Yard owners taking the piss? really?

VioletStripe said:
Where we are for DIY, I think it's £38 for a pony stable, £40 for a large, and an extra £5 if you bed on shavings. Then on top of that, you have to pay for feed and your bedding. Turnout isn't good, and if you want to use a better field, you have to pay more. You can use all the facilities (some only at given times), except for the horse walker which you have to pay for each go.. No idea what that's like price wise comparing to everyone else, but it is an expensive area.. xx
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I know exactly what yard you are on then (MM) as I was looking at those prices just this morning. I am just round the corner!
 
Ella19 said:
You need to come to the Surrey Hills Wagtail and set up here. Our grass livery is average for the area at £270pcm, that includes a field (only harrowed once a year, no ferterliser or other care) a sandschool that is currently locked for quarter of the year due to lack of adequate drainage and a bit of storage space in the tack room. Feed is in a "shed" with no windows and a leaking roof. But we pay for the excellent hacking and great people. I believe the rent is high and that is why prices are so high round here but I do gulp at my livery bill every month, cross the border to sussex and grass is £100pcm.
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That looks quite reasonable compared to the quote I got a few years ago. £350 a month! That was in Albury. They did put a feed in once a day and change rugs, but I still nearly passed out when they told me!
 
WAGTAILI agree wholeheartedly. And then theres your time you need to add at least minimum wage per hour. DIY livery should be at least£40 per week per horse for rent of a stable and shared paddock to be realistic. Unfortunately too many liveries think that the YO should just provide a costs-covered service. why on earth should they?
 
Ella19 said:
You need to come to the Surrey Hills Wagtail and set up here. Our grass livery is average for the area at £270pcm, that includes a field (only harrowed once a year, no ferterliser or other care) a sandschool that is currently locked for quarter of the year due to lack of adequate drainage and a bit of storage space in the tack room. Feed is in a "shed" with no windows and a leaking roof. But we pay for the excellent hacking and great people. I believe the rent is high and that is why prices are so high round here but I do gulp at my livery bill every month, cross the border to sussex and grass is £100pcm.
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That's more than our grass livery and we are in the hills. All fields are harrowed, fertilised and poo picked. School is in full use (except when it really snowed) as YO had all the drainage redone. Tack is with the rest of the liveries...but then most of the GL have been here a very long time and we don't have many as YO is keen to manage her grazing..
 
pixie said:
Go to this website: http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/compare/select and type in the post code of the business. It will give you a list of properties using that post code that are charged business rates and will also break down the various charges for each rating.

For example:
Talland School of Equitation ( GL7 5ED ) have a rateable value of £23,000, broken down here:
http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/compare/valuation/2010/10229070000/9463381000
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Bear in mind to get the actual amount of rates charged you need to multiply the rateable value by the pence in the pound figure set by the council eg 0.52
 
I do help out a bit like this morning I fixed my broken down rail and I re seeded my own field this year to save them the job ( rich people I use to work for letting me rent a stable block with 2 friends) they have a worker who chain harrows and sorts the fields in general but I brought my grass seed to help them due to the price off our livery. I buy in all hay straw etc that's all up to me. I use a walker, jumps, sand school and 2 x gallops which are great. So I suppose although they are a bussiness and have bussiness rates they don't make anything from me useing the place.
 
With any individual business, the set up and the running costs tend to be historic.
If I want to keep my ponies on a farm, the basic cost is £15.00 per week for grass livery, summer only.
If I want to find a stable plus grazing , then it is £25.00 per week.
If I wanted to start up a business doing livery, I would need to marry a farmer with redundant buildings, or be prepared to work for very little in terms of £ rate per hour.
Most people round here either inherited a very small farm and need cash to keep a roof over their heads, or want to subsidise their own horses.
 
I pay £15pw per horse (2), for paddock on field on working farm. Costs of horses apparently just beat profit from having hay on there. No electric, put own shelter up, do own maintinence. About 10 horse paddocks all same size, all other paddocks only have 1 horse in and owners refuse to have more. So I pay twice as much for exactly the same service as everyone else! Only hit me the other day as have always paid 'per horse' in past, but then always had stables too.
 
Mine's £40 a week for assisted livery. That's turn out and bring in, feed morning and evening, one rug change and hay put up until you arrive. Use of school, jumping field, 24/7 turnout in summer, ad-lib hay or haylage. Fields are poopicked and water filled up for you, yards brushed etc. Any suggestion of helping out as a livery is met with horror, the full liveries are kept brilliantly.

However YO is not looking to make a profit out of the yard, just needs to break even. She has 3 part time staff over winter for mucking out, and the livery money just funds the yard, her horses and her competition fees. I have no idea how she does it but I'm glad it's this set up!

Conversely previous yard was £25 DIY a week which is very reasonable. However liveries never saw a penny of it. Arena hadn't been resurfaced in 15 years and was like riding on concrete, was never levelled. Us liveries use to level it but then they locked the harrow away and refused to let us harrow it? So after a week or so of everyone riding on it it became very deep and horrible. Everyone reverted to using stable forks to level it out, and once one livery removed a gate from the field and used that (they were on holiday at the time).

They decided to redo fencing to make smaller paddocks and so re did it all with 2 strips of wire and very flimsy posts that snapped if a horse rubbed its bum against it. Had a strip of electric at the top which never worked as battery was always shut off. Their riggy gelding was always smashing through the fence and going after other geldings but ours always got the blame? In the end I would set up an electric perimeter inside the fence, but then naturally the next day we'd be told to move fields and I'd have to spent another day sorting it out. The gates were removed from the winter fields and taken to the summer fields! Hose was disconnected from November-Feb to prevent pipes bursting and we had to take our own water up, not allowed to get from her house (which was fine for me as I lived next door but for the others not so much) we also had to take up water for her boy even though she lived on the yard?

Yard work all done by liveries - parts of school held together by string :eep: IMO if you're paying for a livery you should get the facilities you were told about and they should be decent quality. I'm not expecting a top class surface or whatever, but something that's safe and rideable. Also fencing should be safe. I'd have rather put the livery up and seen some improvement but alas in the 6 years I was there it never happened (apart from one morning came down and all horses had swapped stables and they all had new stable doors?! Made me giggle)

Only really stayed because of the people and the grazing and because it was behind my house. YO was a character, she was throwing old bales of hay on a bonfire so a livery said ooo I don't mind having that for the field, save you burning it and YO said okay that's £7 please. For hay she was burning. When normal hay is £3.50. Mad :D
 
Ran a small yard for a while, by the time i had paid basic rent for the yard, electric fencing, hose, muck removal, fertiliser, etc etc, it is cheaper to be on a yard where i pay for a stable and use of grazing, have nice school, tea room etc and much more time to spend with my pony instead of running around after other people - its bliss!
 
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