Turn out woes😔

jj_87

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personally i would move, even if it means sacrificing your evening riding, whos to say the stable is going to be free on the given date, saves the aggro for you and the YO.
 

GTRJazz

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I find the horses interact in a kicking each other sort of way when food is scarce, mine can preen each other over the interconnecting door when in.
Ad lib hay is the best thing to prevent ulcers which i have no experience of other than seeing a few x racers that seem prone to them
 

JFTDWS

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I mostly turn my horses out so that they have free interaction with other horses and the opportunity to move more. Not for them to eat the grass, I kind of thought that was why everyone did?!

Yes... But you and I also have saddles that fit our horses and would worry if they were clinically obese and all that too...
 

tankgirl1

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I find the horses interact in a kicking each other sort of way when food is scarce, mine can preen each other over the interconnecting door when in.
Ad lib hay is the best thing to prevent ulcers which i have no experience of other than seeing a few x racers that seem prone to them

Maybe if turn out wasn't such an exciting 'one day a week for a few hours' affair your horses might be calmer in the field ;)

You could always put hay out if there isn't much grass
 

Auslander

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We are at a friends yard and could turn out 24/7 if we wanted, instead our three horses go out Saturdays only for around six hours which is plenty
I muck them out myself and have a routine that cuts the work to a minimum giving me plenty of time to ride.
Not sure why you would want a horse out any longer there is nothing in the grass for them and wading through mud in the dark to ride of an evening probably would not happen
This makes me sad. My liveries go out all day, every day - and I sort the fields out come spring. I would NEVER let convenience get in the way of horses being able to go out and move around/interact/be horses. It takes 5 minutes to drag one in and knock a bit of mud off so I can ride. Mine have ad lib hay in the field, as I turn them out for their mental health, not for the grazing.
 

Bellaboo18

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I find the horses interact in a kicking each other sort of way when food is scarce, mine can preen each other over the interconnecting door when in.
Ad lib hay is the best thing to prevent ulcers which i have no experience of other than seeing a few x racers that seem prone to them
If you can make it work for 6 hours on a weekend, I can't see why you can't make it work without someone getting kicked on the other days.
Unfortunately you're wrong about ulcers. The best thing for ulcers is turnout. Yes if they are stabled they need ad lib hay but stabling should still be kept to a minimum. Grass is far better for the hind gut than hay.
 

Cortez

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Or monoculture. Unless you're in the wonderful position, and I hope you are, of having now rare species rich meadows which support an abundance of birds, bees etc in addition to grazing animals.

If you mean old pasture which is not fertilised or sprayed, then yes, I do. There are more ways of farming than "monoculture", which is not good husbandry, nor is overstocking and neglect which seems to be the default of places where horses are kept (not all).
 

MotherOfChickens

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Or monoculture. Unless you're in the wonderful position, and I hope you are, of having now rare species rich meadows which support an abundance of birds, bees etc in addition to grazing animals.

yes I am-and I am lucky. I chose to move here largely because I keep natives and was fed up of managing them on the rye grass most liveries in the East have. I hate seeing horse sick paddocks-nothing but buttercup, clover or docks and nettles which happens from overgrazing and rabid poo picking. Grazing is a form of enrichment and I believe very important for equines but I think most people would also baulk at the fields mine are in, especially the summer one! And apart from the odd weekend mine always have space and rarely kept in fields less than 5 acres for the two of them.

Why would anyone choose a livery that is overstocked? is it because they are too tight to pay what it actually costs?
 

windand rain

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Dont think it is being tight I think it has a lot to do with availability. You seem to pay your money and take a chance on whether or not you are getting what you are paying for. Some yard owners/managers are purely in it to collect the money have no interest in the land or animals on it others at the other extreme are OCD controlling dictators and everything in between. There seems to be a lot of both extremes going by threads on here otherwise once you were on a yard you would never leave unless you were moving house or area.
 

MotherOfChickens

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Dont think it is being tight I think it has a lot to do with availability. You seem to pay your money and take a chance on whether or not you are getting what you are paying for. Some yard owners/managers are purely in it to collect the money have no interest in the land or animals on it others at the other extreme are OCD controlling dictators and everything in between. There seems to be a lot of both extremes going by threads on here otherwise once you were on a yard you would never leave unless you were moving house or area.

how many times do we see people moan about the cost of livery though? perhaps if YOs could charge more, they'd not need to overstock.
 

JFTDWS

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There is a happy medium between over-stocked, horse-sick patches of nothing, and huge, lush, fertilised fields of rye grass though. The trouble is, down here, those are pretty much the two options - cattle-type grazing, or bugger all - and I don't think either are appropriate for many horses. I'd rather have more, less good land and supplement with hay, than have any amount of beautiful grazing I can't use because it's so lush. Bizarrely I now pay virtually nothing for a pretty good middle ground (neither too lush nor by any means barren), though I'd need more of it to make it work perfectly. If I was planning on staying in the area, I'd seriously consider paying livery for 5, to double my land. I think I could then not feed hay, and it would actually work out cheaper...
 

whiteflower

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how many times do we see people moan about the cost of livery though? perhaps if YOs could charge more, they'd not need to overstock.

I also so think the problem lies not only in people not wanting to pay but also just a general lack of land now days due to building. If you had the advised acreage of grazing land per horse in my area , you would probably need to send half the horses to another county ! There just isn't the land available in some areas now (not all) round me you are about as likely find sole use grazing or yard for rent as you are to win the lottery !
For many people livery is the only option round here but then you either need to accept the land will need to be managed (very few yards have winter turnout) or move very much further afield to an area with more land available. Most of the yards that were around when I was a child no longer exist and have been built on and the others are privately owned and no longer have liveries
 

windand rain

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Yes I am sure some livery should be more expensive but I also know that livery is often though not always not a service industry which it should be if a livery wants to provide a good service they can charge more to cover what is needed and people will pay it is when the yo says they will do one thing and dont then provide that service what ever you are paying and then they moan about liveries and hating having liveries etc. A livery contract should be in place with the exact conditions of livery and it should be impossible to change that contract without consent from both parties. It would allow both to have a record of what is expected on both sides. It would then be a case of choice if you dont want that service you shop around to find a contract you do want or not have a horse at all it is fairly simple
 

JFTDWS

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A livery contract should be in place with the exact conditions of livery and it should be impossible to change that contract without consent from both parties. It would allow both to have a record of what is expected on both sides. It would then be a case of choice if you dont want that service you shop around to find a contract you do want or not have a horse at all it is fairly simple

The trouble is that these things are subjective. Unless the contract states exactly what level of rainfall, what mph winds etc will cause them to cancel turnout, there will always be a level of personal interpretation. I definitely have a higher tolerance to wet / mud / wind than some people, who think the weather is awful while I'm still describing it as moderately fair. I think this is why I've ended up on yards where the YM isn't allowing turnout when I think it should be provided - we discussed it before moving in and agreed that turnout should be achieved as much as possible - but our ideas of "as much as possible" are fundamentally different. It's not the YM lying, or being difficult - just a completely different idea of what is "bad" weather. Even if the contract was explicit, it couldn't cover all eventualities anyway - it's the concatenation of circumstances which usually makes it worth keeping them in, and those are always hard to peg down.
 

ester

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I find the horses interact in a kicking each other sort of way when food is scarce, mine can preen each other over the interconnecting door when in.
Ad lib hay is the best thing to prevent ulcers which i have no experience of other than seeing a few x racers that seem prone to them

Why would you keep food scarce when they are turned out in a group? That's just daft surely?! Ours interact in a walking round sort of way as the one in charge keeps thinking the next hay pile is better so round they go.
We have an interconnecting space between stables too, now that actually does cause more arguments between our specific two but it's totally inadequate for good interaction and movement.
 

ester

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whereas my YO was very much out unless dangerous (icey) to get out there which was true. However hadn't mentioned they all had to come in at 2pm ;).
 

ihatework

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whereas my YO was very much out unless dangerous (icey) to get out there which was true. However hadn't mentioned they all had to come in at 2pm ;).

During winter I find most are happy to come in early but it’s a right PITA if you work full time on DIY!!! That is the sort of rule not communicated by someone who has never had an office job!
 

abb123

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As a DIY livery, I would happily pay a lot more to have a yard owner that was professional and valued me as a customer, daily turnout with no restrictions in the winter and 24/7 in summer, a useable schooling area, and a nice yard environment. The trouble is that there is no place that offers that - there is always one of those things missing. It is a definite gap in the market!!!
 

WandaMare

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As a DIY livery, I would happily pay a lot more to have a yard owner that was professional and valued me as a customer, daily turnout with no restrictions in the winter and 24/7 in summer, a useable schooling area, and a nice yard environment. The trouble is that there is no place that offers that - there is always one of those things missing. It is a definite gap in the market!!!

There probably aren't any because people who are wealthy enough that they don't need to worry about the cost of stable, yard, arena and field maintenance, don't need to offer livery in the first place.

Big companies offer excellent customer service because its a way to differentiate themselves from the competition and therefore attract more customers. Offering horse livery doesn't really fall into the same category unless they struggle to fill their stables and even then, they may prefer to have stables empty than offer livery to people whose horses have specific needs which are going to be too difficult to accommodate. With livery you're talking about 10s or hundreds of pounds, with yard ownership and maintenance you are most often looking at thousands. For example, just revamping an arena, aside from all the other usual maintenance work costs around £20k and lasts perhaps 8 to10 years before you need new fencing and another new surface. (I'm talking roughly here, I'm sure other people have done it for a lot less or a lot more).

I would certainly never tie myself into an ultra tight contract which gave me no flexibility at all to manage my land, I just wouldn't want to take that risk, it would never be worth it as a landowner. As someone else above said, there will always be a degree of subjectivity about weather / ground conditions / sufficient grazing anyway.

When I had liveries I did my best to accommodate 24/7 turnout for as much of the year as I could which was appreciated by 95% of my liveries. I would say the horses stayed in for maybe 10 days a year on average. Unfortunately its the other 5% which spoil it for everyone else because it seems that whatever you offer isn't good enough for them and some of them don't complain in a way that is constructive or enables you to move forward with the relationship.

This thread was about the YO keeping horses in due to bad weather conditions for one day or maybe two days, which I don't think is unreasonable. We had the snow which thawed one week, followed by a week of really heavy rain /hail showers which is quite unusual conditions. If you have the odd livery whose horse can't keep off the ground even for one day over the winter when the ground is suffering, then I think really they need to do whatever is necessary to get their own place somehow. I don't think most liveries would be too worried about the odd day tbh.
 

MotherOfChickens

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I don't have any issue with horses being brought in to protect the grazing I would and have done it myself. I have no issue with horses on limited turnout if they are in 'hard' work. As a horse owner, if you can't give the horse what it needs i.e.the turnout or the hard work, then people should be thinking whether or not they should have a horse. noone on here would recommend a dog be kept if an owner can't give it what it needs. when horses used to be on livery when I was a kid, people paid to have them exercised if they couldn't do it themselves.
 

gallopingby

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Good point motherofchickens the problem these days is finding someone with the necessary riding skills to excercise safely. I’ve had a couple of peeps working for me, one was obsessive about mucking out and wouldn’t take out unless everything was perfect, the other just scrubbed a patch in the mud and got on but sadly appeared to spend 95% of the time on her phone!
 

milliepops

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As a DIY livery, I would happily pay a lot more to have a yard owner that was professional and valued me as a customer, daily turnout with no restrictions in the winter and 24/7 in summer, a useable schooling area, and a nice yard environment. The trouble is that there is no place that offers that - there is always one of those things missing. It is a definite gap in the market!!!
I am dead chuffed that I seem to have found the holy grail... almost, anyway! I actually had to tell YO I didn't want mine turned out in the snow recently, everything else went out as normal ;)
It does cost twice as much as the place I was at before though ;) (ETA and I had to move house in order to make the travel manageable...)

I am happy to pay it, because I am getting what I was promised. I accept the need to maintain land, account for extreme weather etc but the issue I have is when the boundaries are changed piecemeal without any discussion or explanation and you are left long term with a completely different livery arrangement to the one you signed up for. Oh and if a YO says they want to protect their land then some evidence of groundwork happening would help liveries to believe it! My OH keeps my retirees field in tip top condition with a bit of harrowing and rolling. Last yard couldn't get a tractor into the paddocks as the walkways were too narrow :rolleyes:

A bit late to the thread now but to the OP if you can move now then I would do, I agree with PPs that the relationship with your current YO sounds like it's about to deteriorate on a weekly basis.
 
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abb123

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There probably aren't any because people who are wealthy enough that they don't need to worry about the cost of stable, yard, arena and field maintenance, don't need to offer livery in the first place.

Big companies offer excellent customer service because its a way to differentiate themselves from the competition and therefore attract more customers. Offering horse livery doesn't really fall into the same category unless they struggle to fill their stables and even then, they may prefer to have stables empty than offer livery to people whose horses have specific needs which are going to be too difficult to accommodate. With livery you're talking about 10s or hundreds of pounds, with yard ownership and maintenance you are most often looking at thousands. For example, just revamping an arena, aside from all the other usual maintenance work costs around £20k and lasts perhaps 8 to10 years before you need new fencing and another new surface. (I'm talking roughly here, I'm sure other people have done it for a lot less or a lot more).

I would certainly never tie myself into an ultra tight contract which gave me no flexibility at all to manage my land, I just wouldn't want to take that risk, it would never be worth it as a landowner. As someone else above said, there will always be a degree of subjectivity about weather / ground conditions / sufficient grazing anyway.

When I had liveries I did my best to accommodate 24/7 turnout for as much of the year as I could which was appreciated by 95% of my liveries. I would say the horses stayed in for maybe 10 days a year on average. Unfortunately its the other 5% which spoil it for everyone else because it seems that whatever you offer isn't good enough for them and some of them don't complain in a way that is constructive or enables you to move forward with the relationship.

This thread was about the YO keeping horses in due to bad weather conditions for one day or maybe two days, which I don't think is unreasonable. We had the snow which thawed one week, followed by a week of really heavy rain /hail showers which is quite unusual conditions. If you have the odd livery whose horse can't keep off the ground even for one day over the winter when the ground is suffering, then I think really they need to do whatever is necessary to get their own place somehow. I don't think most liveries would be too worried about the odd day tbh.

To clarify. I mean't unrestricted turn out. There should always be a place that a horse can be turned out with it's buddies to have a leg stretch and a mutual groom even in the worst of weather should an owner want it.

My current yard has turnout every single day in the winter with no exceptions. I put up with other issues because this is important to me and I very very much appreciate it!
 

chaps89

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I moved from my previous yard because relations with the YO were going downhill (though I never argued and if I did ever query anything it was face to face when I could pick the right moment to ask!)
Moving was the best thing ever - as I drove away from the yard a weight lifted. And I'd been putting it off for as long as I could because of how 'perfect' the set up was for us.
I've had to compromise on hacking and if anything the fields at the new yard are probably too well maintained for mine who did well on the rough underutilized grazing we had previously.
But I have a fantastic YO who has them out no matter what the weather and just accepts the fields look rubbish in winter but come spring they all get TLC and bounce back.
I'll be able to manage her grazing without compromising on turnout too which was a big deal for me, particularly with lusher grazing.
Ok, not having such great hacking is tough but overall it is far outweighed.
Perfect doesn't really exist so it's finding what you can compromise on.
For me a lack of lights (especially as we start coming into longer evenings) would far outweigh a bad atmosphere/poorly maintained yard/restricted turnout.
I think you do need to make a move OP and I suspect you might feel better for it once you do.
 
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TGM

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What is this obsession with having lush green fields for grazing? It causes so many problems. I'd rather have mine out in a weedy, patchy field of grass and supplement with hay when necessary.

I agree with you to some extent. Obviously fields do require some management, but I was once on a yard where turnout was restricted in the winter 'to make sure we have grass in the summer' then in summer the turnout was restricted because 'the grass is too rich'! Thankfully we have our own land now, so can manage in the way that we feel is best for the horses.
 
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