is it worth having a livery yard with no arena?

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dede

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The yard would have all year turnout and would have a flat field with jumps on dry decent weather and new stables and an bridle way about a 10 minute walk away. Its also half an hour away from a beach and half an hour away from Belfast.
 
Was it quite hard to manage without one, especially in the winter? Would it deter many people from coming to the yard, as wondering whether it would make its profits back.
 
Depends on the area, we have a livery yard near us with decent hacking and turnout, no arena. They are closing after a year of opening as they can’t get liveries. They only wanted full livery or sales livery and have had I think 3 or 4 that have ended up leaving. And we are an area with a handful of yards, there are very few options locally.

If it’s DIY or very cheap then I think that is a different story though x
 
dede said:
so would it be financially viable to run the yard without one?
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Do you have a mortgage or rent to cover? Do you need to live on the income, or is it a side hustle to keeping your own horses there? Do you already have equipment for fencing, harrowing etc? Are you making your own hay? How many other yards are there locally? Do they have vacancies? How far is it to the nearest arena that can be hired out? Do your rivals have as good hacking as you, or as good turnout? What kind of soil do you have? Is there a track area? Are you offering DIY or full? Are you doing the work yourself or planning to have employees? How good is the parking? Do you have skills, reputation with horses, qualifications that would attract people?
Don't answer here but take all the figures to a good business adviser.
(Add in to the mix that having an arena can make extra money from private hires, shows, clinics, dog clubs etc but those things also depend where you are & what facilities already exist in your local area.)

Edited to add, this thread may be useful to you.

Rough diy arena cost?

As it says - I have the space, it already has several layers of brick/stone/hardcore. Has fencing and gates. It will be max 40 x 20m. Any idea of rough costs for membranes and surface? Seeing so many crazy quotes. Thank you!
forums.horseandhound.co.uk forums.horseandhound.co.uk
 
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Would there be a field they could ride in? Is your hacking good with off road tracks? 24 all year turnout but also a place for restricted grazing/track system, is what people are after at the moment. Have you got human welfare facilities available?

You need to do a business plan and market research, change of use, planning. Cover everything you can think of then work it out.

Although many livery yards are run under the radar, my friend was at one that started with 2 friends as liveries ended up with 20. The yard was reported as there was so much traffic building up and everything went wrong very quickly for them.
 
Another factor is if people work full time and want to ride after work on dark winter evenings. Hacking availability won't help those that have that routine.

With the cost of keeping horses most people who are trying to keep a horse at livery need to have a full time job (or a rich partner!) to afford the bills.
 
I had my horse at a barn that had no arena back home. We rode in the paddock or in a field (as long as we stayed to the edge) or on the track (we were on a standardbred barn). This was in Canada so in the winter we would trailer to an indoor arena nearby. We just had a few stalls in a makeshift barn that we did ourselves as DIY.

I think whether it is financially viable depends largely on what your competition have, what you have access to/ your own costs (e.g. hay), what you charge, and if there is a supply of horses and owners/riders that would want your facilities or lack thereof.
 
for turnout do yard owners just give people a field and let them section it out or do people share the fields as well for all year turnout do people just get specific fields and move round them throughout the year when they get too mucky?
 
Kaylum said:
Would there be a field they could ride in? Is your hacking good with off road tracks? 24 all year turnout but also a place for restricted grazing/track system, is what people are after at the moment. Have you got human welfare facilities available?

You need to do a business plan and market research, change of use, planning. Cover everything you can think of then work it out.

Although many livery yards are run under the radar, my friend was at one that started with 2 friends as liveries ended up with 20. The yard was reported as there was so much traffic building up and everything went wrong very quickly for them.
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Very little (if any) off road hacking in Northern Ireland. It rains a lot.
 
I'm on a yard with 11 horses and no arena.
We have good drainage in most of the fields that I think makes what we have work.
We have 2 fields for riding in, one larger one with jumps and/or poles as well as space to school around the and one about 18 by 35 with markers. The little field has battery powered lights for schooling on 1 side (so we don't annoy the neighbours) that we use for evening winter riding. We have good hacking from the gate and also a school we can hire that is hackable to.
Our horses are grouped according to dietary need and horse and owner friendships. Each little herd has it's own fields to manage how the owners like. I love this aspect as it means I can manage the grass for my 2 natives so they can live out for most of the year.
Most of the owners and sharers mainly hack so it suits them- these would be your market rather than competitive riders. I think you need to consider the local market as NI weather and long winter nights
 
I personally would not livery at a yard with no arena purely because in the depths of winter when the fields are sodden and they’ve been in a few days due to the storms that are getting more horrific it’s helpful to have somewhere they can go and have a hooley before turn out to avoid the fields being totally churned.
 
I'm not sure much money could be made from being a DIY yard owner. You could in theory be very hands off, split your fields out in as many as you have stables, plus.one for riding in. You could just mark them out and get people to get their own electric fencing/batteries etc. You will also need storage space for everyone, hay and feed at minimum and a muck heap plus space for wheelbarrows and mucking out tools. Note it often costs to take muck away.

Draw up contracts where you cover payment terms, I recommend monthly DD in advance possibly with one month's deposit. If you have metered water, establish what is normal use for drinking water/feeds and charge extra if people are using excess water for cleaning/washing/leaving tap on. Do terms for what happens in case of new n payment and/or abandonment of horses. Be clear what you are not responsible for (items kept at yard at own risk, thefts on yards are not uncommon).

Set some yard rules, when you are happy for people to come and go. Water usage allowed. What people have to do with rubbish like feed bags, packaging, baling twine/haylege wraps etc. whether they need to poo pick fields (next livery may not be so keen on a field full of poo).

You probably won't be able to charge that much per month, check what local basic yards charge. but if you have a decent amount of stables and space and clear rules it might work out.

Do your sums first though.
Insurance
Water
Electric (?)
Getting it all ready

Go visit a local yard and talk to them.
 
Don't forget business rates, if applicable in your costings.

A lot depends on where you are. You might get away with it on well draining land in an area that does not get huge rainfall depending on the type of liveries you wish to attract. It wouldn't appeal to many people, especially anyone with youngsters. A DIY yard near to me hasn't had a useable arena for over 5 years but does have hacking close by. Quite a few of the liveries come to my yard to hire my arenas and for lessons - most box up to get here or hack 20 minutes but that involves crossing an A road so if there is somewhere to hire near by it might work. Without exception all the liveries there complain about the lack of an arena and recently had a meeting with the YO to ask about getting the old arena refurbished. The main thing to bear in mind is not to make promises you cannot keep. The yard owner in question raised prices "to fund yard improvements" 18 months ago and none have been forthcoming so they aren't happy.
 
JBM said:
Are there arenas close to hire?
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they is one small yard with a small arena but i believe that it is a competition yard but there is 2 yards about 20 minutes away with great cross country so I suppose people could go there if they had a trailer
 
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mariew said:
I'm not sure much money could be made from being a DIY yard owner. You could in theory be very hands off, split your fields out in as many as you have stables, plus.one for riding in. You could just mark them out and get people to get their own electric fencing/batteries etc. You will also need storage space for everyone, hay and feed at minimum and a muck heap plus space for wheelbarrows and mucking out tools. Note it often costs to take muck away.

Draw up contracts where you cover payment terms, I recommend monthly DD in advance possibly with one month's deposit. If you have metered water, establish what is normal use for drinking water/feeds and charge extra if people are using excess water for cleaning/washing/leaving tap on. Do terms for what happens in case of new n payment and/or abandonment of horses. Be clear what you are not responsible for (items kept at yard at own risk, thefts on yards are not uncommon).

Set some yard rules, when you are happy for people to come and go. Water usage allowed. What people have to do with rubbish like feed bags, packaging, baling twine/haylege wraps etc. whether they need to poo pick fields (next livery may not be so keen on a field full of poo).

You probably won't be able to charge that much per month, check what local basic yards charge. but if you have a decent amount of stables and space and clear rules it might work out.

Do your sums first though.
Insurance
Water
Electric (?)
Getting it all ready

Go visit a local yard and talk to them.
Click to expand...
Would you recomend having a field for every stable then? Would that be reasonable?
 
dede said:
Would you recomend having a field for every stable then? Would that be reasonable?
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It depends on how much space you have and whether you are intending on doing the fencing and what type of fencing. It gets expensive really quickly. I'd recommend going talking to some yards to get an idea of local demand
 
mariew said:
It depends on how much space you have and whether you are intending on doing the fencing and what type of fencing. It gets expensive really quickly. I'd recommend going talking to some yards to get an idea of local demand
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well the fields are very big so possibly if we out up a fencer to seperate the field out? Though we may have to do strip grazing due to the possible high nitrogen levels. I would love to ask someone else but there just arent any small scale livery yards round us (dont know whether thats a good thing or not lol) only a large riding school a bit away
 
Well if you have a lot of land maybe be flexible, speak to the livery/ies before they sign up,they could chose what size field they want within reason and if they want to go out more than one horse in together let them manage it themselves. Explain the grass is likely to be rich and do they know how to manage this? If you ask them to be responsible for their own electric fencing with batteries then hopefully they are able to be sensible and strip graze if their horse needs it. I'd avoid taking on total newbies who have never had a horse before as they might not know how to manage their horse and understand rich grazing.

Regardless of if you do individual turnout or big field make sure there is enough space to rest fields and rotate grazing round.

At minimum maybe a winter field, a summer field and a couple of smaller individual paddocks for when horses have injured themselves and need a small area to go out on. Horses can churn fields up when wet so bear that in mind for winter.

If you have lots of land and can maybe cut a strip of grass all around for riding on I suspect that will be most appreciated.
 
I definitely there is demand. The amount of people on livery who don't ride is huge! Even more who only hack.
I've been out today with 2 people on a yard without a school. They are there as it has better turnout than most other yards and just hire schools when required.
 
If you have reasonable hacking, I would say it's not necessary. Lots of people only hack these days and some people don't ride their horses at all. If you have plenty of well drained grazing (and don't over stock it), that's a big plus point for a lot of owners.
 
Depends on what you're offering and the area. I've often traded having an arena for better turnout options / control over my turnout. Sometimes that's meant only hacking and trailering out to arena hire, which is doable if your pricepoint is right.

Where I am now, there's a field available for riding all year round, which is on sand and is exceptionally well draining. It's possible to school and jump pretty much year round without issue. It's still cheaper than it would be with an arena, but it's a viable option for owners with horses in work. Of course, typically, none of mine are in work now, so I don't get to use it!
 
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