One in four livery yards a welfare concern?

I think a licence to own a horse would help more!

I know of an ABRS approved riding school that IMO has serious welfare issues, safety issues too. I also know of a BHS approved yard that has some seriously weird ideas!
 
"One in 10 of the 622 respondents said horses had been deprived of either food or water on their livery yard, and a quarter said there were dangerous items like farm machinery or poisonous plants in their horses' grazing.

Six per cent said they had witnessed violent abuse of horses and seven per cent said their yard had been the subject of a welfare complaint to the authorities in the past year"

For me this makes me wonder why on earth people are prepared to keep their horses on these yards - 25% who have dangerous plants/machinery in their grazing
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Mind you 622 respondents really isnt a huge sample
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and the comments state that DIY come up the worst.............personally its the part and full livery yards that i have experienced to be a nightmare - horses NOT fed / NO water / hay eaten by 6pm / horses not turned out til late morning / lack of bedding etc etc and you pay for the privalage - these are the ones that should be regulated, as you are paying for a service
at least with DIY if u are a responsible animal lover you ensure your horse has the best......................... ( although agree it is fustrating to see horses on DIY with owners that think it is ok to not turn up - in these cases they should be kicked of the yard)
 
I don't think a licence would help as I think maybe a lot of the respondants were trying to pass the buck for their own lack of care.

DIY yards were the worse - who looks after a horse on a DIY yard - the owner. So if they don't have enough food whose fault is that. You either move the horse or you feed it.

A licence would put the price of livery up, and who would suffer then?
 
Yep our DIY livery had a girl do their horse and stupidly shut it out of their stable where the food and water was for 12 hours.

So we should be shut down because their help is incompetent?

Also DIY seems to mean feed it when they forget, rescue horse when they leave it out and fireworks are going off, see to the vet they called them but then didn't turn up and also sort out any other problems arising...

"Do It Yourself" huh?
 
I would take survey's with a pinch of salt really - after all not everyone is honest and as survey like this is very opinion based rather than scientific.

The survey number is very small compared to the horse owning population and also their are a certain type of person who takes part in surveys so you do not always get a diverse enough group of people completing them.

I imagine also some of the reported incidences were a case of people being unpleasant about other livery owners that they did not like.

Also as seen on lots of these forums there is a great disparity of what people see as acceptable ways of keeping horses. One person may thinking that turning a horse out in bad weather is terrible another may think that leaving it in because it is raining is unacceptable as horses need turnout.

Someone people may feel a horse is deprived of food if it does not have ad lib hay or is in restricted grazing due to laminitis.

People have different views on rugging and also what constitutes as violent abuse (which I would consider something extreme needing reporting to the RSPCA) other may differ.

Also just because a yard has had a welfare visit does not necessary mean that the yard has a welfare problem - there are a lot of nasty vindictive people in the horse world who would not think twice of saying nasty things about people even it were not true.

Also those responding could be reporting the same incidences so it might not be lots of people abusing their horses but a small group of people who have been reported by more than one person.

Regarding the dangerous plants question we had some ragwort in the field but we removed it as soon as we spotted it. So temporarily we had a dangerous plant but removed it as soon as we noticed it. It really depends on how the questions are worded.

I am not sure how a license would help really as a DIY livery yard owner may not be able to be on site all day to make sure people are behaving in an appropriate way and would be reliant her employing someone to supervise the yard to make sure everyone was treating the horses well. What about people who are on grass livery - would you have someone sitting in the field all day to supervise them as well?

Sadly there will be people who abuse their horses but I have seen no evidence of anyone on our yard doing this. The only thing is the ragwort which as soon as it was noticed was dealt with.
 
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Also as seen on lots of these forums there is a great disparity of what people see as acceptable ways of keeping horses. One person may thinking that turning a horse out in bad weather is terrible another may think that leaving it in because it is raining is unacceptable as horses need turnout.

Someone people may feel a horse is deprived of food if it does not have ad lib hay or is in restricted grazing due to laminitis.


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This is a good point. There are people on the yard where I keep my horse that do not look after theirs to an acceptable standard (in my opinion) but obviously to them it is...
 
I believe half the trouble is people arent realistic over what they will pay for facilities. By the time I take off business rates, electricity, water rates, maintenance of facilities, field maintenance, public liability and business insurance DIY at £25.00 leaves me with less than a £3 a horse, then add in my time to clean the yard, make sure horses are all ok, late night check, being on call 24/7 it is just not financially viable.

Even a horse on full livery at £100 per week including exercise pays less than £4 per hour for the actual work I do each day.

10 years ago livery prices were much as they are now, everything else in life has gone up with inflation execpt the horse world it seems, in 1991 I was paying £14.50 per week for DIY.

In one way it is very good as it means it has opened up horses to people that previously never thought they could afford it, but it has also allowed people with very little knowledge own a horse and until these items are addressed things arent going to change.

I have no objection to livery yards being regulated, but I think it is about time owners become realistic, you would not rent a room out in your house for £20 a week, yet you expect to keep your horse, good well maintained facilities, electricty when required, security, additional help, 24/7 turn out etc etc. Owners need to get realistic, and livery yards need to start charging again a realistic price where it is a business and as such should be accountable like anyother business.

Whilst yards are making no money, safety and welfare corners have to be cut. I charge £55 a week DIY with hay and bedding included and have a waiting list, people will pay you have to be brave and try and raise standards of horse welfare, but this comes at a price to owners.
 
Well said Scally what you say is 100% correct.
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Everyone wants something on the cheap. Yet try & buy your own place with well fenced land, stables menage, indoor, electricity, water, business rates & insurance. FGS Try putting your dog or cat in kennels for a week & see how much that costs.
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I think Freshman you have hit the nail on the head, it is cheaper to keep your horse, than to board your dog for a week?????

You pay for what you get, how many people go to a livery yard and see proof of insurance and business rates, they are quick to blame Yard Owner when things go wrong, if you turn your horse out in a field with farm machinery in it, at the end of the day who do you really have to blame? If your field has ragwort in it and you are on DIY who is responsible for pulling it, surely not the Yard Owner on the measly amount you pay each week. You pay for what you get in this life, if liveries are not happy with the service and facilities they receive, then move but this is going to cost you in a well maintained and professionally managed yard.

Why do you think professional riders charge what they charge, even then they are making next to nothing still certainly not the minimum wage per hour that they look after your pride and joy, yet people think it is dear. Horse owners need to wake up to how much it costs to provide a million and one facilities that is now expected.

Bring on regulation and minimum charges to cover realistic costs, rather than cheap, unregulated, non horsey people, make money out of the tinest corner of land you have and the welfare of horses will go up quickly and considerably.

Boarding kennels have become standard of no less than £7.50 per day country wide for dogs due to regulation and local authority approval and are regularly checked for standards, welfare and health reasons. Regulate livery yards and realistically owners will then have to pay a realistic going rate and that certainly isnt £25 per week.

There should also be huge fines for anyone boarding a livery and not declaring it as a livery and paying insurance and business rates. If also it is found that they are not a declared livery yard, the horse owner should have no comeback for injuries or accidents caused to them or their horse as they did not do the proper checks and pay the going "correct" rate, but try to do things on the cheap.

I have to take responsibility for my business it is about time too that owners take responsibilities for their horses.
 
I have to admit since moving to the UK 2mths ago and visiting probably between 30-40 livery yards/rented yards/fields (plus many more private yards) - I am hugely surprised by the quality (or lack there of) of livery yards and rented garzing. I am of course primarily talking about DIY but many of these yards offer other types of livery too.

I obviously must have looked at the UK horse society with tinted glasses. From Pony Club, the BHS, and reading magazines such as H&H - iexpected most yards to have ideal fencing (post and ril or th like), large menages in good order(most actually seem to be the size of a postge stamp) and super stables in good order. That rarely seems to be the case. Facilities are generally poor - as you say you get what you pay for i guess. Full livery and competition yards are obviously far suepior but fencing in pasture is often still less than desirable. I have to saythat livery yards and Equestrian centres are usually far better in this respect in Ireland.
There are few DIY yards in ireland (most are only cropping up in the last few mths) hence most livery yards in Ireland are of a high standard as that is what people who pay full livery fees expect.

Personally, safe turnout, safe stabling and a good surface in the arena are oing to be my priority when I buy a horse in Spring. The yard I am most likely to use is excellent in all but surface of the school but has good land and lots of hacking and may be adjusting the surface in the near future. I wont be buying a horse (or bringing my own over until I can afford a yard with decent safe facilities.

ETS _ i was on the phone whilst writing this post so I apologise that it doesnt make much sense!
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I am curious scally, a long time ago when my parents had their own place in the UK they always had a couple of liveries in, think we had 5 or 6 stables so most were our own. Should someone in that situation pay business rates etc? Not too au fait with that kind of situation in UK.
 
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I am curious scally, a long time ago when my parents had their own place in the UK they always had a couple of liveries in, think we had 5 or 6 stables so most were our own. Should someone in that situation pay business rates etc? Not too au fait with that kind of situation in UK.

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Yes they should. And they would get caught for rates on all the stables, barns, school and any other facilites you have, not just the couple of stables. It is all done on square footage and you are charged the same amount as you would for having an office in the centre of town.
 
I think you have to be careful there, if people offering a couple of stables for a nominal sum were asked to pay business rates thousands and thousands of private yards would close the doors to others, and then the only option would be part / full livery and you would outprice 3/4 of the horse owning population, so it really would be a hobby only for the rich.

I totally agree with scally, running a yard isn't financially viable unless you have top priced liveries. Someone paying £15 - £25 per week shouldn't expect any kind of anything tbh cos they're not paying enough for the YO to pay anything formally ie insurance, rates, field maintenance etc.

And I agree with those who said some of the worst cases of neglect are in higher priced yards where the owners are there less to see what really goes on. I was paying £750 per month on a yard and had to buy extra feed and my horse was abused by the YM , who luckily has since been replaced.
 
I sense someone looking for a lucrative sideline in licensing livery yards as the motive behind this. I am sorry but if you can only get 622 responses in a YEAR then that is a worthless piece of “research” and cannot be taken at all seriously given the amount of horses kept in yards in this country!! Someone was totally ripped off an no conclusion can possibly be reached from its analysis, it’s shocking that it even made publication. Another Tax on horses?????

By all means prosecute people if they are not looking after their horse but why do we British always do this sort of thing and punish the majority for the sake of the stupid minority. Why shouldn't a farmer rent a small paddock in his farmyard to the lady down the lane on a budget without big brother poking their nose in, or a struggling farmer have a sideline in his yard of a few boxes for liveries!!!

As for poisonous plants, I have been waging war on ragwort blown in form an ignorant person over the hill who incidentally has horses!!!! At any one time I cannot say hand on heart that there are no plants on my ground!!!!
 
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I think you have to be careful there, if people offering a couple of stables for a nominal sum were asked to pay business rates thousands and thousands of private yards would close the doors to others, and then the only option would be part / full livery and you would outprice 3/4 of the horse owning population, so it really would be a hobby only for the rich.



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I don't agree with buisness rates on equestrian use - not at the rate they are charged. But why should one yard be penalised with business rates and insurnace, when none of the other yards around them are being charged. And because those other yards are only charging £15 a week the yard with all the extra expenses can't cover it costs as it is competing on a very unlevel playing field.

But never mind small little private yards - what about equestrian colleges that provide livery as well? They don't pay business rates. Neither do charities.
 
I see your point but the yards who pay business rates etc are big commercial ventures and will charge huge livery prices to reflect their costs, not the small farmer, or person with a couple of acres renting out a couple of boxes for pin money. If the smaller person had to start funding insurance, rates etc they'd never recoup that. It would cost them money to have customers so naturally they'd close off their facilities to others.

Yards will never be an equal playing field because small ventures will shut their doors to any customer and they cannot compete with big yards and turn into commercial ventures cos they don't have the land volume and facilities etc, nor would they want to run a huge commercial enterprise, offering a couple of stables is a sideline.
 
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I see your point but the yards who pay business rates etc are big commercial ventures and will charge huge livery prices to reflect their costs, not the small farmer, or person with a couple of acres renting out a couple of boxes for pin money. If the smaller person had to start funding insurance, rates etc they'd never recoup that. It would cost them money to have customers so naturally they'd close off their facilities to others.

Yards will never be an equal playing field because small ventures will shut their doors to any customer and they cannot compete with big yards and turn into commercial ventures cos they don't have the land volume and facilities etc, nor would they want to run a huge commercial enterprise, offering a couple of stables is a sideline.

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No they are not. We had a small yard - only 6 acres and had to pay £5k business rates a year and £3k insurnace with a £1k excess on any claims. We could only charge £20 a week and that was £5-10 a week more than anyone else in the area - because no one else paid business rates or bothered with insurance.

Do you think that someone offering a couple of stables as a sideline is any less liable in the event of an accident. Don't youthink that at the very least they should have proper insurance?
 
But if that was the case why would you bother to run a livery yard and I don't mean that disrespectfully but if those are your costs v your income why would you operate at all.

I think its up to the customer whether they join a yard with no insurance, they may prefer to take advantage of cheaper livery costs and decide to insure themselves.
 
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But if that was the case why would you bother to run a livery yard and I don't mean that disrespectfully but if those are your costs v your income why would you operate at all.

I think its up to the customer whether they join a yard with no insurance, they may prefer to take advantage of cheaper livery costs and decide to insure themselves.

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We shut the yard. More to do with the insurance implications than the rates. We still have to pay business rates but now they have gone down to £2.5K a year due to small business relief.

Any yard that does not have insurance is very very stupid. It is nothing to do with the liveries having insurance. It is more the fact that the YO is totally liable for any irresponsible act that liveries commit. If they decide to lead their horse around the road and it escapes and kills someone - the YO is liable. If a drunk driver drives thru the fencing, horses escape and kill someone the YO is liable. If someone gets kicked catching their horse the YO is liable.

Your insurance company will do anything it can to get out of paying an insurance claim - and that means passing it on to the YO, who due to past court cases are now seen as liable.

Why would any risk getting sued for something totally out of their control? I personally don't see how yards keep going.
 
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I see your point but the yards who pay business rates etc are big commercial ventures and will charge huge livery prices to reflect their costs, not the small farmer, or person with a couple of acres renting out a couple of boxes for pin money. If the smaller person had to start funding insurance, rates etc they'd never recoup that. It would cost them money to have customers so naturally they'd close off their facilities to others.

Yards will never be an equal playing field because small ventures will shut their doors to any customer and they cannot compete with big yards and turn into commercial ventures cos they don't have the land volume and facilities etc, nor would they want to run a huge commercial enterprise, offering a couple of stables is a sideline.

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No they are not. We had a small yard - only 6 acres and had to pay £5k business rates a year and £3k insurnace with a £1k excess on any claims. We could only charge £20 a week and that was £5-10 a week more than anyone else in the area - because no one else paid business rates or bothered with insurance.

Do you think that someone offering a couple of stables as a sideline is any less liable in the event of an accident. Don't youthink that at the very least they should have proper insurance?

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I rent a field with 2 stables.....I pay £10 a week per horse, its nice for the owners as the land is being used and looked after, and they get a bit of money out of it. God forbid though, if any accident were to happen, I would never dream of trying to blame the owners.....and I don't expect them to have insurance either. Thats why my horses are insured.
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I rent a field with 2 stables.....I pay £10 a week per horse, its nice for the owners as the land is being used and looked after, and they get a bit of money out of it. God forbid though, if any accident were to happen, I would never dream of trying to blame the owners.....and I don't expect them to have insurance either. Thats why my horses are insured.
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It is not whether you would blame your land owners or not - it is whether your insurance company will pass the claim on to them. The courts have already ruled that the land owner was liable when a drunk driver in a stolen car went thru a hedge and the liveries horses escaped and injured another driver. Why would you insurance company pay out a £1m claim when it knows it can pass it off to someone else?
 
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I rent a field with 2 stables.....I pay £10 a week per horse, its nice for the owners as the land is being used and looked after, and they get a bit of money out of it. God forbid though, if any accident were to happen, I would never dream of trying to blame the owners.....and I don't expect them to have insurance either. Thats why my horses are insured.
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It may not be down to you - your insurance company will know the law and may well go after the landowners to recoup the costs of any claim made against you. What you think will have nothing to do with it. They will know where they stand legally, and if they think they have a case to recoup any costs, then they will.
 
I think alot of it is about supply and demand.

It will depend on what you have available in your area - some areas are more competitive than others with lots of choice of yards and the betters ones at a reasonable price will be full (our yard is full - both in the grass livery and stabled livery sections).

Our yard is well run and still manages to be reasonably priced. YO makes extra money by selling hay and bedding to liveries. We do not have a huge school and it does get dusty in the summer but as we are mostly a happy hacking yard it is not a major issue.

Not everyone needs great facilities so we there is still a demand for the smaller yards without indoor schools or some even without schools - after all why pay extra for things you are not going to be using.

I think it would be a big loss if DIY livery yards were to close - it is not always about money - quite a few people who could afford part or full livery just prefer to look after their horses themselves. Also it tends to be the smaller yards and farmers that offer all year turnout and grass livery.

I think if an owners are aware that the yard is uninsured and are willing to sign a disclaimer to accept the risk I don't think that is a problem as it is a risk they take. Having said that a yard with insurance may have better health and safety as they have to fulfil certain criteria before the insurance will pay out anyway so may be more inclined to minimize risk - for example our yard will only allow outside instructors who have insurance teach as otherwise the insurance is invalidated.
 
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I rent a field with 2 stables.....I pay £10 a week per horse, its nice for the owners as the land is being used and looked after, and they get a bit of money out of it. God forbid though, if any accident were to happen, I would never dream of trying to blame the owners.....and I don't expect them to have insurance either. Thats why my horses are insured.
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It is not whether you would blame your land owners or not - it is whether your insurance company will pass the claim on to them. The courts have already ruled that the land owner was liable when a drunk driver in a stolen car went thru a hedge and the liveries horses escaped and injured another driver. Why would you insurance company pay out a £1m claim when it knows it can pass it off to someone else?

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I understand what you are saying, but have to say I find it madness that the cause of the accident is not 'blamed', but someone else is, who lets face it, really is not at fault. But then thats a different matter entirely....imo our legal system is back to front and upside down, and our insurers get away with murder wriggling out of claims.
 
For what its worth I do think it silly if anyone who rents out land doesn't have insurance but I also think if someone is only paying a peppercorn rent they shouldn't expect a full, formal package of insurance and facilities as there isn't enough income generated to pay for all the niceties.
 
I don't understand how it isn't a simple case of supply and demand? If you don't like the standard at your yard - then move.

That's what I did, and I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever about my current yard.

Interestingly, the large yard I am on now, with indoor and outdoor schools, well managed large paddocks and good quality haylege included costs just £10pw more than the other yard we looked at - a girl with a spare stable in a barn and field. No hay, no schools, down a unlit country road, and nowhere to store tack or rugs safely. In the summer, they are the exact same price! (£20).
 
Realistically though I wonder what percentage of yards do not have insurance, and if the day comes where all these yards close down, where will people keep their horses? We cant all afford to pay £200 a week for full livery.
 
Yes thats exactly my point really, if all yards have to be all singing and dancing, that costs money and naturally that is passed on to the livery yard clients.

So if yards are to be regulated in some way and only allowed clients if they pay business rates, have insurance etc then they wont bother which leaves only expensive £200 a week yards that only the rich can afford.

It is only through the £20 per week informal yards that enable most people to be able to have a horse.
 
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