Help me decide - Livery???

chickeninabun

chickeninabun

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What with all this cold, dark weather and everyone talking selling/giving up/finances
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etc I thought I'd have a rethink about my livery....

I have two horses:
Molly 14.3hh cob mare who I ride when I get the chance.
Sandy 29yo retired mare that my daughter plods out on every now and again.

My livery is £200/month plus feed, hay and straw, so I'm reckoning approx £235 (excluding feed). But my bugbear is that we have no facilities so in winter I barely ride (haven't ridden for 3 weeks now
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).

There is a yard 2 miles down the road with lovely, and I mean l-o-v-e-l-y stables, an indoor school and an outdoor one. They charge between £35-£55/wk for livery including use of schools, mucked out, turned out, hay and straw (not sure about feed, but mine hardly eat anything anyway!). So I'm thinking approx £350/month. Although should say I've seen them mucking out and although not horrendous, it doesn't quite look done to my standards
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! A little too "deep littered" and new straw piled on top for my taste.

So for an extra £115/month, do you think I should move?? Oh I should add my current yard is approx 100yrds from my house
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!
 
if you can afford it then YES. i read your previous post and i think the use of an indoor and outdoor school will benefit you and give you time to ride and your cob will be happier by being ridden and its only 2 miles down the road.

+ Plus you can still get a sharer, maybe one who will contribute a small cost and then help towards the price of livery.

ETS just re read and noticed mucking out is included-well you can always do abit of skipping out if your not happy with it.

Go with your gut, I always do
 
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I'd say move if you can afford too - i would kill for an indoor school............

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me too!
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and 2 miles from home? wish i was that lucky!
 
M O V E !!

My yard is 2 miles from me, a 4 minute drive, alas no indoor school so I am barely riding with all the rain of late. Thankfully ponio seems happy to be a field ornament. ( I wont ride if school is too wet as its slippy, a personal choice as my mare slipped a couple of years back and went lame which lead to 3 months box rest).. a silly accident, but one I do not wish to repeat.

You'd be much happier being able to ride, rather than feeling the restriction you do now, and you can always skip your horses out to a level you are happier with !

Good luck with whatever you decide
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It's not DIY it's full, so everything in for that, which I think is very good really.
Am a little concerned that it's a bigger yard than I am on (only 2 of us currently) so I'd be worried about bitchiness and general yard moans, that I hear about on here
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.
Didn't think about still getting a sharer, although i'd be able to ride a lot more if there.
Husband has just thrown a spanner in the works
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that if we borrowed friends trailer and trailered up there on a night, I could hire the indoor school (£25/hour) once a week for less than the livery!
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Oh it's so hard even thinking about it
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.
Bad thing is, that if I left current yard, friend would be on her own at current yard
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, and she is a friend. She rents the yard so she'd be footing the whole cost of yard each month instead of it being split between us. Although am thinking of just moving for the winter and coming back in summer.

Arrgghhhh, my head hurts!!
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Hi, you might niot be able to move back for the summer. If your friend needs to foot the bill for the whole yard its in her interests to rent it out to somebody else. Also, if she doesn't she may want you to pay more through the summer months to help recoop some of the additional outlay she will no have. I know I would!
 
You will find it hard going from DIY to full. If you're doing it so you can ride more then go for it, but if you're not going to ride any more frequently then I'd think it was a waste of money!
 
I would go with your husband's suggestion. In fact as I was reading your post I was thinking 'could they hire the indoor school?'
That way your friendship doesn't suffer, your horse is kept to your own standard, you maintain your relationship with your horses (something which would always worry me about full livery) and you are still not spending quite as much as the full livery option.
One of the benefits we find of having the horses at home is that we can check on them every time we go out. You must have a similar benefit of keeping them 100yds from home. 2 miles is quite a long way if its in the opposite direction to the way you are going.
 
I would move the ridden horse to livery and keep the retired one at the yard. If ridden horse is on full, then you will only need to skip out and ride.
 
i'd move if i could afford it PROVIDING the standards of mucking out were upped. My YM skipps her own horses but does customers how they do them themselves (or sometime better if i'm really lucky). If having them in two different places isn't too tricky i'd do as CBAnglosaid and have one in one yard and they other in the other.
Don't worry about yard moans- I went from a yard with 4 owners to Erm about 11 ish (not gonna count) and yes, there is moans and grumbles - I just keep out of it and stick with the ppl I've chummed up with who are also keeping out of gossip types.
 
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