setting up a retirement livery

[qwerty123]

Hi, Im thinking of setting up a retirement livery. Is there much demand for this?. I would have about 6 boxes for this and offer various packages mainly with night stabling. There would be no DIY liveries so it would be nice and peaceful for the oldies.
At the moment it is just a thought- I would do most of the care myself so they would get lots of individual attention. Is it a good idea? especially in the current financial climate?...

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

I think there aren't enough good retirement liveries around! But you'd have to do a careful business plan to make sure you could make the finances work. There are some members on here that run retirement liveries and would have lots of info for you. One thing you'd need to think very carefully about is how you'd handle the veterinary side of things. Many veterans are retired because they have health problems. These might need eg 4hourly medicine or eye drops, or no turnout when it's sunny, or dry ground, or special diets or a specialist farrier every week. It might be very intensive work, rather than 6 happy veteran neds sauntering about in the sun, if you see what I mean. You'd have to price it very carefully and do your market research first. I'm not sure that 6 retirement liveries would be viable or sustainable. If you charged say £50 a week (just an example) then you'd be making £300 a week if you were full all the time. And out of that would have to come business rates, insurance, rent or mortgage, feed, hay, utilities, etc etc. Hmmm. I dunno....... You'd need a good local horse vet and a good local farrier too.

 

[qwerty123]

It would be six to start off with and maybe grass retirement livery aswel for the ones that dont need as much attention. Surely things like specialist farriery and vetrinary treatments would be charged as add ons rather than inclusive of a livery at say 50 a week...just means more work for me...?

 

[henryhorn]

There is a place for more retirement homes, we turn people away virtually every month because we rarely accept new horses now, having decided we didn't want to be wandering round fields in bad weather in our seventies which would be when the oldest are still around.
We charge a set rate all year round and worming/vet/farrier trims are extra.
I don't charge for fly treatments or minor injury treatments.
Ours is purely a grass livery set up with stabling for ill ones, the owners understand when the time comes as it did yesterday for one of our own oldies they can no longer thrive outside it's time to have them pts.
Don't forget you will need proper records and submit accounts, my accountant charges me around £1100 a year to sort my accounts out which is a big lump out, and you need a fair level of skill to recognise what problems they are having as old horses..
I'm not sure in this climate I would be starting a business that relies on people having extra money to retire their horses, two of mine had their horses pts when I upped my price by £2 a week, and another took her horse nearer home to see if it was rideable again (it wasn't but they haven't brought it back, I reckon it will quietly go the same way)
A pain DIY liveries can be they are more likely to give you regular income....