I think I need to move livery yards

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PuddingSummer

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With the storm this morning, having only been at current yard for 5 months, I’m seriously thinking I’ll need to move once my year contract is up. Please go easy on me, I’m soaked through and cold.

I’ve moved to a lovely, very friendly yard 25 minutes away but all year 24/7 turnout (you have your own field). Fab I thought, fantastic, I thought. Except the yard won’t let me put up shelter in the field which has absolutely no natural shelter (i truly don’t know why) and is on the coast so is extremely windy and cold. My new pony won’t let me catch him (I recently posted about bad catchers!) and services are done independently and cost an absolute fortune making the cheaper livery not cheap at all.

I’ve realised new pony needs VERY regular catching to be handled, and if the weather goes tits up or I can’t get there one day he loses his goddamn mind and you can’t get near him so we have to start all over again.

I’m doing a bale a day in hay to keep them warm even though stabled overnight they go through a quarter of a bale with plenty left over in the morning. Has anyone seen the prices of hay recently by the way?!

The ONLY other option is a part livery yard, just a sweet little 6 minute drive from my house (that I drive past daily as I begrudgingly realise I have another 20 minutes of driving to do).

I didn’t consider it before because of cost and restricted winter turnout (every other day). I’d also have to give up our loan pony that is for the kids (who aren’t interested by the way). Now I’m thinking the bad catcher could do with some time in, the weather without shelter is just cruel and the cost I’m spending on hay and services is probably adding up to more then part livery anyway.
 
When you're comparing the cost, look at what's included in the part livery contract. A deal with unlimited hay / straw could be good but I know a few yards where it's specified the max weight of hay and 1 bale of shavings pw included. Extra to be paid for which could be a lot if the turnout is restricted. Equally if you cost in your fuel to get to the other yard how does this affect the relative cost.

Keeping the pony in more might not improve the catching problem. If he can't be caught at the new yard, will this be a problem for the staff there? Will they just leave him out or ask you to keep coming down to get him in?

It's been a horrible, hard winter but hopefully we are coming out the other side soon. If you're thinking of moving how will the relative yards compare over the summer. What are the hacking / arena / other facilities like at the 2 yards.

A one year contract is unusual, it there a notice period at all or a penalty clause?
 
For now, you need to substitute rugging for shelter. Three of mine had no access to shelter last night - they have new (this winter) rugs. The others do have access to shelter but the ones with fully waterproof newer rugs often don’t bother. Warm enough rugs with neck will drop your hay bill down to whatever 2% of his bodyweight is per day.

I would also just resign myself to getting up at 5am or going up at 9pm if necessary to see the pony (unless your job involves overnight stays away from home and that wouldn’t work or the yard restricts visiting hours).
 
maya2008 said:
For now, you need to substitute rugging for shelter. Three of mine had no access to shelter last night - they have new (this winter) rugs. The others do have access to shelter but the ones with fully waterproof newer rugs often don’t bother. Warm enough rugs with neck will drop your hay bill down to whatever 2% of his bodyweight is per day.

I would also just resign myself to getting up at 5am or going up at 9pm if necessary to see the pony (unless your job involves overnight stays away from home and that wouldn’t work or the yard restricts visiting hours).
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I do go up at 5am but with two small children that don’t sleep, I just physically can’t get to the yard in the afternoon/evenings! Which is why I have to rely on the services to get in on the evenings
 
nutjob said:
Keeping the pony in more might not improve the catching problem. If he can't be caught at the new yard, will this be a problem for the staff there? Will they just leave him out or ask you to keep coming down to get him in?
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If it's done right at the beginning, the routine of coming in with everyone else would probably be very helpful. If it was me I would be taking time off work to make sure it was done right at the beginning but I don't have kids!

OP if a year's contract is enforceable, it's very weird, then I guess you're stuck for 7 months anyway? The most you can do at the minute is get your name on the list for the other place and things might be completely different by the time July rolls round. The first winter in a new yard with a new horse is frequently brutal no matter what the individual circumstances. Even without the weird contract, it might be worth sticking it out until things are less miserable in general in the spring.
 
smolmaus said:
If it's done right at the beginning, the routine of coming in with everyone else would probably be very helpful. If it was me I would be taking time off work to make sure it was done right at the beginning but I don't have kids!

OP if a year's contract is enforceable, it's very weird, then I guess you're stuck for 7 months anyway? The most you can do at the minute is get your name on the list for the other place and things might be completely different by the time July rolls round. The first winter in a new yard with a new horse is frequently brutal no matter what the individual circumstances. Even without the weird contract, it might be worth sticking it out until things are less miserable in general in the spring.
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This was my train of thought, the regular going and coming with a herd will help. In fact if I can halter him daily he isn’t so much of a problem, and he can be caught at the gate if he has a field safe on but over weekends for example, he has to stay out because I can’t get there both ends of the day with no weekend services. Then he manages to get the headcollar off (he seems to keep it on during the day so I’m wondering if other pony is ‘helping’ it coming off!).

I have to stick it out over summer no matter what so things definitely might change fingers crossed but I can’t figure out how this will won’t next winter. And our winters can be several months long - I’ll go and view other yard in summer and work out the finances. They might not even have stables for me anyway so it may well be a long waiting game if I did want to move
 
PuddingSummer said:
I do go up at 5am but with two small children that don’t sleep, I just physically can’t get to the yard in the afternoon/evenings! Which is why I have to rely on the services to get in on the evenings
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If he is living out and there is some grass, you only need someone to cast an eye over him in the evening. You can probably sneakily buddy up with someone else so you check theirs in the morning and they do yours in the evening.

Catch him in the morning for his feed (no catch, no feed so he has motivation). Put out hay in multiple piles. Once he’s eaten it he can nibble on the grass.

I have had my horses out 24/7 for decades and have always swapped ends of the day with a friend/neighbour to cast an eye over them. They don’t need feeding or poo picking twice. Just to be checked over.
 
is there not another option? Every other day turnout is very limited and really not ok if there are other options. You might also find part livery yard wont have a horse thats hard to catch as they havent got time to deal with it.

I'd rug and sort the catching and stay where you are.
 
I'm not sure why you have to stay for the year? I would hand notice in and move ASAP. I don't like the sound of the other yard with only being able to turn out every other day! but I also don't like the sound of the current yard with no shelter at all! I'd be going out of my mind with worry if I thought my horses couldn't get out of the rain, so I completely agree you need to move! I hope you can find somewhere in between that offers a bit more turn out than the part livery yard
 
I'm Dun said:
is there not another option? Every other day turnout is very limited and really not ok if there are other options. You might also find part livery yard wont have a horse thats hard to catch as they havent got time to deal with it.

I'd rug and sort the catching and stay where you are.
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I’m not excusing it but every other day is quite good for this immediate area, several other yards close their fields for weeks or even months at a time. One yard closes religiously for 6 months every year!
 
As far as I’m aware the restricted turnout at other yard is only for a few months, they still go out and they have 24/7 spring and summer turnout. I’m not saying I would move them to these yards that restrict winter turnout as much as I mentioned, just that the only other option is more restricted then the situation I’m currently in which just doesn’t seem to be working
 
Well it's so wet our 24/7 horses 'catch me if you can' in the summer, with big hedges for shelter are done being out after 5 minutes atm. We make them stay out 3-6 hours and they tell us off when we bring them in for being late. Mine doesn't even want to go out.

limited winter turnout isn't the end of the world as long as everything else works. It's going to be tripe for another month or two then hopefully change!
 
This is the dilemma, I assumed I’d be able to bring in regularly but given the issues I’m having that’s not happening and I feel sick leaving them out in gale force winds and torrential rain. Surely extra stabling is preferable to being forced to stand in this shite
 
Just to play devil's advocate, they probably won't allow a shelter due to the location. If it really is on the coast, it may be they're worried about it taking off and causing chaos. You can mitigate that to some extent with a permanent shelter, but yours would be presumably mobile. I've had the roof of one fly away mid-construction and that was in a sheltered spot!

For now I would just rug well and see if anyone would like to buddy up if you need two visits a day/extra handling. Rugged well, they'll be fine, even on exposed land.
 
Fransurrey said:
Just to play devil's advocate, they probably won't allow a shelter due to the location. If it really is on the coast, it may be they're worried about it taking off and causing chaos. You can mitigate that to some extent with a permanent shelter, but yours would be presumably mobile. I've had the roof of one fly away mid-construction and that was in a sheltered spot!
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This is a good point.

I don't know exactly how windy we are talking here, but mine has a shelter in her hardstanding paddock and refuses to use it no matter the weather. Would rather just stand bum to the wind. So long as they're not shivering I try not to worry overly. The lack of routine/ weekend flexibility and the un-catchable problem would concern me a lot more than the shelter situation tbh.
 
Lack of routine wasn’t something I was worried about until I got a pony that seems to have a problem with inconsistency. All my previous horses have been super easy to catch and so leaving out wouldn’t have caused an issue.

All the issues feed into each other, because I wasn’t worried about the lack of shelter when I moved because I was going to bring them in regularly but I can’t because he’s halter shy which is causing more inconsistency in handling which is causing the catching issue to intensify. If I can get a field safe on him I can catch him but leaving him out for more then a day, he manages to take it off, cue starting from scratch.

I’m feeling rather stressed out and could use summer right about now.
 
Most horses thrive with a routine, I'd call it that rather than inconsistency!

If you can find a yard which can support a routine suitable for your horse, go for it. It will undoubtedly cost you to do this, but the benefits will come through.

A good rugging system will be helpful as well.

Good luck
 
On the shelter front, could you put some of the big 6 string Heston's of straw in an X shape as a windbreak?
Or could you do some wooden posts (either in the ground or concreted into buckets) with terram wrap or similar as a windbreak, might that be an alternative to a full shelter?

I have a shelter for mine, with it's back to the prevailing wind and the ponies do use it. The wind was coming in from the opposite direction this morning and neither pony wanted to go near it, favouring tucking their bums into hedges instead, so just because it's there doesn't also mean they'll use it. But please do rug up well instead.
Today's weather was exceptionally bad, even my usually very steady ponies were wild, so I'd not make too many decisions off the back of this morning
 
PuddingSummer said:
This is the dilemma, I assumed I’d be able to bring in regularly but given the issues I’m having that’s not happening and I feel sick leaving them out in gale force winds and torrential rain. Surely extra stabling is preferable to being forced to stand in this shite
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Agree, and a ‘wild’ pony would certainly take itself away from an exposed, coastal hillside during named storms!
A muddy field, permanently wet hooves and legs aren’t healthy, but horses mustn’t be stabled 24 /7 either - they do need to get outside and to get moving about, regularly, so accept you’d have to ride in the rain instead. And UK weather does look pretty wet for the foreseeable.
Re locate - to immediately cut the responsibility and expense of a loan pony your kids don’t want, and give yourself more time to focus on the one which needs attention.
If you could only turn out every second day, just make shift to go for a decent ride on the other days, or maybe arrange someone to share and achieve that.
It used to be very common for horses to be stabled all winter, typically hunters, and three local riding schools routinely did this for 4 months a year, but their horses were all being ridden, or led from another for exercise, so they never stood in. That’s the important bit, so if you’ve a non rideable horse, or one you can’t manage to ride / drive for whatever reason, turnout then takes priority.
 
Having had my horse live out 24/7 for a year I did experience him becoming very herd bound and more difficult to handle. He would be a right pita to bring in and groom or ride and I could not leave him in the stable as he would lose his cookies, rearing, bucking, kicking the stable, shrieking and getting in a muck sweat. Partly this was because I didn’t bring him in enough as the field was a long way and up a hill so it put me off. (I also had a horse at a separate yard to do).

I’ve now moved yards (to where my other horse is) and he’s out during the day and in at night and is back to his old self. He’s currently in an individual paddock but going back in a group field at the weekend. 🤞 the separation anxiety doesn’t return.

I also found that he was hungry a lot living out and it was a struggle because in a group setting you all need to be on the same page forage wise. This also added to a stressful situation. I have to say though despite being on top of a hill with little shelter he was never bothered about coming in. He was well rugged and never cold or seemed bothered by the torrential rain or wind. Actually it was the summer where they needed more shade and luckily they did move to a field with trees.
 
Reporting back from my lot: based on the poo evidence, those with shelter spent the storm standing in a huddle out in the rain and wind, not in the nice sturdy shelters. Their instincts to stand together (in their nice waterproof rugs) were stronger than those to stand under a roof. I put their hay inside today and they were disgusted with me. Outside with their mates was what they wanted. Mine are in small groups of 2-3. Field is flat, no natural shelter to speak of, very windy in storms.
 
PuddingSummer said:
This is the dilemma, I assumed I’d be able to bring in regularly but given the issues I’m having that’s not happening and I feel sick leaving them out in gale force winds and torrential rain. Surely extra stabling is preferable to being forced to stand in this shite
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No they're waterproof with brilliant internal Central heating, being cooped up in a box barely twice your body length is definitely worse, if you're worried they're cold (shivering, tucked up or losing condition) rug up, if they won't let you put a shelter up can you put a big bale of straw (or2) length ways into the wind so they can tuck in behind it?. Being stuck in constant deep mud isn't good but you don't mention this so presumably it's not awful. Stabling is a human convenience really, not a horse's dream.
 
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