Haylage/hay amounts and prices on a livery yard...

[4redheadmares]

What would you class as a fair price for hay and haylage on a livery yard. we offer both hay and haylage and at the minute we price by size/type so Shetlands are £7 a week pony's are £10 and horses are £12. i have never said they cant use either and can pretty much use as much as they need but where do you draw the line when pony's are eating as much as the horses but paying less?? i think we are very cheap and we are always fair but at the moment the costs are not being covered and my liveries think we are just ripping them off. the proofs in the pudding though as its not difficult to work out how many bales we use per day etc. i'm considering now doing a weight limit for each type of horse/pony just to try and make things fairer but with 35 liveries i will end up standing all day to check nets....what a nightmare!! be nice to hear any suggestions as i think were way past the honesty policy ha ha

 

[Leo Walker]

We pay £35 a week inc ad lib hay and straw. Its the same price for everything and theres no limits on it. A big bale is dropped in place every day and you just help yourself. I'm not sure if you can work it any other way without driving yourself demented!

 

[Auslander]

You're certainly not ripping them off! I budget for 2 big bales per horse per month (living out with ad lib), so double what you are charging your liveries for hay!

 

[milliepops]

Do they pay the same per week during the summer and winter?
I'm just roughly totting up what I spend - big bales and I generally feed ad lib overnight in the winter, I get through 2 big rounds a month at a cost of £50 for 2 horses. In the summer I spend about £25 per month.

So if it's a flat cost all year round it actually sounds quite expensive to me, because I'd expect to feed less in the summer months. Of course, I buy a bale at a time so it's in my interests not to waste it etc, if you're finding loads chucked out on the muck heap then perhaps you need to review things

ETA if it's small bales then i guess that changes things quite a bit... I'd pay a lot more if I had to buy them in.

 

[4redheadmares]

yes im definately verging on demented..just want it to be fair but same time not have the mickey took out of us! thankyou

 

[Leo Walker]

We pay the same all year round and whatever size of horse. Most live out March to Novemeber ish and as its a riding school theres more little ponies and fat cob than big horses, so it does seem to even out. I still think its a very good deal though

 

[4redheadmares]

its a difficult one cause before we took over the yard everyone just bought in their own and used what they wanted when they wanted but the had the added cost of paying for a container to store it in... they now don't have that cost of container so are saving money on that and they no longer have to mess about getting their own in its fresh every day they don't even need to open a bale. i feel it is cheap and should be more like £15 and £12 and £10 .. plus now they are using the yards they feed alot more as they feel they are getting their monies worth..apart from the select few that are very honest and still use the same

 

[4redheadmares]

Update to my first post. . Last night i weighed everyones nets..something i have never done myself as i just feed by what i know they will eat etc..i was really surprised at firstly how much a certain weight in a net looked like and then was even more surprised by the actual amounts that was bein fed!! .. ive now restructured my prices into 3 weight brackets so it is more fair and that the honest ones are not penalised! .. fingers crossed it works...i think theres gojg to be a lot of horses gojng on diets this week!!

 

[9tails]

I don't understand why people need to throw so much into their stable when it's included, it gets into the bed and makes everything messy. My nets look rather small but they're a third of a small bale and weigh around 8kg, I'm not one for fluffing up the hay so it goes in as a block. How much would 8kg per night be on your weight bracket? My hay bill is currently under £10 per week.

 

[SO1]

How are you going to manage the pricing without weighing the hay on a daily basis, are you using this one night weigh in to decide how much to charge? What happens if someone goes to a show and needs more hay on that day than another. I think this system will be quite hard work for you to administer.

Hay and feed is included as part of my livery and there is no "pony" discount as far as I am aware. He eats less grass than the big horses as he is muzzled but his hay consumption is probably the same as he has a big hay net of steamed hay at night and as he is greedy there is no wastage. I don't think people are always dishonest but presuming ponies eat less than horses does not always work, it might be that a light weight show pony type in hard work may need more hay to keep the weight on than a horse with a lot of cob or native pony blood in light work. Are you finding people are wasting hay and it ends up being thrown on the muck heap because they can have as much as they like for a fixed price?

Update to my first post. . Last night i weighed everyones nets..something i have never done myself as i just feed by what i know they will eat etc..i was really surprised at firstly how much a certain weight in a net looked like and then was even more surprised by the actual amounts that was bein fed!! .. ive now restructured my prices into 3 weight brackets so it is more fair and that the honest ones are not penalised! .. fingers crossed it works...i think theres gojg to be a lot of horses gojng on diets this week!!

 

[4redheadmares]

the 3 weight brackets are upto 19 lb then 19lb to 25lb then 25lb to 35lb...... some have had no choice as to which bracket they go in as its fairly obviuos how much they are using, some by choice have gone into the higher bracket. i randomly check what is being used and it seems to be working ok. only thing now is some have gone onto hay cause its obviously lighter and they think can feed more in a net. it doesn't get wasted it just gets used far more quicker than it used to as some are trying to get their monies worth and some was paying less than others yet feeding double the amount.

 

[4redheadmares]

me neither .. if u was only feeding 8kg per night it sounds like you are feeding less than 19lb per day so u would be in the £10 per week bracket

 

[ohmissbrittany]

It's hard to single out the heavy users from the light- where do you draw the line on a 17h easy keeper vs the not-so-thrifty-needs-to-eat eventing pony? I have been at barns that state a rate of hay feed, and then you can pay for more if you want it. (ie, their costs were covered if each horse ate half a small bale per day, but they added to the monthly bill anything over that if the owner chose.) With how livery works here vs the US though (there's virtually no such thing as DIY unless you buy and supply your own hay, but most stables it's full livery or nothing) that system might be a bit hard.

I would run some numbers on what your average usage is and increase the rate across the board- chances are the price increase overall would be less, you get costs covered and no one feels cheated. Maybe consider a summer and winter rate?

 

[chocolategirl]

I think you are always going to get some liveries thinking you are 'ripping them off' unfortunately but this is how I do things on my yard: hay £4 pb straw £3pb delivered to clients bay, haylage 25p per kilo. We make our own hay and straw but have to pay someone to make the haylage for us. I have a weigher suspended by the bale and then clients mark on a board what they've had and are charged accordingly. I never see any waste! I would NEVER NEVER offer Adlib or an 'inclusive' price as this always has the potential to be abused. I'm not suggesting this will work for you, but at the end of the day if you can't make your business pay, your clients will ultimately be the ones who will lose out when you have to shut down. :-( my system probably works so well though because horses live out 24/7 from April to end of October so are costing virtually nothing to feed all summer.

 

[skint1]

At my yard we have ad-lib haylage and straw between 1 Nov- 30 April (or it might be May, I can't remember) but we pay for it in our livery all the year round, the farmer produces both on his land, he has worked out the cost per average horse and factored it in to the livery. There used to be a cheaper rate for ponies but he abandoned that as a bad idea some time ago. Personally, I think we get an excellent deal from the farmer, and I have no complaints!