Livery Yard that make money!

I agree that it is not a business to go into to make your fortune!

But - YO who are not making a profit, do you take into account what you would have to pay to keep your own horses on livery elsewhere (out of taxed income!) if you didn't have your own yard? That's profit - not hard cash but still.

I looked at buying a yard a few years ago, admittedly it was unusual in that it had a lot of land and very few stables with little or no potential to build more but while it would have been easy to cover running costs and little requirement to put in too many hours, paying a large morgage made it unviable! Land is so expensive in the south east that this is probably the case for many.
 
Genuine question then.... if YOs are barely breaking even or running at a loss, why do it?

For those that say DIYs lose them money, or that they only get a profit from schooling horses to sell - why do DIY, or why do livery at all if you can make money from buying and selling?

There's also the point about paying for livery for your own horses if you didn't have the yard. For those that have several horses it would run into hundreds if not thousands in livery costs a month - that's definitely a cost that ought to be counted as profit.
 
xspiralx said:
There's also the point about paying for livery for your own horses if you didn't have the yard. For those that have several horses it would run into hundreds if not thousands in livery costs a month - that's definitely a cost that ought to be counted as profit.
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I'll choose your post as this has cropped up several times before - my own horses have absolutely nothing to do with the livery business, I do not count their feed, bedding etc as cost of running a business, my books don't take them into consideration full stop.
They are paid for from other sources of income:)
 
cbmcts said:
I agree that it is not a business to go into to make your fortune!

But - YO who are not making a profit, do you take into account what you would have to pay to keep your own horses on livery elsewhere (out of taxed income!) if you didn't have your own yard? That's profit - not hard cash but still.
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Very interesting point!

I went to a private equine college and one of the senior instructors once told me that the owners had once employed the sevices of an accountant to help them find a way to make the school profitable. The accountant pointed out that if the family paid for all their private horses (there were at least ten of these at the time I was there with all their costs, feed bedding, shoeing, vet costs, worming and so on coming out of the school coffers, despite the fact that these horses were rarely ridden by students) out of their own private pockets, the school would make a healthy profit. The accountant was promptly sacked! :rolleyes:
 
I think that is a fair point. There are enough people running yards to subsidise their own horses to severely impact the prices that people trying to run a proper business can charge. At our yard there was recently some talk of possibly building a school, depending on the finances. I know it won't happen as to recoop the costs they would have to put the bills up to such an extent that the current liveries, who are nearly all happy hackers, would leave.
 
My mum used to have a yard. No mortgage and she still didnt make money, just covered the cost of a couple of horses (I paid the cost price of mine). We closed it eventually because it was pointless running a quasi- charity for staff and liveries. Admittedly even as a teenager I thought my mum wasnt exactly using a business brain.

Now I have thought about this and the reasons why..

1) including all bedding, hay and feed can be a total disaster because you as the YM take the hit on the price fluctuations and people wasting and overusing bed and hay and feed. If you run DIY running a package which includes the bed, hay and feed is a bad plan - better to make people source theri own or better source from you, at a margin on the basis of what they have used. Part and full liveries can be as bad. We offered part livery and the amount of bed and over haying and over feeding was ridiculous. Very difficult to explain to liveries who think their horses are "eventers" who are exploding out of their skin when all they actually do is hack and do half an hour in the school that the horse does not need 1.5kgs of grain a day.
2) not charging enough!! we used to include a brush off but not tack cleaning and no way did we charge enough. A lot of the liveries were filthy and covered in mud because they had cheap and nasty field rugs, so tons of work to brush off.
3) staff didnt work hard enough ! 4 boxes to muck out a day - they must have thought they were in heaven. Plus weekends off when yours truly would work for nothing.
4) you have to aim your package at the market that will pay for it. we had a small odd shaped outdoor school which people willing to pay for good full or part livery wouldnt want. We should have offered DIY and charged for the hay, feed and bedding. if you have good facilities its easier to charge more for packages you can potentially make more out of.

Completely agree also with those who point out it can be hard to raise prices when so many people arent trying to make money, just subsidise their horses. My sis pays about 500 quid a month for everything except tack cleaning and exercise and full grooming (but gets a brush off etc) amazing facilities, because she is basically subsidising a cost the YO would have anyway - she has 2 liveries only and then her own horses. To the YO this makes sense but you cant make money that way if you are trying to actually run a commercial operation.

I really hope that my experiences have made me a better livery. I dont mind paying decent money or extra for more shavings, and I know you cant get it perfect all of the time.
 
IMHO, there are a lot of people who run yards that aren't 'professional' just hobbies - that's all fine and good as long as they don't expect to make a living from them!A lot of these yards forget to register as a business re rates, insurance and tax which provides a very unlevel playing field for the yard that is required to provide an income.

The problem is that human nature being what it is :p is that customers will go for the apparently better value option and some YOs forget that they can't realistically expect to get paid a salary for doing their own horses....which leads to lower/no standards within the industry.

I really think the horse industry is the last sector of business that tolerates these standards - I'm not sure why - just look at the way SOME farriers, YO's, saddle fitters operate, I can't think of any provider in other service industries that would get away with these attitudes and we would still spend money with them:confused:

Again, speaking personally, I think that if the horse industry doesn't start to regulate itself it will find that that it is regulated by officialdom via HMRC and licensing. I appreciate that will add cost and admin to many small yards which may put them out of business but tbf many of those yards are an accident waiting to happen - just read the posts on here about yards :eek:

No easy answer really.
 
martlin said:
I'll choose your post as this has cropped up several times before - my own horses have absolutely nothing to do with the livery business, I do not count their feed, bedding etc as cost of running a business, my books don't take them into consideration full stop.
They are paid for from other sources of income:)
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Not trying to be obtuse, but I don't quite understand your point.

I wasn't trying to say that keeping the horses would be part of the cost of running the business, but that by having them on your own yard and doing them yourself, you're saving a lot of livery charges that you'd otherwise have to pay to keep them elsewhere.

It might not be an 'actual' cost, but it is worth an amount of money which has to be considered somewhere.

Forgive me if I've missed what you're trying to say!
 
I worked as a groom as a teenager on a small stud. The owner had lots of money and it was some sort of tax right off as it didn't make a profit.
I think most YO are optomists and never really cost down to the last penny what their liveries are costing them. They tend not to facter in the £ per hour rate, and the cost of on going repairs. I had a friend who bought a farm and advised them not to do it, apart from the money the aggravation some people cause can not be beleaved all for about £5 a week net profit.
The only person I think I have seen truely make anything from liveries was a farmer with old out buildings as they get grants/right offs etc that most people do not have access to.
 
xspiralx said:
Not trying to be obtuse, but I don't quite understand your point.

I wasn't trying to say that keeping the horses would be part of the cost of running the business, but that by having them on your own yard and doing them yourself, you're saving a lot of livery charges that you'd otherwise have to pay to keep them elsewhere.

It might not be an 'actual' cost, but it is worth an amount of money which has to be considered somewhere.

Forgive me if I've missed what you're trying to say!
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OK, I'll try to explain a bit more.
Of course I'm saving money on livery fees by having horses at home, but more than make up by spending on a bigger mortgage to have stables at home :) It is probably more than the £20 or so pw per horse I would have to pay somewhere.
What I was trying to say, the yard I'm running is separate from my own horses if you like, and that separate yard is not making money, it just about breaks even if I choose not to mention capital costs :), if I take capital costs into consideration - I'm running at a loss.
We have another 2 businesses that prop up my chosen lifestyle, for how long will they be able to do that it's entirely separate kettle of fish :o
 
I see this thread is still doing the rounds, clearly many yards out there aren't making any money, they do it because they don't or can't do anything else.

Myself I'm tied in for many a year, but in truth I just want to find the way to make a path.

Yes if you have your own horses then you are saving money, but you can't compare what it's costing to keep a horse on your own yard to having it on livery, it doesn't work that way.

I wonder if it's only big yards that can make some profit!!
 
T-Bag said:
Yes if you have your own horses then you are saving money, but you can't compare what it's costing to keep a horse on your own yard to having it on livery, it doesn't work that way.

I wonder if it's only big yards that can make some profit!!
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I think that is probably the case, economy of scale and all that.

DIY livery has to be the least profitable with the downside of the most disruption to your life if you live on site.

Full, sales and schooling livery probably would make a decent living on a medium sized yard (20 to 35 boxes) but does require a fair bit of skill both with the horses themselves and in marketing your business and would be a very full time job even with staff (who are also the biggest cost for this type of business)

If I had bought the yard I seriously looked at I would have needed to regard it as my 'pension' as in continue working full time to cover the mortgage payment and only expect the yard to cover it's own costs and basic maintenance and then hope like hell that it's value had risen enough (hollow laugh, this was 2005/6) to fund my retirement when I sold in 20 odd years or more realistically that the urban sprawl would have overtaken that bit of greenbelt and it could be sold as housing rather than grazing.

Still don't think that it was necessarily a bad deal, just that I didn't have the funds without going to the bank so not for me.
 
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