Who else is rationed their hay by YO?

I would be out of there like a shot I'm afraid.

Mine will polish off 2 big haynets absolutely stuffed, and then be hungry by morning, so I have added a 3rd haynet. I hate horses not getting enough roughage. (I hasten to add this is because I've switched to wood pellets and I haven't built a haybar yet)

I used to charge £7.50 p w for adlib hay. (people still thought it was too expensive) 12 pw seems high, though I suspect it is not uncommon.

Years ago when I was really unhappy at a yard, I found a field to rent, put my 2 in there for £100 pm, they overwintered in good rugs with lots of hay & looked fab by Spring/ Is it possible to find something like that if there are no spaces in livery yards.
 
siennamum said:
I used to charge £7.50 p w for adlib hay. (people still thought it was too expensive) 12 pw seems high, though I suspect it is not uncommon.
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£ 7.50 per week ad lib??? how did you make it worth while £8 pounds for two bales which a horse would eat in 4 days
Our bales are £ 4.50 which our through 3 bales a week each
 
It's situations like this that take the joy out of horse ownership. There is always a compromise on livery yards but I wouldn't be happy with this at all. Hay is the most important part of a horses diet through the winter so to hav that basic need stripped away is not good. That's how they end up with a ulcers. I'd buy in hay until you can move and if she's arsey about it then I'd use a hay replacer like fast fibre for a bit. Will she let you store your hay on the yard or do you have a place to keep it at home?
 
During the winter, our haylage bill is £20 per horse per week. This is fed five times a day. Some horses are restricted (I weigh theirs in nets) but that is due to them being very good doers and prone to laminitis or just being overweight. The others are fed it loose on the floor, enough so that they have a little bit left at the next feeding time. OP I would be buying in extra immediately, not waiting until after Christmas.
 
I think it's reasonable that yard owner where the horses are on DIY set an amount per horse for hay , then the owner tops up as necessary at there own cost there are lots of options for doing this from buying your own hay to useing hay replacers .
 
amymay said:
Move or/and buy your own hay.
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This.

In the winter we pay a set price depending on the size of the horse and the YO says to feed as much as you want which is good because my 16.2 gets loads!

(In the summer when most are out 24/7 we buy small bales and the pricing structure in the winter is good as its fair so those with little natives who are on restricted hay don't pay the same price as 17hh horses who are ad lib :). I know some yards who all pay the same regardless of the size of the horse all year round)
 
I think £12 per week for hay is expensive. My girl gets through 3 standard bales a week at £3.50 each so £10.50 in total - but it's good hay no dust or rubbish on it. OP in your situation I'd buy my own hay or haylage in and start looking for a new yard
 
wiglet said:
I think £12 per week for hay is expensive. My girl gets through 3 standard bales a week at £3.50 each so £10.50 in total - but it's good hay no dust or rubbish on it. OP in your situation I'd buy my own hay or haylage in and start looking for a new yard
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For me, £12 would be good value, mine could eat almost 1 small bale per day. It all depends on the size of the horse and if they're good doers, poor doers etc.
 
As others have said, not acceptable. And it's not just the amount, it's the quality. So really no matter how full, there's still no value or nutrition.

Mine are coming in at about 1 daily as the weather is atrocious. They go out to 3/4 bale between 4. The other 2 get a half a bale. In to a full net of hay and haylage. At chore time they haven't finished it all but it's topped up again and the same at 9pm. In the morning any excess goes in the out to the field pile.

YO is quite rude too.

Terri
 
wiglet said:
I think £12 per week for hay is expensive. My girl gets through 3 standard bales a week at £3.50 each so £10.50 in total - but it's good hay no dust or rubbish on it. OP in your situation I'd buy my own hay or haylage in and start looking for a new yard
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I don't agree with rudeness, but I can see it from YO's point of view it is a business not a charity.

Yes but OP is not only paying for the hay.

Does OP put it out in field?
Does OP paying for the storing of the hay?
if small bales does OP pay to stack the bales or her labour to stack them?
does OP pay to have them brought to the yard

No!!! YO does

she pays someone to take them out to field
someone to stack them
pays for someone to bring them to the yard
this is over and above what she paid for the bales in the first place

we don't put hay in our fields but if i had to take a haynet out in field or hay a DIY I would charge £ 1 for my labour walking out with it inclusive of my storage

The £ 12 also includes storage of the hay and taking it out to the field. a lot of people forget this they think its just the hay, but it includes storage and labour and fuel from tractor taking it out to the fields.
 
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My big horse eats a bale a day in this terrible weather (so £24.50 a week - if I didn't make it myself) - if your YO won't accept more money for more hay I'd be out buying your own.

Do you have a garage you can store some in?, I think you can buy a zip up bad to keep a bale in the car and give him extra when you go up to ride?
 
Polos Mum said:
My big horse eats a bale a day in this terrible weather (so £24.50 a week - if I didn't make it myself) - if your YO won't accept more money for more hay I'd be out buying your own.

Do you have a garage you can store some in?, I think you can buy a zip up bad to keep a bale in the car and give him extra when you go up to ride?
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To be fair, any yard doing this would buy in large bales and bulk or make their own. If they couldn't then they're mad not to just give the liveries a set storage place each.
We charged £30/month all year round. This covered fuel and time for twice daily feeding (so they always had some left) last years was over 50% of the year. We would have been broke had we used little bales (bar own). Combination of our own and large bales in an expensive area still covered our costs.

Agree to buy in though. Forage is one thing that I would be fuming about not having enough. I'd top up what he's having but ensure yard doesn't start cutting down their addition and horse is getting what you think he is. Or pay for own and don't let yard get involved at all.
We had an old hay bag which could take about 3 little bales. Could open bales and just put in enough sections to fit car and easy to grab a section as and when needed.
Or get a storage area at yard and get some other liveries to chip in to get cheaper bales between you, that's how I've always done on DIY yards.
 
It's impossible for us to say what we think is a universal fair price for adlib hay, its obviously going to vary too much from horse to horse, & situation. Ad lib hay for daughters 11.1, even in 24/7 wouldn't even equate to 1 small bale per week, so anything over the cost of 1/10th large bale, or local cost of small bales would be yo ripping me off. At the opposite end of the scale, the 17.2 I had could polish off a large bale in 12 days, even when out for 12hrs on reasonable winter grazing, so a yo charging me less than 50% of a large bale per week for adlib would be getting ripped off by me.
 
At a previous yard, we where told 2 x 14lb nets a day, and if you wanted a third net, it was an extra 80p a day.

At my current yard it is ad lib, but one of my horses eats quite a bit, and the other not so much, so I think it does balance out between the 2 of them. But I do always say that I want ad lib hay and is this included etc.
 
I don't understand, you are a paying customer so the owner should be doing their best to accommodate you not treating you as if they are doing you a favour by allowing you to be there! Of course the YO should be covering their costs but restricting hay doesn't seem the answer - why not simply charge you for what you use/need?
 
This is why we are on a yard where we buy our own bedding, hay and feed. This way we the owners have control over what we give our horses. I could not imagine being on a yard where the amount of hay was restricted. If it was me in your position I would move.
 
Leviathan said:
£ 7.50 per week ad lib??? how did you make it worth while £8 pounds for two bales which a horse would eat in 4 days
Our bales are £ 4.50 which our through 3 bales a week each
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It was hay from the farm, heston bales so pretty economical. The horses were all living out at the time, so it was a couple of slabs a day in the field which probably works out at a bale and a half a day for 7 horses/ponies (I think). The year before it was £5 per week per horse, still had complaints haha.

It would have been approx the same had they been living in tbh, as had a few ponies who wouldn't eat more than that.
 
We used to have haylage included in our livery - it was a set price all year round, but some people didn't have theirs out 24/7 in summer and used loads of haylage instead while the rest of us used nothing, so it worked out quite unfair. Earlier this year, the price of livery was reduced so that the stable was included, but no haylage and now the farmer supplies each of us with enormous haylage bales for £25 - this would last my two about 2 weeks if not getting any turnout due to weather. However I have had to buy some hay now as the TB is out of work and overweight and this is costing me £4.50 per bale and between them they are going to be going through a bale a day once I stop mixing it with the haylage - so it's going to cost me about £30 per week (although our haylage is superb and very dry, so not actually sure that the hay is any less rich anyway, so might just move back to that). Our other alternative is that we can buy haylage for £1 per medium net. So really I don't think what the OP is paying is unreasonable IF the quality was good - in fact for hay, she would be getting good value for money.
 
PandorasJar said:
To be fair, any yard doing this would buy in large bales and bulk or make their own.
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I agree absolutely, I was just trying to point out (clearly badly!) that the OP could double what she currently pays the YO and still be better off (depending on how much her horse needs) than if she went to the local supplier and bought a few small bales at a time.

OP - if you can get storgae at the yard and there are others in your situation then certainly look into big bales/ buying in bulk to reduce the cost.
 
good grief some of you pay a lot for hay, my horse is munching his way through a quadrant that cost me £50 (from a merchant), its good quality as well, think it will take him 2 months to eat it. he's a 15.2 wc cross about 600kgs so about £6.25/week! Sopped onto that coz we were on lovely hayleges, got the feeling the others were diddling me, that was £10 per week, it wasn't the price that annopyed me think thats actually cheap, it was the diddling that did annoy me! why do people do that?
 
Making my own hay I can promise £3.50 a bale is not cheap. Out of pocket costs are red diesel, string, weedkiller and fertiliser, reseeding, then purchase and maintanence of a drum mower, turner, baler, roller and tractor. Then our time to cut, turn daily/ twice daily for 4/6 days, then bale, then collect from field, stack oh and barn to store it in.
Not to mention a field that's out of action from Nov to Aug (if horses were on it in the winter it'd be so churned there would,t be any grass left!)
 
Haven't read all the threads but from experience of being on DIY, part and full livery at various points.

I can understand yard owners where they do an all in price getting fed up if people are throwing good hay away because of over feeding but equally as a paying customer I have been at a yard where in my opinion my horse was not getting enough hay and other horses would often finish their hay by around 6.30 and then not get fed until 7.30 again the next morning. I used to generally be up the yard last so could top my horse's hay up but it was very frustrating.

When on DIY have generally done the pay by the bale and so could use what I wanted.

At the very least you should be able to buy some more on top if their finances are worked out at to allow a certain amount. Harsh if you were not told it was limited when you moved to yard.
 
Added to say where I used to have my old horse who died three years ago, I was at that time paying £17 a week for hay and straw but that was add lib. It was generally expensive for DIY but a nice yard and I liked it.
 
OP I have this issue with hay and straw.

Other than that I love the yard and so does horse. So my solution is simple, rather riling y/o. He gets his net on an evening, stuffed full, double netted plus 3 scoops of hi-fi lite molasses free, its got less value than poor hay and 3 scoops = around 1.5kg. He gets this to pick at plus a good scoop of speedi beet in his feed which is high fibre and keeps the system going. He generally doesn't run out till 8.30ish now and gets t/o at 6.30am.

As for bedding, i'm going to buy in my own shavings and be as a*al as I want about giving him a huge soft clean bed daily, rather than a sprinkle on the floor.

I feel for you it is stressful when y/o has differing ideas to yourself.
 
Makes me realise how lucky I am at my yard - the hay is produced on the farm, is really good stuff, and we are unlimited in how much we use. Included in the rent, and atm Shy is having ad-lib hay and thriving. Two medium haynets would not be enough for him, and he's 14.2.
 
My lot are fed adlib. You actually use less the more you put in! That's why I would never go back to measuring it again. 22 horses costs about £60 a week in hay.
 
While it's wrong that horses aren't getting enough hay - maybe the YO is worrying that she might not have enough hay to get everyone through the winter.

Maybe she should get a spring balance and weigh the hay for each horse. Unless you know the true weight of a round bale its hard to estimate the amount of hay you have available - there can be a 200lb difference - usually they weigh around 300 to 400 kgs (660–880 lb) - it was much easier to estimate weight when you could get small bales.

Have you a garage at home where you could store some conventional bales and add to your horses ration?
 
That's just terrible, I'd be extremely worried about ulcers etc.

Can you leave a big trug of readi-grass for them to come into, and maybe a treat ball with grass nuts in? and put the hay up last thing?
 
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