Working Livery: what do you all pay?

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

MiJodsR2BlinkinTite

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Further to a previous thread (sorry!); am just trying to establish whether I'm being ripped off or not.

I won't go into the history (complicated!) but working livery at a certain yard is £45 per week, for the winter months. For this you get basic bedding (straw) and haylage which they make on the farm (so don't have to buy it in). But this doesn't include anything else, i.e. shoeing, supplements, or hard feed; or indeed any other "tasks" such as clipping - all of which is (so I understand) billed for separately and in addition to the £45 quid a week.

The "working livery" consists of the horse being used for two sessions a day in the riding school, so could be lessons or a hack. Hacks cost £25 per pop; donno how much lessons are costed at.

Sooooo peeps ........... how does this compare with other places? The yard in question is in the SW.
 
Our working liveries pay £150 per month and basically get full livery (inc clipping and holding for vet etc)
The only things on top of that are supplements, shoes , vets and wormers. Basic hard feed is covered if the horse needs it.
The most our workers do is about 5hours a week in the school.
 
I paid half the cost of whichever livery package I wanted, but got full livery perks like attendance for farrier, etc. Grass livery during the summer was £12.50/wk on working livery, and the yard also paid half feed and half shoes. He'd only be used about twice a week.

The half livery cost applied to any package you wanted to take, so stabled livery with muck out, feed, rugs, turnout/in etc would have worked out at about £30 ish plus half feed and half shoes. I thought it was an extremely good deal, especially as they coud be trusted to only put decent riders on.

I'm now paying £63/wk for part livery - stable, daily turnout, muck out, feed twice daily, turn out, bring in and rug change, and including all hay / haylege, bedding and hard feed plus some supplements. £45/wk working livery sounds steep to me, but it depends how it compares to the cost of the othr packages on offer.
 
Working livery in local RS is £60-£65 pw depending on size, all the usual extras on top, I think it is very expensive and one of my liveries came to me as I do part livery for much the same price without the horse getting ridden by novices and potentially spoilt.

I think it varies so much because some YOs do not realise what a good deal it is for them, they get the use of a horse, no outlay for horse or equipment, all its running costs covered and if it breaks they often put it on full livery as it is no longer working.

In your case would the yard have loaned him, that could have been the ideal solution.

Also in SW.
 
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I've never had my own horses on working livery but a large portion of our 'decent' horses were working livery (going back around 20 years too).
Horses were expected to do a minimum of 10 hours per week, at least 2 of those hours at weekends (but same weekend day). Owners were charged the same rate as a DIY livery, everything was included, apart from the vet.
Looking back, 10 hours seems a lot as few leisure horses these days do more than 5 hours if in private home. Our RS ponies averaged about 18 hours a week!

ETS; Riding schools were very different to the schools of today
 
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Yes I think that's steep if they are being worked by riding school. Your looking on average thirty quid a week livery so I would expect to be paying much less than that if they Are being used for lessons
 
£30 a week is the average you would pay for stable and field, possibly beddibg round here. Including no feed or services.

I would expect the price of working to be lower than full but not DIY!
 
I put one of mine on working livery for my first year of uni. It was free! And included absolutely everything, including farrier bills! Only thing i paid was for his vaccination. They even paid his vet bill when he went lame in a lesson one day. Turned out to be lami, which when led to a cushings diagnosis, but that's another story :-(
The YM said that by letting them use my horse, i was doing them a favour & the least they could do was pay his keep! :O
 
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