Own Yard - top tips?

[Custard Cream]

I'm moving from livery to my own yard (not at home) for the first time in 6 years. Any top tips? We have plenty of grazing, stables are all painted and looking good. Hay and straw have been delivered. What is useful? What to avoid?

 

[Norn]

It really depends what you will be using it for! It is just for yourself or for liveries?

 

[HashRouge]

It really depends what you will be using it for! It is just for yourself or for liveries?

Ditto!

My 2 have moved down the road to a private yard, just the 2 of them with 3 stables and 5 or 6 acres. It's lush! They are on grass livery with the same lady who has looked after them for 3 years, but i tend to do most of the maintenence. Only things I have done so far is pull up ragwort, establish a muck heap, clean water troughs and slather cribbox all over the inside of the stables. I recommend having electric fencing if you have good doers like mine! Oh and if you have trees, go and have a look for any oaks and sycamores as well as more obvious poisonous ones. I have one sycamore which I'll be fencing off soon, and a couple of oaks. One of mine is a devil for eating acorns so will need to fence them off too!

 

[Honey08]

My top tip is find a freelance groom to do one morning a week, partly to give yourself a break, and partly because they will usually fit you in for holiday or emergency cover.

A bit of electric fencing - a few posts, rope and an energiser is always handy tucked away for emergencies, either fence repair or lami/boxrest area.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

Make your yard work for you and the horses on it at the time. It doesn't matter what any-one else thinks about it, you are the one who will be using it. I will only say, make sure the muck heap is easily accessible both for you daily and for collection and that you can easily get water wherever it needs to go. Our field boundaries are dry-stone walls but we have electric fencing to split them as we need at the time.

 

[LovesCobs]

dont set anything in stone the first winter summer as you'll change what you want or need as you get to know the land and how you use it (wet areas/ where the wind usually comes from, ditches, fencing etc etc)

 

[Esmae]

A frost free standpipe. Never suffer with frozen taps again.

 

[Spottyappy]

Buy some kind of Cctv, as when you don’t live on site, it gives you peace of mind to an extent.
If you don’t have mains electricity, there are some that run off batteries.