What's the strangest yard rule you've come across?

Old YO hated kids and used to regularly bitch about me bringing my 5yo daughter up the yard...... oh yes I can hear all the child catchers shouting ..... but kids are dangerous and evil and should be banned from all yards .... we have an 11.2 Welshie! Did he think I was going to ride it! I have not been under 9 stone since I was a young teenager and I am certainly not one of those any more!
 
Cobrastyle said:
My friend was a livery at a big livery/RS yard, the rules were about 4 pages long, most of it patronising and common sense, but some jumped out to me:

- No jumping unless someone with you
- Hats and gloves to bring in horses
!
Click to expand...

Some of those rules are perfectly reasonable.
On our yard a hat is required if bringing in from a group of horses - it is for safety not to annoy liveries. Horses set the precedence here as they kick.

The jumping rules and heights are governed in a lot of instances by the insurance companies.
One company who quoted us told us no-one could jump over a meter - ever - thankfully we had other options.

Other people riding your horse on the yards premises may also compromise on the yards insurance policy. They may need to sign a disclaimer beforehand.

No lunging in the arena is standard enough. It can destroy the surface or tear the terram underneath. Typically this applies to better pre-mixed surfaces.
Lunge ring build specs are entirely different.

What liveries need to remember is that rules are normally brought in due to someone elses previous actions. Some people are born stupid and others need to pay for it.

Having said that I do struggle to see where some of the rules have come from.
 
TheoryX1 said:
Did laugh at some of these. Am currently on a good yard with some rules, which are sensible. However our last yard took the biscuit really. Some of their rules were:

Only one flap of hay (small) per horse morning and night.
You must leave the premises by 6.00 pm on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. You may not arrive at the stables until 9.00 am on any day, and on show days with prior permission.
However their barmiest rule was that you may not discuss your horses's health and possible vet needs with anyone one else but the yard owner, who I would add was not a vet, not even the yard staff. I got called into her office and told off because I was overheard by her husband discussing my daughter's old pony, who I was concerned about with my instructor, who also knew him well. Was told if I was concerned I should ring YO or speak to her husband, who would make the decision to call the vet about either of my horses, not me.

I left the week after.

They went bankrupt about a year after I left. As a business owner I would never wish this on my worst enemy, but this YO really, really deserved it.
Click to expand...

That's just weird!
 
The yard I have just left was pretty sensible in the main (clear up after yourself, under-18's to wear a hat at all times, no unsupervised children) but there was no written list of rules and the YO had a habit of blindsiding you with stuff depending on her mood. The ones I hated most were:
Not allowed on yard before 9am (horse on grass livery so not too bad but still frustrating),had to leave before 5pm on a weekend,
Owners not to be present during annual vet checks,
Nonone but owners or YO to ride horses, official sharers required to pay an extra monthly fee to YO.
Very glad to have left!
 
Hippophilia said:
The yard I have just left was pretty sensible in the main (clear up after yourself, under-18's to wear a hat at all times, no unsupervised children) but there was no written list of rules and the YO had a habit of blindsiding you with stuff depending on her mood. The ones I hated most were:
Not allowed on yard before 9am (horse on grass livery so not too bad but still frustrating),had to leave before 5pm on a weekend,
Owners not to be present during annual vet checks,
Nonone but owners or YO to ride horses, official sharers required to pay an extra monthly fee to YO.
Very glad to have left!
Click to expand...

My last, large yard had some of those - the 9am-5pm rule at the weekend, and never before 9am any other day and sharers have to pay a £10 a month facility fee - even if they are only hacking your horse out and not using the actual facilities.
 
Not the strangest but one of the most ironicI came across at a previous yard was 'no bitching allowed'.

The irony was that all the bitching and back stabbing was done by the YO and staff!! The liveries all got on perfectly well!
 
I've been at my yard about 7 weeks and asked the YO about the rules. She said none to speak of, just go with the flow. So far I've managed to work out if you make a mess, you clean it up, if you are putting the kettle on ask if anyone else wants a cuppa, if anyone looks like they need help, hug, or in for a chit chat then don't be shy to offer your services if you are in the mood.
Works well for me and it seems everyone else too.
 
PonyRiders said:
These were at a RS/DIY
most have probably already been mentioned but;

1) No visitors to the yard, including my own sister! only me or my mum aloud.
2) no wasting water- this included emptying water buckets, horses had to drink it all! including dirty water!
3) No use of the hose ever! including medical emergencies.
4) No using the tap, collect water from the water drums. this was fine until there was none left or it was filthy.
5) no riding in the school inbetween lessons
6) no use of the lights- even when we offered £5 for half an hour
7) horses must wear rugs from October-april- not good when i have a hairy native!
8) no taking pictures of your horse on the premises
9) no instructors allowed
10) no hacking with anyone from a different yard

I can see why they said most of these rules, but in reality they just aren't all possible.

the water rules and lights were the ones that got me... but we didn't have to poo pick or brush up
Click to expand...

And BYEEEEE!!!!! hope you left them to their own devices - minus your diect debit!:D
 
A yard owner onced asked me would i need the stable for a gelding or a shire? Erm i asked if he meant a gelding or mare to which he replied that he only took experienced horse folk and walked away tutting!
 
Spot_the_Risk said:
We don't have liveries (just have a field, a few barns, a simple set up) but my MIL stitched us up, as in 'oh they'd love to have you, of course your horse can go their' etc - family politics! Anyway, we'd see the person about once a week, so were poo picking for three instead of two, and she had two obnoxious young boys who she just let out of the car and let loose. So when we saw one of them sat on the recently installed permanent electric fencing, swinging on it and stretching it loads... we just turned it on. It was battery, mains would have been excessive, but it did the job, and that kid was such a whinging little creep that his mother never even realised! Deep sigh of relief when she finally found a loan home for the mare and disappeared.
Click to expand...

Lol thats the kind of thing id have done!
 
I have never been on a livery yard until last yr.
the YO insisted that we weren't allowed to use more then 1 cup of water in the kettle, weren't allowed to use the electric for clippers, went mental if I showed up before 7am, or after 6 pm, hated my family and OH on the yard, no friends on the yard at all, banned the hose to wash the horses off after heavy work and ... get this...... 2 buckets of water to drink in the height of summer!!! and I was paying £80 a month for the privilege.
need I say I didn't hang about and found a field all to my self with no stupid YO who came into money and haven't got a clue LOL
 
I can understand many of the rules regarding use of the hose etc when the yard is a DIY yard. My friend used to run one and charged £25 a week for stable, grazing and full use of the facilities. She was forced to close it because the cost of electric, water and business rates exceeded the income from the liveries! One livery had an old bath tub to soak her hay and would empty it and refill it for every haynet she soaked! Each haynet was costing my friend around a pound a time! As the manege was near to the carpark, the liveies would switch on the lights as soon as they got out of their cars at night and then go and do their horses, often not actually riding until an hour or so later.

It just is not economically viable, in many cases to run a DIY yard.
 
Last edited:
This thread is brilliant! It's had me laughing since it came up!

I'm so glad that we have a private yard & I don't have to put up with all the nutty yard owners. We hardly ever see the bloke that owns our field, he just leaves us to our own devices.
 
One dressage yard I was at in Italy would not allow liveries to hack out :D

Oh and you couldn't go at all on a Monday unless it was a major emergency (sadly this is a VERY common rule in Italy, on a Monday most yards are closed and access denied :eek: )
 
BoolavogueDC said:
That if I shared my horse, the sharer had to pay to ride in the school.
There was me thinking you paid per horse in the school but apparently we were paying for US to be in there..:confused:
Click to expand...

I've had that rule too, if anyone other than you rode your horse you had to pay the fee for having a private lesson, the logic being they could be making money as you could be paying them to school, or you could be making money if they were paying you to ride so the YO was making money.

She also charged a friend of mine the same fee when I walked round the school with said friend, helping her with her nerves.

We both left.
 
crabbymare said:
I have known some very limiting ones but the strangest was to the effect of liveries were not allowed to have sex at the yard :confused: I did not ask why they felt the need to have that clause in the rules but its the oddest I saw
Click to expand...

Maybe this isn't so crazy...I have known a couple at my old yard to have sex in their stable...on a Sunday afternoon...whilst the horse was in there!!! Anything to stop that ever happening again can't be such a bad thing!
 
Mad_Cow347 said:
This thread is brilliant! It's had me laughing since it came up!

I'm so glad that I have a private yard & I don't have to put up with all the nutty, high costing liveries
Click to expand...


Corrected for you to reflect my opinion ;) :D

TFF; own yard & Fuzzies, 1 livery (who is a YM elsewhere & has a semi retired horse) space for 3 more, but not going to happen.... :)
 
I wonder how many of you have ever tried to run a livery yard? The vast majority of the so-called "strange" rules quoted on here actually make a lot of sense. Having owned and managed several establishments in different countries I know how hard it is to reason with people who have no idea of the costs or consequences of their thoughtless and/or ignorant actions, perhaps through youth or lack of knowlege.
 
One very posh dressage yard I know of has a fantastic ladies' loo, tiled floor, heated, basket of scented dried flowers and all the hand towels colour co-ordinated and rolled individually in a basket.
As you sit on the loo the notice opposite at eye level reads...
"LADIES! Please do not put anything down this lavatory that hasn't entered your body via your mouth...! "
I know the owner well and chortled when I read the notice, but he is unrepentant, and claims it works...
 
I agree with Lark and Kerrelli, any rules are usually made purely because someone has caused a problem previously.
We have a dog welcome rule but if it chases our cats or horses it has to stay on a lead.
People are expected to sweep up after themselves, can't see any prolem with that at all myself.
Muck has to be tipped off the end of the muckheap (yes, believe it or not, we had people tipping right outside the entrance door from the yard to the muckheap until you couldn't get past the piles or out of the door...)
10 mph limit on driving through the yard, as cars and animals are always on the move.
Kettle available but only to take the chill off a bucket if washing or for making drinks, as our electric fuses if used time and time again.
No string or ropes tied along the back of the boxes inside for rugs as horses can get a leg caught (and it's us who have to free them usually)
We limit the size of the storage boxes kept right outside the actual stable as they can get broken if horses get loose (think size of a haybale)
I'm trying hard to think of more, but can't. We don't have poo picking as plenty of grazing, allow any instructor except parelli (that's unreasonable we know but we would feel obliged to laugh)
They can have any vet, any farrier etc, put up a shed inside the barn for storage and have an alarmed tackroom. No restrictions on feed/haylage but don't like seeing horses out in winter without hay fed in the field for them. Last winter I had to hint to one know it all livery that leaving her fully clipped horse out in torrential rain for more than 48 hours wasn't really fair, I got a lecture back on how he was perfectly ok despite us seeing him standing shivering under the hedge.. Now we have a rule that fully clipped horses can't be out for more than 24 horses without a bit of a break inside to dry off. Free parking for trailers and boxes.
Lungeing has to be done in various places to minimise damaging the surface membrane and jumps have to be returned as they found them after use. (often we have a measured grid up).
We have never had time restrictions on but one recent livery regularly arrived at 5 am after working overnight or 10.30pm, she's now gone and we would say in future please don't arrive before 7am or after 10pm if possible.
I laughed at some of the rules but having seen how bloody dumb some owners are I can honestly see why they made them. I was once tempted to put a notice up asking people not to tie their horses up when the yard was being painted. One livery discovering a ladder with a painter up it at her usual tying up ring simply tied her horse through the ladder.. with him up it..When advised not a sensible move she moved it, and tied it to the handle of the barn door, a sliding door of 14 feet high weighing a lot, which had the horse pulled back and it came off would have killed it..
Then we had the livery who one Christmas tied balloons to her horse's tail. Yes, they burst sending all the others beserk.
One of the rules I do wish I'd enforced is the no dogs one, clearing up other people's dog poo which of course they totally deny is their dog is really annoying. Now I just try and get liveries without dogs...ha ha.
 
I've remembered another one from a yard I worked on.

There was a large blue barrel with the cut off that was to be used for a bin, however thre was a note on the bim that said

No plastic bags
No drink cans
No remains of fruit
No feed bags
No plastic bottles
No bailer twine

There wasn't much you could put in the bin!
 
finding some of these very amusing. especially the stealing of mud from fields and the banning of carnal pleasures on site. Quality! I'm another lucky one with relaxed 24/7 turn out and 'be sensible/respectful/safe' type 'rules'. Phew!
 
Fiona36 said:
Have just had such a laugh at this!!! What did they think was going to happen? You'd gradually steal the field in your horse's feet? Am wondering what happened if you were picking out feet after a hack. Did that have to be into a bucket or was it OK just to sweep that mud up? And where would you return that mud to?

So glad I'm not on a yard but am finding these rules very entertaining!
Click to expand...

Lol so funny am crying with laughter .

Have been on yards where part/full livery horses were only allowed 12lb of hay in any 24 hours regardless of size and work and if staying in due to weather.

No hay in fields even though the fields were tiny and shared with two horses.

No one allowed on site after 7pm.

Horses to be out by 6 or you were charged to turn it out.

Not allowed to help each other muck out/ turnout/ bring in.

All jobs to be done by 10am

Muck to be placed on top of a muck heap over 12 ft high !! I joke not. Or you would be charged for yo to do it.

Couldnt be DIY as yo insurance only covered for so many full/part/DIY.
 
glass said:
finding some of these very amusing. especially the stealing of mud from fields and the banning of carnal pleasures on site. Quality! I'm another lucky one with relaxed 24/7 turn out and 'be sensible/respectful/safe' type 'rules'. Phew!
Click to expand...

Same here. Some of these are hilarious, but alot of them seem fine to me. My yard is very relaxed, there are no written rules but plenty of common sense rules really. I like to tidy up after myself, turn things off and close things after i have used them anyway. I also like to keep my paddock in good shape by regular poo picking and ragwort removal, putting hay out in different areas so as grass can grow for example
 
I have to say that I find a lot of the rules on here very sensible. I would not like to be on a yard where everyone can bring there dog. Like mothers, owners always seem to think that everyone else will "love" there dog when in actual fact, Not.

I think Hats should always be worn when turnout/bring in especially for insurance reasons. And I feel sorry for YO who have people turn up at crazy hours.

I guess it's just a case of making sure you find the right yard for you and your horse. Every ones needs and tolerance are so different.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top