Keeping horses at two separate yards?

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HelenBack

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I’m aware that there are people on here who keep their horses at two separate yards and this is looking like a likelihood for me. I don’t want it to become really difficult and stressful so I’m looking for hints and tips to make it easier.

Presumably the closer to home and the closer to each other the better but has anyone got any other advice apart from that?
 
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HelenBack said:
I’m aware that there are people on here who keep their horses at two separate yards and this is looking like a likelihood for me. I don’t want it to become really difficult and stressful so I’m looking for hints and tips to make it easier.

Presumably the closer to home and the closer to each other the better but has anyone got any other advice apart from that?
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presumably an overwhelming reason for doing this?
Because if you don’t have to, better avoided!
Advice: don’t get involved in any yard politics whatsoever, be ridiculously nice to absolutely everyone on both sites, but keep your interactions with the humans as brief as civility allows.
Good luck
 
Following as I moved Coblet off his DIY livery yard onto grass livery in April to live out a retired lifestyle for the summer as a companion, but his daily care is still my responsibility and I go once/day to feed, pick feet out, groom, poo pick and give him a fuss. However if and when daughter and I get another ridden horse (I'm looking at a potential loan on sunday) then said horse will go to the livery yard where coblet was for 2 years.
Yard is 3 miles away and coblet is 6 miles away thankfully in the same direction!
 
I have find it twice. In both cases one horse on diy and the other part livery. In one case in similar directions. Other one totally different. Both times one horse was like yours retired but still my care. Fortunately had friends at yard who helped and in the second instance there were always horses out full time so my horse was never going to be left on own. Actually I’ve done it three times but the other one was horse in full competition yard and I only rode my horse, no yard or other duties. It is doable and yours being in similar directions sounds helpful. Not sure have hints other than perhaps explaining why you can’t stay and chat and being very organised so prepping feeds or hay nets when you have time.
 
fredflop said:
DIY or full livery?
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One full and the other I’m not sure yet as I’m still looking at options. I’m the sort that likes to get there as close to every day as possible even when they’re on full but obviously not having to do jobs on full is a major help.

Exasperated said:
H

presumably an overwhelming reason for doing this?
Because if you don’t have to, better avoided!
Advice: don’t get involved in any yard politics whatsoever, be ridiculously nice to absolutely everyone on both sites, but keep your interactions with the humans as brief as civility allows.
Good luck
Click to expand...

Oh yes, I’m definitely with you on the yard politics thing and have made that mistake too many times before. Never again! Unfortunately though it is looking like I’ve run out of options for both at the same place, although I have really tried.

Kirstd33 said:
Following as I moved Coblet off his DIY livery yard onto grass livery in April to live out a retired lifestyle for the summer as a companion, but his daily care is still my responsibility and I go once/day to feed, pick feet out, groom, poo pick and give him a fuss. However if and when daughter and I get another ridden horse (I'm looking at a potential loan on sunday) then said horse will go to the livery yard where coblet was for 2 years.
Yard is 3 miles away and coblet is 6 miles away thankfully in the same direction!
Click to expand...

This is a fairly similar situation to mine, hence the different needs. Do you think you’ll manage to make it work okay or do you have worries?
 
humblepie said:
I have find it twice. In both cases one horse on diy and the other part livery. In one case in similar directions. Other one totally different. Both times one horse was like yours retired but still my care. Fortunately had friends at yard who helped and in the second instance there were always horses out full time so my horse was never going to be left on own. Actually I’ve done it three times but the other one was horse in full competition yard and I only rode my horse, no yard or other duties. It is doable and yours being in similar directions sounds helpful. Not sure have hints other than perhaps explaining why you can’t stay and chat and being very organised so prepping feeds or hay nets when you have time.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that sounds encouraging and I will definitely have help at at least one place and hopefully the other too. Hopefully it will all be manageable then!
 
I currently have three horses across two yards. All three have very different needs, and if they could talk would prioritise different things!! What one likes the other doesn't unfortunately!! My two horses in work are actually in another county an hours drive away down the motorway, but are on full livery, very well looked after and the yard has excellent facilities. For me this makes it worth it. The lady at the yard rides the younger one for me a couple of times a week to make life easier. My mare is a complete princess and its reassuring to have someone there to pander to her when she kicks off to come in as I work long hours in the NHS. My old retired mare is about 8 minutes away from home, and is very well looked after, but the yard has very limited facilities. Being close to home I can go and visit after work which is helpful. It is a far from perfect situation but they are all where they need to be if that makes sense, with their needs catered for. For me three lots of livery is a considerable amount of money so although inconvenient from a logistical point of view at least I am not paying all that money for them to be somewhere they are not happy or that doesn't work for them. Livery is essentially a compromise in some form most of the time, and different people will want and prioritise different things.
 
I once had three horses on three different yards but all very close to each other. All were on part livery but the different yards met their different needs (although two would have been on the same yard if they had space for another horse).

I found it worked well but I did end up buying duplicates of things like riding hat and grooming kit as I found it easier to have kit at each yard rather than having to remember to put whatever in the car (mainly my hat!) when going to a different yard.
 
I’ve got two at two different yards after my yard of 14yrs closed down last year and then I moved them to another yard together further away as couldn’t find two spaces together nearby. That didn’t work out so now I’ve moved them closer but to two different yards as they have different needs and one yard is too expensive to keep both at. They hate each other so can’t go in together which is another factor 😩.

Yard 1 is 5 day livery 7 miles away so I only have to do weekends if I need to. It has a school and a nice routine which suits my difficult youngster. He’s settled really well there.

Yard 2 is DIY 5 miles from home and 7 miles from the other yard but along main roads so quick. It’s sort of triangle journey. My older horse that has had intermittent soundness issues is living out 24/7 with a small herd which he loves. I have a stable if I want it but there isn’t a school so not suitable for my youngster. I share days with the others I share the field with so technically I only have to do two days a week but those days I have to feed all 4 horses and poo pick field and do checks, rugs etc. in winter I’ve had to go up weekends to catch up on poo-picking etc. it’s hard work especially in winter due to it being on a hill a distance from the yard.

Although it’s worked quite well I still feel I’m not able to give ether the attention I really want to. Older horse has gone a bit feral and has separation anxiety leaving the herd.

Ideally I’d still like them to be in the same place if I could find somewhere affordable with the right facilities.
 
I have horses across 3 separate locations - unridden at home, a ridden one on full livery at a yard with facilities and another ridden on grass with no facilities but good hacking. I do all of them once a day, which currently works as both liveries are within 15 mins of home in the same direction. In the winter the ridden ones will move to the same yard, or else the one at grass will have some time off as I think it would be a stretch too far to get them both done after work with the shorter evenings.
Main downside is that I have "stuff" distributed between the various places and my car is effectively a mobile tack/feed room 😂
I think it's definitely do-able depending on locations and proximities of yards to each other. And if only one is ridden that probably makes it easier too!
 
I had two on two different yards. Yard 1 was not the right place for my 2-year old (we did try; she jumped a fence to get away from another horse) so she was moved to more youngstock-appropriate livery. My old horse was very, very neurotic, and Yard 1 was the first place we'd been in a long time that didn't set off her neuroses (fencewalking). Yard 1 is seven miles from my house, and Yard 2 is about 15. They are circa seven miles from one another, so I always drove in a big triangle. When old horse died and I bought a new riding-age horse, I decided to keep him at Yard 1 because the hacking is a million times better than at Yard 2.

It kind of drove me nuts, but it was tolerable because I wasn't seeing the youngster every day. It's a youngster. She was on full livery. But when she was about 4.5, Yard 1 agreed she was old enough to return, so she did. It was easier to back her and produce her there because there are people to help, facilities, and I could spend more time with her at that yard.
 
HelenBack said:
I’m aware that there are people on here who keep their horses at two separate yards and this is looking like a likelihood for me. I don’t want it to become really difficult and stressful so I’m looking for hints and tips to make it easier.

Presumably the closer to home and the closer to each other the better but has anyone got any other advice apart from that?
Click to expand...
Yes I did this in the 80's as my mare had vision problems but luckily I just walked up the field to the old girl as the yard was at the top and the other the bottom but owner by 2 seperate people. I just doubled things up so the only thing needs toping was the food.
 
I did it short term. It helped that I had to drive past one (I could see him from the road) to get to the other so it didn't really cost me much in terms of time but it was still a PITA compared to checking them both at the same time. I knew I'd be letting Arch go at the end of the summer though and I wanted to make sure he had the best summer possible so it was worth it to me.

Which one would be staying put, the older or the younger? I'm conscious your current yard is a fair distance from your home and not a huge number of other places between the two so unless you're moving one very close to home I think you'd struggle even with full livery.
 
I had two at different DIY yards. Over Winter it was a nightmare!
I would never do it again, however if one lived out or was on full livery it would be more manageable.
 
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