Information required from all livery yard owners/ or riders owning a few horses

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andreo

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Hi everyone I am looking at buying a livery yard, I want to put a business plan together as will need a commercial mortgage. I currently keep my competition horse on full livery so finding it difficult to work out some cost as i only know what it costs me for livery. If you currently own a livery yard or keep a few horse yourself please could you help in answering the following questions

* How much is a bale of haylage at mo , i know this will vary in different parts of country
*How many horses will a bale of haylage feed p/w
*whats the easiest way of calculating the hard feed of an average horse per week
*idea of cost of public liability insurance for 15 horse full livery/assisted diy to included care and control etc

Any other cost information you feel useful, i know i have not included what all my costs will be here I have just put the ones that I need info on. My goal is to work out an average of all costs and the cost for keeping one horse, so i can show that it is a viable business based on what i will be charging.

Thanks in advance :-)
 
Don't take this the wrong way, but why not keep your horse on DIY, nothing included for a few months? That way you'll soon find out exactly what you get through & all costs involved. If work makes it impossible, go assisted DIY so they can turnout/bringin, but you still incur all expenses at cost. That way you'll get an accurate reflector for your area. Buy in your own sundries rather than buy from the yard, will enable you to find good source at the price you will pay later (may get discount later for bulk buy - can the supplier meet your needs when you have a yard?).
 
Thats a how long is a piece of string question! haylage will last about 5 horses a week ad lib but its going to depend on the size and appetite of the horses how much grass they will have and what size bale it is. as for hard feed just look at the feeding threads on here and you will see that the work the horses do varieties fed and the amounts vary enormously so best way is to think of what you do with yours and what they get fed in kilos annd then multiply it to get the weekly consumption and look at the feed prices in your area for the costs.
 
Blimey! A bale of haylege ad lib only lasts my 2 a week! Always knew they were a couple of pigs lol! IMO keeping a horse is expensive mine are at home but I don't know how anyone can make money with full livery which around here ( Norfolk) works out at around £15-£20 per day + expenses (shoes, vet, travel, entry fees etc)
 
hobgoblin said:
Blimey! A bale of haylege ad lib only lasts my 2 a week! Always knew they were a couple of pigs lol! IMO keeping a horse is expensive mine are at home but I don't know how anyone can make money with full livery which around here ( Norfolk) works out at around £15-£20 per day + expenses (shoes, vet, travel, entry fees etc)
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This is the problem with trying to generalise! bales here are 1.40 diameter rounds but they also still have grass so you are not going to get any 2 people with the same usage.
 
Averaged out over the year (out 24/7 in summer and off the grass completely in winter) it costs me £142 per month per horse for haylage, bedding and hard feed.

Then you have to pay business rates per stable and per square metre for any arenas. Then there is water and electricity, insurance, maintenance of buildings, fencing, and grazing.
 
* How much is a bale of haylage at mo , i know this will vary in different parts of country £28 large square bales. Currently on free round ones. If you are not feeding a whole bale at a time don't touch round, get square so you can use slabs. Don't touch small unless you won't be able to use a large before it goes off. Hay was £32 large, £3.50 (standard £5) small I always feed both if stabled or not much grass out or you'll end up feeding more with it going straight through them.
*How many horses will a bale of haylage feed p/wSquares - Fed 1 bale every two (nearer one and half) days to 20 (mix of fatties (who didn't get any), ponies (didn't either) and horses out 24/7) and they had equivalent in hay, if not on haylage had hay to keep ticking over. Now feed 3 round in the field twice a week to 15 out 24/7 with lots of land and grass still underfoot
*whats the easiest way of calculating the hard feed of an average horse per weekThere isn't one. Last yard we fed 4 horses different feed and amounts. Now none, 'til summer. Depends on work they're in, the owner, reactions (medical or heating) etc. We always had a bag of alfa and beet made up though for people who wanted to use either for any reason (dinky treat, wormer, after riding, regularly)
*idea of cost of public liability insurance for 15 horse full livery/assisted diy to included care and control etcDepends on riding or not, buildings or not, stables or not, postcode etc etc
 
hobgoblin said:
Blimey! A bale of haylege ad lib only lasts my 2 a week! Always knew they were a couple of pigs lol! IMO keeping a horse is expensive mine are at home but I don't know how anyone can make money with full livery which around here ( Norfolk) works out at around £15-£20 per day + expenses (shoes, vet, travel, entry fees etc)
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That's more what I would expect. Two of mine would eat a big bale of hay easily in a week with no grazing. I use two round bales a week atm for six and three are minis. lol That's with no grazing though.
 
hobgoblin said:
Blimey! A bale of haylege ad lib only lasts my 2 a week! Always knew they were a couple of pigs lol! IMO keeping a horse is expensive mine are at home but I don't know how anyone can make money with full livery which around here ( Norfolk) works out at around £15-£20 per day + expenses (shoes, vet, travel, entry fees etc)
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But what's ad lib?

I chuck out round bales which they work for, if square and slabs would be gone in half the time. Is there grass in the field still? Mine range 35acres which is all still decent grass height which they graze on and supplement with the haylage, but if in a smaller field without moving so much/less grass would go through faster. If not in a larger herd they would eat more (they used to be in smaller herds). What size are the bales? I say large, yet we've 3 different rounds in atm (one free, one cheap and one paid from different sources) and one lot fit in pick-up, the other two tractor. They're all different quality. All decent feeding, but different.

It's so hard to do like for like!
 
I pay £25 for a large square bale of haylege, for 6 horses/ponies (ranging from 11hh pony to 17.3hh hunter so guess they average out) this will last 4 days just now. I think that's going through a lot but the grass and ground conditions are very poor where I am just now, so they come in early and have an extra haynet so that they can stand in the dry and get some goodness to eat.

The hard feed is more difficult as it will vary so much on type and size of horse, work done etc. Perhaps try averaging some standard staples such as hi-fi/alpha-a and speedibeet/alpha beet then add say £12 per bag as an estimate for mix/nuts/etc depending on the above. Again as a rough average a bag of mix would last 3 of my horses a week.

No idea on the insurance.
 
I DIY livery at an otherwise full/part livery yard. I pay £35 per week per horse which includes day time grazing, however much haylage I want, straw bedding, stable, use of ménage etc.
If I bought a haylage bale for myself it would be £30 (1.40m round bale, very good quality).

The full liveries I livery with pay an average of £15-£20 a day for turn out, full muck out, bring in, late night skip out, haylage and hard feed. All of them feed the same hard feed that comes from YO.
I think feed is the hardest one as all horses have different requirements.
A bale of haylage lasts the whole yard (13 horses) about 3 days. They do not have it in field, only nets through the night.
 
Surely what everyone says is irrelevant in your case as you need to find out the information locally based on local prices and average bale sizes

Try your local friends or do an information gathering evening perhaps by arranging something like a table top tack sale (fund the hall from the table fee) and provide simple refreshments on the proviso that the sellers sit through a short Market research session with you before the sale starts and anyone else is admitted
 
Hi thanks for all replies so far, pls keep them coming. Welsh D all the bits of info people are providing means I can work out an averge for my own case. :-)
 
Four native ponies get through about £35 in high fibre feeds per fortnight so about 17.50 per week
They get
Connie in full work gets a kilo roughly of calm and condition, 500 grms of grass chaff, 40 grams linseed and about 250 grams unsoaked weight of soaked sugar beet
three others are fatties and get 250 grms of fast fibre 250 grms of unsoaked weight soaked sugar beet and about 500 grms of grass chaff
I use one small bale of hay every two to three days as hay gives them diahorrea The working connie gets the most with one slice divided between the other three they are out 24/7 so no bedding and have grass to nibble although it is very very short just now.
These are very rough weights as they are done by a top spec cup
I worked it out without livery and expenses it cost about 700 per year to keep each horse with the extra expenses being vets, competitions and insurance
 
I think you should also ask for the other costs you have not mentioned, so off the top of my head I can think of

General yard insurance for staff/yourself handling the horses (you have already said you would have 3rd party)
Rates for a yard
Maintenance costs for grazing, so harrowing, fencing, seeding etc etc
Electricity/water costs
Money for general wear and tear, i.e fence repairs, filling in potholes etc etc

Hope that helps..
 
Hope this helps-
My yard is 16 boxes. Plus 8 living out.
Hay here is £25 large square bale
haylege is £28

We go though 2 x hay and 2 x haylege on those horses who are in per week, fed adlib.
Field ponies eat through 4x round bales in 3 weeks at £30 a bale.

Feed is about £50 a week (all on conditioning cubes, chaff and sugar beet) but not everything is eating hard feed as we have quite a few youngsters who don't, so you will prob spend more.

Insurance is £1600 a year, thats for public lia, employers lia. and care and control.

Hidden costs that you will find out are-
fencing (the bane of my life)
Water and electric
B.rates (allow about £100 a year per stable)
repairs (we had a leaky roof, £1400 later now we don't!)
plus all the other day to day costs of running and keeping horses.
 
Last winter I was buying the six string heston bales (think they were 7' by 4'?), they cost me £50 each (Leicestershire/Warwickshire area) and lasted 5 horses around 8 days (approx £1.25/horse/day). Yard I am currently on is charging £9/week for a horse between 15.2 to 16.2 and anything bigger than 16.2 is charged at £10/week.

Shavings and bedding also need to be costed. Obviously bulk buying pallet loads of shavings make it cheaper.

Feed is a tricky one. You could estimate it by going on a worst case scenario that you will end up with huge horses weighing 700kg each in hard work. Based on that information and the fact they will then be eating around 3% of their body weight split 50/50 hay/hard feed you can guestimate how much feed you will use.

Personally I would only provide a basic cool mix and chaff. Anything over and above that is at the owners expense along with any suppliments. In my experience owners on an "all inclusive" deal often take the mickey with the amounts they feed their horses if given free rein and totally over feed (then wonder why they cannot manage their horses!). This rapidly erodes your budget!

Will you provide free access to hay? This again can be abused and there is nothing worse IMO than horses being given more hay than they can eat and throwing it around their beds, not only does it waste hay but it wastes bedding too. It can be difficult to achieve a happy medium, you do not really wish to lock everything away but cannot afford to have wastage either.

Hopefully you will get a bunch of lovely owners who trust you implicitly to feed/look after their horses and are open and receptive (as you must be) to discussion about their horses needs and requirements. Sadly it does not always happen like that and running a livery yard can be one of the most stressful jobs around! Good luck
 
andreo said:
Hi everyone I am looking at buying a livery yard, I want to put a business plan together as will need a commercial mortgage. I currently keep my competition horse on full livery so finding it difficult to work out some cost as i only know what it costs me for livery. If you currently own a livery yard or keep a few horse yourself please could you help in answering the following questions

* How much is a bale of haylage at mo , i know this will vary in different parts of country
*How many horses will a bale of haylage feed p/w
*whats the easiest way of calculating the hard feed of an average horse per week
*idea of cost of public liability insurance for 15 horse full livery/assisted diy to included care and control etc

Any other cost information you feel useful, i know i have not included what all my costs will be here I have just put the ones that I need info on. My goal is to work out an average of all costs and the cost for keeping one horse, so i can show that it is a viable business based on what i will be charging.

Thanks in advance :-)
Click to expand...
I own a livery yard, there are 13 horses/ponies on the premises at the moment.
I use 2 full heston bales of hay and 3 large rectangular (around 350kg) bales of haylage a week.
A square bale of haylage is £40, I also have some 5ft rounds of decent quality from our own fields, they cost me around £7 per bale to make/wrap/cart.
A heston bale of moderate quality hay is £25.
I only offer all inclusive deals, my feedroom contains: Graze On, Top Spec Cool Condition cubes, DH Mare&youngstock mix, DH Build&Glow, Kwikbeet.
My monthly feed bill is around £550. There is no easy way of calculating it.

My full business combined insurance with NFU, including CCC, livestock farm, buildings, equipment etc, etc is around £2K a year.

I have a business rate relief, but you would need to look at around £100 per stable.

Hope that helps.
Ah, fencing is very expensive and you need to seriously consider the cost of staff.

ETS I am on water meter and my average water bill is £95 per quarter. My electric bill is anywhere between £300 and £700 a month.
 
Try ringing Shearwater for the insurance quote; they will give you a hypothetical price. This is what we did before taking on our yard and is them we are now covered with. Main variables on price, aside from size of yard were things such as proximity to roads, type of fencing, whether there are any footpaths through the yard and how stable the herd are or if they are on individual turnout etc.

We pay roughly £900p.a. for public liability and “care, custody and control”. We don’t have any staff so employers liability is not included in this. (Have used freelance grooms in past when needed but they obviously have their own insurances etc) Our yard is a MUCH smaller scale than you are looking at, accommodating 5 horses but with cover for up to 8.

Don't feed haylage so can't help in that respect sorry! All ours are on hay, which we bought straight off the field cheap ;) As for feed, as others have said, it varies massively depending on the type of horse, any specific dietry needs and workload ... I would guesstimate, for mine a broad average cost of around £150-200 per month in feed for the yard. But don't forget, I'm only feeding 5 on that..

Hope that helps.
 
All this has been very helpful so many thanks for taking the time, especially Martlin and Natalia as it sounds similar set up. Fingers crossed now it all works out :-D
 
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