Horses at home

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Princess16

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I'm so envious of those of you that actually have your horses at home that you can see all day every day. Just wondered how much land you actually have them on? Do you have purpose built stables on your land? What is your actual set-up?

We have ours on our own field but I would give anything to actually have him at home or better still manage to obtain PP to build house on there - I can dream :D
 
i have mine at home, i have about 5.5 acres stables, school, barn etc. at first i found it incredibly stressful but now things are settled i absolutely love it. i love the fact i can make the decisions relating to their care, grazing and manage them in the way i want. i also love the peace and quiet although, if they wernt currently broken i would love to have some company to hack with near by !! from my point of view that is the one and only downside. never give up dreaming, if i was told i would live where i do now 10 years ago i would have laughed at the idea. life takes different twists and turns and dreams can come true !
 
It's amazing but can be a little lonely at times :(

I have mine on 16 acres - there is an 11 acre hay field that they have access to in winter then 4 smaller paddocks for summer. The stables are in a U shape with fence and gates across the end so it is really secure. It means I can let them loose whilst I muck out which is handy.

If you do have stables put in one thing I would suggest is make sure your drainage is good. Mine slopes towards a grid at the bottom of the U - big mistake! If the drain gets blocked the yard and stables flood :( always have the slope going away from the stables...

Another thing - go for good quality doors. We're having an issue of the timber swelling in the wet which makes the doors really stiff to open :(

Despite everything I am really happy where I am and couldn't imagine going back to livery.
 
I have a twenty acre field which I've split down the middle into two separate 10 acre fields, so I can rotate them. I have stables, tack room, feed room et al., and a horse exerciser.

I love it and wouldn't have it any other way.

I think those of you on livery are brave. I worked at a few yards in my youth and found them to be generally unpleasant places. So, I always swore that I wouldn't buy a horse unless I was in the financial position to keep them at home...I was in my mid thirties before I reached that point. I lost out on quite a few years of horse ownership, but I'm glad I waited.
 
I am lucky enough to have mine at home - about 8 acres, 2 horses and 2 ponies, 4 stables, hay barn, school. I am glad I can do things my way, in my own time, but it can be lonely. Hard work maintaining grazing, fencing, muckheap, etc etc, but it is SO worth it.
 
I keep my two at home I have 3 stables and just over 3 acres which you can see the whole lot from the windows indoors, the stables are a stones throw from my back door which is very handy, I am lucky enough to have use of the menage in the livery yard next door where I have met some really lovely horse owners and ride out with a few of them, I also have access to decent hacking without going on the road, I do really love it here I think myself very lucky can't imagine going back to a livery yard now.
 
I have my two at home plus have one DIY livery.

The land is divvied up into two "lots" basically; livery has her own 4-acre bit which is separate from where I keep mine (its across a road which makes a natural dividing line). There is a lovely big yard which everyone shares (used to be the place where cows used to stand for milking as there was a dairy herd here a long time ago). There is a loosebox for all the horses we have on site here, currently two (my two, plus livery's two). Both she and I are thinking of getting another horse so we might need to think about building on in the near future!!

We have a sheep farmer who puts his sheep in here on an occasional basis: saves us a fortune as they do a good job of land management!

If I want to check up on my two I can peep out and see them for most of the time.

It is so lovely to have them at home: I've had to kiss the @ss of some pretty unpleasant people in my time where if your face didn't fit you knew damn well you'd be out on the grass verge PDQ with a duvet, a pony-on-a-headcollar and a mug of coffee :( Been there done that.
 
9 acre winter field, 3.5 acre summer field. Barn and loose box in a separate field with an enclosed concrete yard. Sheep run with them most of the year and they switch fields every 6 months so never a worm problem. Can see them out of the window most of the time...wouldn't have it any other way.
 
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We made the fairly scary decision to move to rural Ireland (from Somerset) and buy a semi-derelict property, partly so that we could afford a property with land and have them at home.

8 acres, 2 ponies (my cob and daughter's little 'un). 2 acres are at the back of the house, the others are spread around the village so short walks (< 5 mins) on the quiet roads but are next door to (farming and horse-owning) neighbours so I have extra eyes on them which is handy. I saw this as a negative but actually with this wet weather it is a bit of a positive, no muddy tracks!

We have a hay barn. Plan is to convert old "stables", currently derelict and not really suitable as stabling, into an open-fronted shelter and surfaced yard area, but currently house taking priority so they live out but come into the bottom of the hay barn in foul weather. We got a little tractor with the house so plan to do our own land maintenance, but have also had the neighbours take hay off some of the land (got enough hay for the winter delivered into the hay loft, plus some money) and rented some to another (got some money, plus he harrowed and grazed it with his sheep).

Biggest negative is fencing, which is an ongoing battle as the fields are surrounded with dry stone walls with a tendency to fall down and the ground is alternately solid stone and peat which makes electric fencing posts or wooden posts difficult. It is lovely to see them out of the window and also so much better for me (work full-time with young child) to be able to have him out full-time and only poo-pick when restricting grazing in summer. The effort I used to go to for his ROA when he was stabled full-time in wet weather, hoovering the stable, soaking hay etc is now a thing of the past. I love the fact I can pop out and do something with them, come in and cook dinner, pop back out finish up etc.

It is lonely for riding but I had already got used to that as I had to ride at odd hours and often stick to tight timescales since having my daughter so it was generally easier to ride alone anyway.
 
We moved ours to the house YESTERDAY (massive photo thread to follow, obviously)! We have about 3.8 acres of grazing (split in 2) with 6 loose boxes. 3 have been re-roofed to make us 2 stables and a tack/feed/rug room, the other 3 are going to be flattened in a year or so for OH to build a garage.

I'm so SO looking forward to having them here, I keep peeking out the windows to look at them in their boxes! Our back bedroom windows look out onto the field, and the side one looks out at the stables, so you can see them from the house :)

We have Jazz and my sister's horse Harley, so it's ideal as I'll always have someone to ride with.
 
I have had mine at home for a month now, and I can safely say it's the best thing ever. I have a concrete yard with 5 stables plus a barn, a tackroom and a washbox, a small school (needs to be resurfaced) and around 10 acres of pretty steep grazing. I love being able to pop out to see them, or to do chores and so far, I haven't found a downside to moving from livery. I need to find someone who wants to graze some sheep for free though...!
 
Mine our at the fields at the bottom of our back garden. We have a small stream which separates the house from their field but come the summer im getting a bridge built over the stream which i can walk over straight into their fields. I can see them from my back bedroom window, they literally are about 200 yards from my house. I had two stables and a shelter block built. I love the solitude of not being on a yard. Ive been n some nice yards and some dire yards, but it's much nicer making the decisions yourself, even though it is harder work, especially dealing with fencing, grazing etc. I still wouldn't ever go back on a yard though.
 
I wouldn't have horses if I couldn't have them at home, I am so done with livery yards, rules (good or bad) bitchiness, someone always watching and clockwatching.

We downsized radically to a piddly 5 acres with no outbuildings, not even a garage, I miss my half mile oval gallop, 10 stall barn, hay barns and other buildings, I don't miss much else about it though. I agreed to move into this house (which I still loathe a year on) purely because it was in the right area. The fabulous outriding, on the doorstep, and horsey community here make up for lack of facilities. I have commandeered two rooms in one wing of the house, that we don't use anyway, for feed and tack. Rugs and smelly stuff live in the basement/cellar where the furnace is, so I have convenient rug drying rooms ;)


I have a couple of small flat paddocks (sand) where we erected a shelter, either of these flat paddocks could easily be tilled and harrowed for use as a sand school, in all there are 4 separate pastures/paddocks, and in summer (because we both hate mowing lawns) we fence the lawns (about an acre) around the house in a U shape and the horses graze those down for us.

My shelters are very rudimentary, a shipping container (surprisingly good for hay storage) with a lean-to on either side. I really don't need anything else, they live out. If I needed to stall horses for any reason I can easily just gate them.
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