey between April 2008 and April 2009 of 622 respondents.

Most of the incidents occured at Do it Yourself Yards and it was more worrying that more horses are being moved as a result of the current recession to Do it Yourself Yards where there are less trained staff at the yard.

25% reported a serious welfare issue in their yards within the past 12 months.
21% reported poisonous plants such as Ragwort in grazing
20% reported dangerous items in turnout
13% reported serious injuries on their yard
11% reported incidents wheer horses received inadequate food or water
7% reported athat welfare report had been made about their yard in the past 13 months
6% reported physical abuse of horses at their yard
10% said there were issues with access to fresh water in turnout areas

The question is should livery yards be regulated and if so what should be included?
 
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The question is should livery yards be regulated and if so what should be included?

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No, the question is when will some owners take responsibility for the actions that affect their horses.

If no water in feild, fill a bucket.
If dangerous item in field, dont move to the yard or fence off with electric fencing.
Ragwort in field? Remove it!

The owners make the decision to move to a yard. With it comes a responsibility to ensure it is suitable for the horses needs. If it isn't, dont go there. A yard without horses will soon make improvements.
 
I think that there are more issues than that Natt. People go to DIY yards & think that all they have to do is look after their own horse. Errr No, it's a DIY yard so sweeping the yard, looking after the muck heap etc all falls into that arrangement. Many DIY yards look awful because the liveries are lazy & don't shoulder their proportion of the work it takes to keep the yard running well. If you see ragwort in your paddock pull the damn thing out, if you don't who do you think will?

Fortunately at our yard everyone mucks in & keeps it nice & the yard owner is very supportive & keeps on top of maintenance.
 
There is a post about this in Latest news and someone posting on it took part in the survey and apparently the questionaire was written very biased to get the result that DIY yards are rubbish.
 
What Juno said - with bells on.

Society is full of people who want to whinge and moan but rarely have the gumption to do something about it. If your yard is sub standard then move. If something threatens the wellbeing of your horse then take responsibility and do something about it (I've filled more troughs and pulled more ragwort than I care to remember in my time on livery yards)

How much more of a nanny society do we need?

I suspect this survey has more to do with the BHS or some similar organisation wishing to spread their empire further, training is already being swallowed up and centralised, licensing could be next
 
I don't like the way it's biased towards DIY being the all evil. I have seen plenty of full livery yards where the standard of care has been shoite. I take FULL responsibility for my horses and like to DIY. If I find ragwort I pull it, I check my water is working, etc etc etc, I am lucky in that I'm on a nice yard where everyone does their bit - not all DIY'ers are lazy you know. The yard I was at before was a disgusting shite-pit - I moved.
On the other side of the argument, there are alot of non horsey people moving into offering DIY livery as they think it's a quick way to make money - it certainley isn't! these people have no horse knowledge whatsoever and combine that with clueless owners and you have a nightmare situation on your hands.
 
I run a DIY yard and the survey annoyed me!!!

We have a group of liveries who help each other out, check waters etc. If there is something wrong with the stables/fields etc, it is sorted first temporarily by the liveries (such as if fencing is down etc) then very quickly by me (or my dad) .

I think, becasue of the nature of DIY yards (and how us horsey ladies talk) if a horse wasnt being looked after well, there would sooner be something done about it as something would be said, either "through the grapevine" or directly from yard owner following a complaint. I have walked on to full livery yards where horses have been left in, without water or hay, for hours - becasue the "yard had been swept" or "they didnt want to ruin the turnout" or a horse gets rough handed becasue its not liked, or left stood in a box then hacked for hours by a full livery payer at the weekends. All of which are welfare issues...

I have two liveries at my yard who arrived underweight, unshod with appaling feet and resulting ligament and tedon strain on one (my farrier nearly passed out, the poor horses fetlocks were basically collapsed) who are now up to weight and shod regularly - the girl is novice but sees how we keep our horses and wants to keep her horses in the same way. I actually think the issue comes (as it certainly did in this case) by inexperienced owners having a yard of there own and trying to cope without the greater support of a yard and all the knowledge that comes with it.

It is very hard to run your own yard, taking my yard on was a big responsibility. It is very "rustic" and old fashioned but the horses look fab (I wont let them off the yard looking a mess, and have stopped people hacking becasuse of mud matted tails and non picked out feet, and it is in our livery agreement that all horses should be fed and rugged as appropriate at all times) and, as someone else said, I think it is more to do with the culture of the liveries - if everyone has low standards (such as not sweeping the yard etc) then it is highly unlikely the horses will be looked after to the highest standards...

I dont think we should be licensed, however I do think DIY yards should be able to register with the BHS as DIY yards and not have to meet the scrutiny of a livery yards but should be assesed on safety (such as stables and fields) management (such as safe storage areas for tack etc) and horse welfare (worming routines, condition of horses etc)
 
I believe my horse is safer on DIY being looked after by me than she would be if she was on full livery at same yard. I agree that there are some DIY owners who do the bare minimum and rely on the goodwill of others to ensure their animals have hay and water. However there are full liveries who pay upwards of £70 per week little knowing that the staff have been told to allocate no more than ten minutes per day per horse to turnout, change rugs, muck out and feed! I'd rather get up at 5am and do it myself.
 
under 700 people took part in this survey- not a huge pool of people!

most people responding to these surveys will only respond if they have negative feedback- the same way companies get more complaints that notes of good service/delivery/product.

i also agree with the above- you can vote with your feet and not keep your horse somewhere rubbish!

last night my horse came in and drank loads of water- so i went to her field with a big water carrier and filled her bucket as she had knocked it over!
she has pear trees in her field and when they started dropping i sectioned them off with electric tape.

the point is it is DIY- some people forget this stands for DO It Yourself!!!!
 
I think once again it is an issue of definition, the various types of livery available are ill defined.

Is a DIY yard one where literally all you do is rent a stable and have joint use of a field? That is technically what it is if the owner of the yard wants to avoid additional tax liabilities (I might be out of date there though).

But many yards offer DIY when some services are included. DIY at our RS means that the staff don't feed or turn out your horse, but the fields are maintained, the yard is swept, hay and shavings are supplied, etc.

I think true DIY is fine for those who genuinely want all the responsibility of having their horse at home but do not have the land but people need to appreciate that this is what they are signing up for and act accordingly.

For those who want to be on a maintained yard but do not want to have their horse done there perhaps needs to be a definition of this category between part livery and true DIY. It would also then be easier to compare and know what services to expect. Yards offering more would be compared like for like and would have less of a perception of unfairness too.

There seems to only be four definitions of livery; competition or hunting livery, full livery, part livery, and DIY, when in fact there are about six variations and lack of clarity about what each involves.
 
Agree with a lot of the comments on here. Our yard is a bit of a mix but many of the problems we have are due to DIY-ers who won't take collective care and consideration for the space we all inhabit with our horses or of other people.

Several of us are good about removing ragwort as soon as we see it, checking troughs/fencing, etc, and letting YO know about any things we can't sort and also spotting problems with other people's horses and notifying owners but others will just walk past all of it and pretend they haven't seen it.

So while yes I agree there are yards which can be badly run and get badly run-down I think a part of it is also down to the attitude of people on those yards. A yard can be as good as you make it sometimes with very little facilties or smart surroundings if people pull their weight.
 
It's not an easy question - but regulation is not the way forward, market forces probably are. There are some fantastic yards out there, and there are some awful ones. It's not just the facilities that make or break the yard, it is the attitude and values of the YO the YM, and probably also longstanding liveries that make or break the yard!

I've always taken on my share of work and more in whatever yard I'm in - bit obsessive-compulsive about tidiness - but as other posters point out things change in yards over time and hazards are introduced beyond the control of the horse owner. Again back to market forces.

There are some perfectly nice yards up here that lose all their liveries on a regular basis - mainly due to attitudes and values of YO/YM. Registration won't fix that, market will.

BHS registration is not the answer, in any case (risking incoming) the BHS is not as representative an organisation as it would like to think it is, and does not speak with the authoratative voice it would like to have.

I think what might make a real difference is if insurance companies asked more searching questions and looked more deeply into injuries on yards - in the last yard I was on there were at one time 4 horses on box rest due to yard related injuries, two quite nasty. Insurance companies need to hold yards to task and pursue them for these injuries - then standards would rise.

However in defence of the YO, fencing is expensive, building stables are expensive, floodlit outdoor schools are expensive, electric bills never fall - and cash flow is always a challenge - the £20 DIY livery is probably hardly covering their costs.
 
i always say vote with our feet.
if people are saying their livery yard is dangerous then why on earth are their animals still there?! DIY or full!!!
i think livery yards need to be very clear on what charges apply and what is included and liveries need to ask lots more questions before moving on. a written agreement is safest
ive seen plenty of shocking DIY and full livery yards and moved on asap to look elsewhere!
 
Hi Mother Hen

Just thought I ought to point out that you are wrong in your assertion about the BHS and it isn't really a terribly helpful thing to say. The BHS is involved in this but then so are WHW, Redwings, LACORS, BEVA, ABRS etc etc. No one organisation is driving this individually nor is anyone trying to empire build. The issue is welfare, not commercial gain.

Hello everyone else,

I think we all have our own personal experiences of livery yards and that will inevitably colour our views of the whole industry (be it in a positive or negative way). However, what is indisputable is that the whole livery yard licensing movement is driven by the volume of (justified) complaints about livery yards that are made to ALL equine welfare charities (ourselves included but also WHW, Redwings etc). It really is quite surprising just how many issues there are and how many horses are suffering on livery yards.

That said, of course there are many brilliant livery yards, run by fantastic people who would never dream of allowing a horse to receive anything less than the absolute best of treatment.

To be honest, most of the people reading this will be responsible and therefore you will not come into contact with the poor livery yards that welfare officers do day in day out. However, just because you don't come into contact with them does not mean they don't exist. They do. And this needs addressing. Whether or not you feel that licensing is the way forward is down to personal opinion but believe me when I say something needs to be done.

I hope this is helpful information anyway.

Best wishes

Lee

PS. Carrot and Spud doing well for those who would like to know! Thank you to all of you who donated to, or joined, the BHS as a consequence.
 
Over the many years I've had my horses on DIY on 3 yards, each differant, some wanted paying for rug change, others I bought my own hay and straw but with very little turn out, that where I had most broken bones(I wonder why). Bought my own place have helped out people when they have been in trouble, treated their own horses like my own. I cann't leave a horse out on it's own when that said horse knows that mine are in and tucking into their dinners, when it's left out and churning up my paddocks, which in the end costs me a lot of money reseeding. the same goes for one left in and kicking your stable to pieces because the others are turn out for the day and the owner cann't be bothered to turn up during the morning.
 
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