Retirement Livery

C

CPW

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Does anyone know of/have any experiences of retirement liveries - preferably in the East Anglia area?
 
My friend struggled to find one in East Anglia, there was one which advertises regularly but all is not as it seems (pm if you want to know more)

Eventually found one on a small yard, but unfortunately lost him 2 months later to a bad bout of Laminitis brought on by Cushings
 
I would beg anyone thinking of retirement livery to be extremely careful and ultra suspicious. You hear such terrible things. Hard as it may seem, it might be much, much kinder to consider having the horse pts in his own home with his own friends around rather than risk unmonitored health deterioration, horses being kept in atrocious conditions and horses illegally sold on as riding horses or worse. Be brave and ask yourself what is best for the horse, not what is easier for yourself.
 
hey, not all retirement livery is bad.

my horse lives on a stud in Oxfordshire with a yearling, a retired 10yr old and another oldie having the time of his life. He's wormed regularly, has his feet done without fail every 8wks and is fed whatever he needs. No, he doesn't get daily pampering but he seems to have enjoyed reverting to his wild state and loves it even more if i go down and take him for a little ride. He always seems completely contented and I'm happy he's happy and still enjoying life.
 
Box Of Frogs, It is important to inspect any livery be it retirement or working but they should not all be tarnished with the same brush as the odd one with bad factual experiences. I do retirement for a handful of 'old timers' which I have grown very fond of and will be devastated when the time comes! I look after them like I look after my own horses, always worrying if they are too hot or cold when the weather changes if I am out for the day! I send monthly newsletters with photo's attached to their long distant owners and practise a NO appointment visiting shedule so that they can come and visit whenever they want to without telling me first that way I hope owners know I am not tidying up the yard and quickly grooming before they arrive. It is our, as a horse owners, responsibility to check where our trusted steeds end up and for this reason alone I recommend anyone just turn up at a yard to enquire rather than phoning first.
 
Hi DB and Star. Absolutely right - there's wonderful places out there who look after horses as well as - or even better than - the owners. And it's cheered me no end to read your posts. DB, the way you run your yard sounds the gold standard and I love the no appt system. What reassurance for owners. All I was doing was trying to alert people who might be thinking about retirement livery to the fact that for every gold standard yard, there may be a dozen that fail miserably and horses suffer. The evidence abounds so this debate needs to be aired and no offence to anyone intended. The advice you gave was great x
 
I feel quite insulted actually Box of frogs, the inferrance you gave is that most retirement livery places are pants..!
I would say that what everyone's idea of perfect retirement is will differ.
Some think a warm stable, ample bedding and brushed over every day is ideal, others want their horse to live as natural a life as possible with plenty of mates and ad lib food.
We have a happy medium here.
The horses get ample food, shelter in winter and in summer from the flies, and live as natural a life as we can give them.
They get checked daily sometimes more than once, and get injuries etc attended to. If ther is a fault in the system it can be foot trimming, as often the one you need to catch spots the farrier at half a mile and legs it refusing to be caught, so we can go longer than I would prefer on that issue.
I do keep an eye on the cases that make H and H and haven't actually seen any kept in atrocious conditions reported as being retirement liveries. Dealer horses yes, but not a livery place.
I no longer accept long term liveries as we decided we would prefer not to be struggling in the rain and wind when in our seventies, as the horses here seem to go on a long time...
Please don't tar us all with the same brush.
If anyone would like to check out the pics on my blog I think you will see happy healthy horses, not unmonitored deteriorating ones..
www.narramorehorses.blogspot.com
Apologies to the original poster, but couldn't let those comments go unchallenged..
 
Like I said HH, my comments were NOT aimed at anyone who knows of or runs a gold standard retirement home for horses. I wish there were more of them around. I suspect that people who use this Forum will always have the horses' care and well being at heart. But not everybody does, not by a long chalk. My post was aimed at people who were thinking of putting their precious ned into retirement livery. The evidence is everywhere. There are unscrupulous people and dealers out there who will promise the moon and the next thing your precious retired ned has been sold on for a riding horse, or vanished off the face of the earth and god knows where they end up. I don't want to jeopardise the Amersham case but one of the horses there was almost totally blind and you have to wonder how she came to be at a place like that. Would you want your blind horse to end up there? I just wanted people to THINK before acting. It could NOT end up as the blissful wind down that caring owners thought it would be. I'm not trying to offend anyone - just an alert that, sadly, all is not always as pink and fluffy as we would wish. I stand by my original post which of course is NOT aimed at superlative yards such as have already been mentioned here. I do hope you understand.
 
Have to put my oar in here, sorry, but a friend of mine ran a retirement livery yard. She saw things you would not believe and people had a habit of forgetting to pay and the vets would just keep alot of the really ill ones going just so they could keep charging her clients big bills. She doesn't do it know because of all the heartache and her retired horses have gone to a place in France because they get the very best care and the vet bills are a hell of a lot less, and she gets the regular updates and photos.
 
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