Question for YO's & Livery clients

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Lulup

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I have recently taken on a few liveries at my yard and hope to take more in the near future so I would like to make sure that I am getting things right and not being the YO from Hell :-(

I supply good quality haylage (sourced from a local farmer) in large rectangle bales - it is the best quality I have been able to find and the horses love it. I pay £40 per bale and collect, store, handle it so all liveries have to do is literally fill their haynets. I have also offered to supply hay in the same way as one has expressed a preference for hay over haylage, but, I have said that I cannot provide storage for each individual livery so I cannot accomodate them sourcing and buying their own hay/haylage.

However, I do charge them more than I pay for it - I add £5 on to each bale and this is then split between the number of people sharing the bale so at present three people pay £15 each for their share of each bale, meaning that they are paying approx £1.67 for collection/delivery/handling storing.

Is this unreasonable - as a YO would you expect to be selling it on at cost and just take the hit on your time/fuel collecting? And as a livery would you expect to pay cost price only?

I am trying to make life easy for them by suppling good quality at reasonable price and am also going to be bulk buying shavings to save them having to buy 2-3 bales at a time from local tack/feed shops and paying full price.. so I am trying.. but I am also trying to cover my costs and make it worthwhile actually having them .

Opinions please?
 
Of course I would expect you to add something on as an administration cost. You're in this as a business not as a charity, aren't you? I think you should aim to be competitive but not at a loss.
 
IMO (as YO) most liveries want to source their own hay and bedding. If you do it it's all hunky dory until a) they query the quality or b) they realise they can get it cheaper elsewhere.

This isn't to say you aren't totally within your rights to charge a bit on top, you've had all the hassle and expense of organising it, but I just wanted to warn you what can happen!
 
Totally reasonable! Good luck with the liveries......as a yard owner myself you'll need it!........some are ok though lol. Very hard to keep everyone happy!
 
We supply all forage and bedding to our liveries, it must be brought from us. We of course add a bit on for handling and storage but always make sure we're cheaper than else where. Atm our shavings are around £2 per bale than any of the suppliers sround here :)

If they don't like it, then tell them to move on. Always remember it's your yard, so your rules and you will never keep everyone 100% happy :)
 
As a livery I would not expect to have forage supplied at cost and as long as the quality is good enough I'm happy to pay a bit more for the convenience.

I think £1.67 is more than reasonable
 
I'm a YO, but don't undertake to supply hay or haylage for anyone: its a DIY set-up here so livery buys her own.

If there is no storage available for liveries to purchase their own hay/haylage and that this is clearly stated in loan contracts before people come onto the yard i.e. that they have to buy haylage only from the YO, then don't think YO is being unreasonable here. Though if my boy was fed haylage only, he'd be a total fruitloop as he can get really nasty on it plus it just goes right through him and gives him the squits. So I'd personally want to have the choice of being able to buy in hay if I was on that yard.

Is it possible to perhaps consider the possibility of some storage area(s) being set aside? Often a few wooden posts and some corrugated iron will suffice; plus some tarpaulin, nothing fancy needed - and it would provide space for hay if anyone wanted it. I think this is what I'd be inclined to explore TBH.
 
What you've said sounds v reasonable. My advice is to stick to yr guns:you supply,they only buy from you. Start providing storage&letting people get their own=more hassle & trouble down the line at some point,even if it's just 'I had 8 bales left and now there's only 7,someone's taking it' or 'Her bales are encroaching into my storage area' etc etc . Good luck & like someone said above..Remember,it's your yard,your rules,stick to them-you'll never please everyone,so is easier and less ambiguous if you just stand by however you decided to do stuff at the beginning. I had 2liveries who very gradually and not in a particularly nasty way,just insidiously said 'would it be ok if we did this,that,the other' and it just creeps on and is a pita (& causes muttering amongst everyone else!) Don't have them now-much better!
 
Sounds fine. Its much easier than sourcing individually. I'm happy to pay extra for the service as when time and petrol are taken into account, it works out even really.
As long as potential liveries know from the start, there's no reason for complaints.
 
At my old yard you could buy shavings if you wanted to, they were £10 per bale so I didn't as was getting mine for £6.50, I would have been really peed off if they said we had to buy from them at that price, we were supposed to buy hay from them & I did for ages until I changed to haylage which was fine as they didn't supply that. There was a massive problem with the hay when suddenly lots of the horses wouldn't eat it, they were charging a premium for small bales & people were really cross. TBH for what you will make out of it I would sort out some storage & let them get their own stuff.
 
As long as the quality was good, I actually prefer the YO to arrange the supply and would fully expect a small mark up for the time and effort.

It saves me the hassle of doing it myself, plus would likely work out cheaper than buying in small quantities myself anyway.

For me the only time this would be unacceptable would be if quality is poor. The choice of hay or haylage is also welcomed as preferences vary.
 
my yo buys the haylage in but puts the cost of it into the livery so no arguing or messing about ,we have a local feed merchant deliver free to the yard so you just pay on delivery for whatever you need for feed and bedding. altho i think our diy is a bit more expensive than most around here ,it does include adlib top quality haylage so it works for me:D
 
I would say it is more than fair to charge you liveries a little more than the cost to you. your liveries don't need to know how much you pay for it after all!..

As for the suggestion of providing individual storage - that really depends on the yard set up. I am fortunate that my yard is an ex full livery yard which now has a third of the number of horses on it as it did in it's day so we have adequate storage to buy in our own hay and bedding. That said, my allocated space is only enough space to store about 50 normal bales of hay or 3 large round bales so if OP is really limited for storage space I can see her issue. and I wouldn't be happy with using a few posts and some currugated iron to knock up a storage area...
 
Absolutely fair, we do. As farmers we make our own hay, haylage and straw and about two years ago added to the livery contracts that all of the above had to be purchased from us. Most did anyway but we did also used to get some of the problems mentioned above, such as "I've found some great hay but need to buy 100 bales" etc, or expecting us to be around to unload large bales bought elsewhere. Now we sell large round bales only, everyone has their own and it solves the storage problem, and straw is provided ad lib for a set weekly amount (£5). The trick is to supply good quality stuff at the market rate, not take the mick and overprice, and then everyone will be happy. We didn't have any complaints when we brought this in and haven't lost any liveries over it, as long as everyone knows where they stand they're happy and you shouldn't have a problem I don't think. It's hard enough to make a living from horses so when there is anything to be made it makes sense to make it for yourself if possible in my opinion ;)
 
I run DIY
- My liveries can opt in or out of the yard hay delivery, BUT if they opt out then they cannot opt back in for the winter. Each livery (well, each horse actually!) has space to store approx 10 small bales.
I get guaranteed good hay, delivered by tractor on a monthly basis, whatever the weather. Liveries have to let me know how much they need 3 days before the delivery.
If they source their own because it is cheaper, then fine, but that's that - they're not getting any off my hay man in the middle of a snow storm.
This is explained to liveries in great detail and never had a problem!
 
I don't mind a mark up to cover time and transport, but if I am bound to buy what is supplied I want to know that the quality is reasonable and that there is some choice allowed. For example if my horse couldn't have haylage and needed hay I would want the YO to either be willing to source this or allow me to source my own. Likewise if my horse had specific bedding requirements.

However OP I'm not sure your way of splitting the cost is very fair..... it isn't based on what is used, but also isn't a flat inclusive and predictable rate. I would be inclined to either work out what you use on average and charge a daily rate for adlib or to weigh haynets and charge by weight. Our yard charges by weight and people just write down what has been used.
 
One thing I'd like to ask all those going on about quality is how do you gauge it??! it used to infuriate me to hear fellow liveries banging on about hay being dusty, or containing stones (which - incidently the horses failed to eat!) when it was harvested during one of the dryest summers on record - what do they expect the farmers to do about it?? Just wet the bbleddy stuff before feeding it for christs sake!! Farmers work bleddy hard to provide us with the hay for our neds and get very little in return and at the end of the day the most valuable part of it is the fibre, so unless you are going to get every bale analysed for it's nutritional content there really is no way of determining differences in quality.

ok, there's weedy hay which i would deem as poorer quality but you can't otherwise tell by looking at a bale that it is poorer quality than another.. And I'm sure every responsible Y/O wanting to keep hold of good liveries will only source the best.

I think blanket pricing is fair but a lot of yards charge one price for ponies and another price for horses as this generally determines how much they will eat....
 
As CBFan has said above, you perhaps need a sliding scale depending on how much hay/haylage is fed. I don't think anyone has the right to complain about you making some sort of markup when you are the one buying in and storing it. However my 11.2 has one slice of small bale hay a night, yet yards I have viewed have quoted me a horse or pony price, which has meant they'd expect me to pay the same as if he was a 14.1hh!
Luckily the yard I am on allow us to buy small bale hay for small ponies, and for others they estimate the number of haynets each horse averages per week of hay/haylage and charge accordingly - I think its generally between £8 - £15 per week. If someone's horse is on box rest they pay extra for the extra haynets used.
 
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