Price for DIY/grass livery

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Abacus

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In a post slightly related to my other thread. How much do you think is the cost of true grass livery? - horses live out 24/7 although stables are available for occasional overnight, box rest, etc. Facilities are basic - a nice 20x40 arena (sand and rubber), not great hacking but most of it is off road with short distances of roadwork (quiet). Tack and rug storage. No electricity but a good generator. There are 18 acres for approx 9 horses. Expensive area in Oxfordshire.

Thank you!
 
Expensive area in berkshire and my sister and i pay £800 for just under 8 acres for our boys. No electric, but really good hacking and a bigger arena.

We also do or pay for all the field maintenance except the outside fence and auto water trough repairs.
 
A minimum of £30/week but could easily see it more. Getting quite difficult to find grass livery with facilities in some areas of the country so if it were more it wouldn’t surprise me (and I’d pay more personally)
 
I would have happily paid £45 a week when living in that area for decent grass livery and an arena, probably more if maintained well as so hard to find
 
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I had mine just outside of oxford, gorgeous yard, 1000s of acres of off road hacking, quiet lanes, beautiful yard with things like hot water shower, human shower, nice school etc. I paid £65 a week full livery. Including hay, hard feed etc. The car was exceptional. That was a year ago, so recently.
 
Around £50/week.

Good grass livery, if anything, is more work and cost to maintain than DIY as keeping fields reasonable through the year takes a lot!
 
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The cost to buy say a miserable £15k an acre = £270k, school, fencing, stables, storage presumably parking - another £80k.

If you took £350k and put it in a long notice bank account you'd easily get 5% - which would be £1,500 a month

If you invested it with medium risk probably 10% would be doable - so you'd be getting £3k a month without lifting a finger.


If the owner has to cover some maintenance and take the risk that someone trashes stuff, doesn't pay, etc. etc. Covers water bill, provides fuel for genny etc. All for less than £1k per month then they should sell up and do something else.
 
I'm Dun said:
I had mine just outside of oxford, gorgeous yard, 1000s of acres of off road hacking, quiet lanes, beautiful yard with things like hot water shower, human shower, nice school etc. I paid £65 a week full livery. Including hay, hard feed etc. The car was exceptional. That was a year ago, so recently.
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Blimey, that’s excellent value for money. Where abouts was this as I am close to Oxford and struggling to find anywhere suitable.
 
We are in an expensive area of Oxfordshire too.

I’d answer this in two ways.

If the horses are only allowed to use the stables in case of emergency, and that is restricted, and there isn’t a stable per horse then I’d consider it true grass livery at around £150-180 pcm. These kinds of facilities are usually grass only and no school or yard though, so you could go up from there to recognise the school or even rent it separately which I have seen done.

If it is a stable per horse, and 24/7 grazing is the management style chosen - for example, the stables are used for tacking up, the school is used, there is storage available then I think it’s more akin to DIY with 24/7 turnout. I would then position the 24/7 turnout as additional value from a base of standard DIY livery, rather than see it as grass livery. I think that would be £250-300 pcm around here.

I would pay more for 24/7 turnout for my horses than I would for DIY but stabled and possible restrictions on turnout creeping in.
 
Goldenstar said:
I don’t how anyone can provide that at less than £10 per day
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They can’t!

I costed out full Youngstock livery on my small set up (no school or human facilities) and the break even cost was £8/day - that included paying a freelancer 1 day a week to give me a day off and a further 2 weeks for holidays. That £8/day did not include my basic labour or any return on the land investment.

Now there would be an efficiency in numbers to bring in for a bigger set up but even so! Got to be doing it for tax reasons at £65 full
 
One place I know near here is £60 a week full grass livery, with some use of an indoor and an outdoor arena and a short farm ride otherwise bad roads.
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ihatework said:
Now there would be an efficiency in numbers to bring in for a bigger set up but even so! Got to be doing it for tax reasons at £65 full
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Full livery including going on the walker (ridden schooling charged separately) costs me £850 at the dressage yard and £580 at the eventing yard. Both fab, with full care and well set up for their jobs. Eventing one is a little more relaxed.

I can’t imagine how anyone would afford to pay their staff a decent wage at under £300 per week. I agree - there must be some very unusual things in the background there.
 
ihatework said:
They can’t!

I costed out full Youngstock livery on my small set up (no school or human facilities) and the break even cost was £8/day - that included paying a freelancer 1 day a week to give me a day off and a further 2 weeks for holidays. That £8/day did not include my basic labour or any return on the land investment.

Now there would be an efficiency in numbers to bring in for a bigger set up but even so! Got to be doing it for tax reasons at £65 full
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Clearly they can as they are doing it and its nothing to do with tax. The yard is rented off a large estate as well. They have stabled liveries, resting racehorses/polo ponies and other income streams, but they have started and maintained a successful business doing it.
 
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