Yard owner banning other peoples hay/haylage?

I think the whole point of the OPs first post was the YO was insisting that the liverys buy hay from her which was of poor quality. I can understand why clients would be reluctant to feed rubbish hay just because the YO had changed the rules.

If the YO does change the contract them the only choice is to stay and use poor quality forage or leave and find a more accommodating yard.

I have found the responses of YO on here really interesting though! The general synopsis seems to be ' my way or no way' I do understand that alot of premises are their homes also but some think that they are doing liverys a favour!! Horse owners are paying for the services, they are not getting it for free. Owning a horse is expensive game and it should (within reason) be the liverys choice what their horse eats ect....

I think that if the livery includes hay/haylage and sometime bedding it can be a very good thing. Also, i'm sure that most YOs would want to supply good quality hay as its their livelyhood at the end of the day, and as we all know, gossip spreads like wildfire in the horse world!!!
 
NoseyPosey said:
Disagree with i) because if there's enough room for home grown there should be enough for brought-in.
Click to expand...

This is not actually so, sorry. :(

Homegrown hay can be stacked to the rafters.

Hay bought in by individuals can not.
Say you have 10 owners all bringing in 100 bales of their own choice of hay. That means 10 separate areas which will not, in all likelihood, be stacked as economically as 1000 home grown bales.

As a YO: I can easily stack 1000 bales in my barn. To stack it in 10 separate piles with access for all would be a nightmare and I wouldn't do it. Quality hay is included in my livery charge, Full, I don't do DIY. I buy it in.

I do not have the space to store hay for individual owners and I don't offer to, no one has ever asked otherwise, they do not expect to have to do so. As I feed everything anyway it would be a giant pain in the arse to take a bit from this stack, and a bit from that, then put it out in the paddocks where it would get eaten by everything anyway.

As an Owner on livery: If I couldn't feed what I wanted then I would go elsewhere if I felt that strongly about it, but I would make that decision before I moved to the yard in the first place.
 
Last edited:
I would never be on a yard that tried to enforce this rule. I'm lucky that I have friends who let me purchase their hay at little more than the production price (2.25 a bale for last years cut) so when i see people charging 5-6 pounds a bale I nearly choke!
 
I rent a little yard from our farmer and it is 'encouraged' that you buy theirs. It is good quality though and one of the cheapest suppliers around so not really
a problem :)
 
This really annoys me. There's a lovely yard near me I wanted to go to. But they insisted on you buying theirs that they make themselves at £7 a bale! Such a cheek I told her it was way too much to charge for hay they are making them selves and that I wouldn't be interested unless they changed that rule as I've always paid £2.75 or less.
 
If I went back to taking liveries, I would not want them buying in their own hay because inevitably they would be introducing weeds. I take a lot of trouble to eradicate ragwort and docks and don't need any seeds being brought in from outside.

I must admit I had not thought about the logistics of, say, a dozen owners all having and storing there own hay separately! I can just see the squabbles and fighting that would create, not to mention the mess!

My property, my rules, as others have said.
 
I've been on a previous yard where you had to buy your hay/haylage and shavings from them. If you used another bedding you could buy it in...

It would have been fine if the forage was of good or at least consistent quality - but it would often be dreadful. People ended up sneaking in small bales in dead of night and hiding it under their yard hay, or stuffing it all in haynets and hoping the YM didn't notice! It did say in the contract tho, so at least we knew that would be the deal.

When moving, looked at a yard where all feed, bedding, hay must be ordered from their shop - this put me off going there, as I didn't want the same situation again with dodgy hay :(
 
I see this is an old thread but I guess it could be of interest to other people.

I own a pretty decent sized hay farm where we make high quality horse hay, and we sell a few thousand bales of it each year. I also have a lot of horses who live here. The majority of the horses here owned by others are on full care livery so hay is included. Some of my clients rent fields from me and they buy their hay at cost from us. I do not usually allow hay from elsewhere on the farm unless I know exactly which fields it came from as we are an organic farm so I cannot risk our own hay fields being 'polluted'.
 
If a YO is trying to force liveries to buy rubbish hay, surely the solution is obvious? If a polite quiet word doesn't work, you go en masse and demand better hay or the lifting of the restriction on bringing your own...or go elsewhere!
 
OH the delights of DIY liveries! :eek:

Never, EVER again, and those who open their doors to them, get what they deserve! ;) The problems with feed, are only the start of it!

10 different piles of hay, makes for 100 separate arguments, or more. :D

Alec.
 
I've only ever been on yards where the hay is supplied, and you have no choice but to use it.

No problem at all - makes life a hell of a lot easier for me.

Hay and haylage has always been of excellent quality, and the price more than reasonable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top