Liveries stealing from liveries!

The lady I share haylage with, we are going to put a rug over the top of the haylage bale and buy a 15ft dog chain to tie tight around the bale and padlock. That will stop the little ******s!

We have been planning anti theft strategies all night!

Wish I had been relaxing other than seething and planning anti theft plans.

Want to kick myself for leaving 3 bridles hooked up with very expensive bits on them! All going to be locked away.

How does everyone lock their saddles on normal racks?
 
this is really sad :(

im on a lovely yard where id feel happy leaving my iphone knocking about, car keys, money etc - its safe.

yards i have been on previous though - i wouldnt have left a pair of scissors about - never mind my £500 phone!!!
 
My feed got stolen all the time at my last yard, along with my sprays - mane etc all the time , brand new bottles, bags of treats, brand new head coller, £129 KK bit

The bit was the final straw I could not hack it, I work hard to pay for my horse, if you can bleeding afford one get a GOLDFISH makes my blood boil....!!!!!!

My new yard is good, everything is safe.
 
With regards to your problem would it not be easier if all four if you put in equal money to buy haylage / hay etc and buy in bulk. Then it's fair .?? Just share it between the four horses all paying same amount.?? At least she won't be stealing yours then .
 
How awful.

I'm lucky I would feel happy leaving anything out on my yard. For a big yard we have an amazing family atmosphere. None of the usual bitching, worrying about feed hay or anything else being stolen.
 
Generally it is feed and haylage that goes missing. Happened last winter too. My friend has just had her horse PTS and the week run up, he wasn't eating, so she knew she wasn't using it, but it still went down!

Thankfully tack and general stuff stays put, but this latest experience of taking haylage from a net hanging in a stable has really taken the biscuit, so everything is being locked as I now don't trust anyone, which is really sad.......

Again, if you cant feed a horse, don't have one!
 
Use food colouring. Soak the string in a bright colour just where you knot the net to tie it up. Also if you are tying hay up elsewhere such as a barn coat the knot & string in Stockholm tar.
I've had issues with someone who isn't putting any of her hay out in the field, she turns out after me, so I'm basically providing ad-lib hay for a large & greedy horse for 10/11hrs everyday. Wkend I took two of her small bales while she was nearby & told her very politely I was just getting back what she owed me.
 
This is honestly just sad to read. There are five of us, including owner on my yard and we can all leave our bags with wallets, phones etc and never have a worry. We text each other to check if it is ok to borrow a scoop of chaff for goodness sake. We always tell each other to help ourselves, but we still always show the courtesy of texting or calling and checking before we do.

I would not be able to cope being on a yard with no trust.
 
a spray bottle with either bright red or blue food coloring. spray on hay. will not harm the horse (tho he may sport a colored nose for a short time!!) and whoever is taking the hay will have colored hands and you wil soon spot your colored hay in another stable!
 
Oddly I would trust them with my phone and car keys - but not my haylage!

Food colouring is interesting, I will think about whether it can be done.

With regard to putting in equal amounts to share the haylage 4 ways - good thought but she has 4 horses of different sizes (plus a foal) so it would get complicated in working out how much we each use. One of hers is out with ours.
 
That's dreadful..... All feed at home, I would lend anyone some this weather( struggle with hay as my 50 bales are with farmer!)


Such a pity that you can't pop CCTV or a web cam in box and catch red handed......

What about attaching a rape alarm to the hay nets ...... Make a real din....
 
Highlands said:
What about attaching a rape alarm to the hay nets ...... Make a real din....
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And scare the bejesus out of the poor horses! ;-)

I would have to call a yard meeting on this, but then, I cannot tolerate stuff like this. It is totally unacceptable. I would say what I have said before when faced with similar in work and that is along the lines of...

"If you fall on hard times, it is fine, let me know and I will help any way I can....but steal from me and you are digging yourself a bigger hole".

I will help anyone if and when I can and I can forgive anyone pretty much anything, but only if they are honest.

This yard sounds like a nightmare. I could just not go on without having this out in the open. I wouldn't care how much it affected the atmosphere...it is just plain wrong!
 
Noone on our yard touches anything but I have been on yards where they do.
If they are struggling I'm sure someone who lend them hay/feed until they get stocked up again.

Maybe put a note up with your nets - saying "these are my nets and you are being watched" :D
 
My mate and I had this.........turned out it was the girl with the most expensive horse as well!

We ended up premixing all our feed and putting it into freezer bags and keeping them locked in a massive compost bin!
 
Or a sign saying 'Smile for the camera'!!

asterid said:
How does everyone lock their saddles on normal racks?
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You can get a saddle rack frame-check eBay. Bloke at my yard has one, given how massive his horse is, no-one else could use it!:rolleyes:

Request lockable storage from the YO or buy a cheapo filing cabinet thing with a single door that you can shove filled haynets in and lock.
 
asterid said:
Generally it is feed and haylage that goes missing. Happened last winter too. My friend has just had her horse PTS and the week run up, he wasn't eating, so she knew she wasn't using it, but it still went down!

Thankfully tack and general stuff stays put, but this latest experience of taking haylage from a net hanging in a stable has really taken the biscuit, so everything is being locked as I now don't trust anyone, which is really sad.......

Again, if you cant feed a horse, don't have one!
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Is it small bales of hay? Could you get an old chest freezer and put some in there, if so? I'd rather spend money on numerous lockable storage containers than feeding a thief's horse!
 
At a yard I was briefly at, the YO who also ran a small riding school nicked my feed and presumably everyone elses.

I didn't realise at first - but then asked one of the liveries why all her feed dustbins were chained and padlocked. She said it was because she knew the YO had sticky fingers.

As it was, the YO was rather 'caught out' and lost business over it (serves her right) because the lady with the padlocked bins had a racehorse, and was feeding it racehorse cubes.... that feed blew most of the Riding School ponies' brains, and they were bolting and bucking clients off all over the place!! ;)
 
What about some stealth electric wire hooked up to a unit in amoungst the hay :) Altho a video camera would be good for a you tube post of the result.
 
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Just had a thought that might work of you have a rough idea of what time the thief operates at. Get an old phone handset (or even your actual phone) & leave it recording in your stable while you ride etc. Or, get a free sim for an old handset, knot some hay round it & hide it in a leaf of hay in your haynet. Then when its been stolen ring the phone. Obviously you'd need to make sure the suspected thief was still around too. I'd be tempted to make my own ring tone too, something along the lines of 'I'm a thieving barsteward'.
 
Confide in the suspected thief that someone is pinching but you will have it sorted soon as you have installed a tiny trail camera to catch the thief in the act:D
 
Last year, everyone bought their own hay, haylage and straw into the yard, as it is DIY. However, because the majority of the yard was on straw bedding with a few feeding hay, the YO decided this year to help everyone out and source small bales of hay and straw and sell them to us. This meant the yard wouldn't have to worry about sourcing and delivery as she had sorted it. She only asked that you ask for a bale before taking it from the barn, then she would know who had taken what. Her prices were very reasonable.. in fact I can't imagine she added more than 20p onto the original bale costs!

Turns out someone had been stealing bales of straw on the sly, and when it came to her adding up who owed what, she was short of something like 15 bales! It is a small yard and by this point many people had switched to shavings, so there were only a handful of people even using th straw! I was just so shocked that someone would do that after she had done us all a favour that she didn't even have to do!
 
I agree with the food colouring idea! How disgusting to steal from you!

On my old yard everything would go missing, people would go into your horses box to get your headcollar and leadrope, steal feed and one person even took my martigale off my bridle to use....pretty obvious who it was when they left it on their horses bridle. :rolleyes: My yard owner wasnt bothered either, so I moved and always thought it was a novelty to not have to hid everything, could even leave your headcollar near the field gate and no one stole it :eek:

But the stealing has to stop, horses are expensive and Im guessing you dont want to pay to feed someones elses horse..I would want a yard meeting and Im thinking whoever has been stealing will be red faced!
 
I've been very lucky and not really had any problems with theft..

Apart from one instance. I had an old arthritic mare that used to wear magnetic boots in the stable and some thieving scum stole them off her legs!

Only one at a time...we kept replacing them as they really helped her and they ended up taking a full set FFS.
 
At my last yard there was a dreadful time where hay/feed/bedding was going walkies. Some liveries were moaning about it & I chipped in that I must be lucky as none of mine had gone missing.
The next thing rumours were flying around that it *must* be me.
What made this so funny was I had a barn of hay made from my own fields & I sold it to many of the liveries, I also had monthly deliveries of straw & feed from a local merchant....in fact is someone needed to borrow chaff or a bale of straw it was me they always came to :D

Ironically a livery left & so did the stealing. She had been one of the most vocal about her things going missing ;)
 
Someone was stealing YO's Alfa A a few years ago (old yard I was at) by literally a good few handfulls a day, and she put a snap mouse/rat trap set underneath a thin layer of the alfa A . . . . . a people sat about outside a few hours after she'd set up it & yes there was a hell of a scream from the feed room & the culprit needed help removing said trap :D Evil but it worked!
 
glamourpuss said:
At my last yard there was a dreadful time where hay/feed/bedding was going walkies. Some liveries were moaning about it & I chipped in that I must be lucky as none of mine had gone missing.
The next thing rumours were flying around that it *must* be me.
What made this so funny was I had a barn of hay made from my own fields & I sold it to many of the liveries, I also had monthly deliveries of straw & feed from a local merchant....in fact is someone needed to borrow chaff or a bale of straw it was me they always came to :D

Ironically a livery left & so did the stealing. She had been one of the most vocal about her things going missing ;)
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This same thing happened to me, I was normally alone at the yard away from the clique that was there in the day and when I was the only one saying that I hadnt lost anything the finger was pointed at me it was awful and I ended up leaving, low and behold the thefts carried out after I was gone.

People need to be very careful about pointing the finger if they are not 100% sure because it really isnt nice to be on the other end!
 
We are very lucky at our yard, all liveries and YO's are good friends and very honest. If we had someone who was struggling to feed their horse I would prefer to be asked for some help rather than find someone has taken without asking. Its the poor horse that suffers in the end. Thieving is one of the worst things to do especially as they will be caught out in the end. All our hay and straw is included in the price of the livery so at least the horses would never go without. YO's always make sure we give our horses good hay nets and keep a good eye on the horse's welfare. I hope when this person is caught they have a good explanation for this dishonesty.
 
I've been at 2 yards with feed tealeafs. One was a woman who wouldn't buy her old horse (who of course meant everything to her) feed, but could afford to go clubbing all the time (& used to appear at the yard about 11am to turnout in the previous nights glam rags having not been home).

Second was a woman who stole from evryone. We'd been wondering why our feed was disappearing (into the belly of her large wb). She didn't work, boyfriend was a dealer who'd lost his yard to pay off the ex & had no income. She stood in the yard well through winter telling me what a good doer her horse was, she'd only bought 3 bags of food all winter, big alarm bells. Did she think I was as stupid as that? Really? We said to YO there had been thefts (accused no-one), & asked to padlock our feedbins, to which she agreed. After all, if you aren't stealing seeing a padlock on someone elses bin is not insulting. When she came next day, saw the locks on our bins & came out the feedroom & blew her stack. No-one had accused anyone, it was our choice to lock our feedbin. Suddenly horse wasn't such a good doer & had to start buying feed. She & boyfriend took it as a personal insult by me (5 of us chose to lock our bins so why I was devil incarnate who knows) to them. Their stall was next to mine, they used to stand in there threatening to beat me up. Lovely people. Funny thing is couple months later they got chucked off for stealing from YO. Karma.
 
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