YO's having to make big bale haylage - how to charge liveries

Bosworth

Bosworth

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devon
www.ballhillequestrian.co.uk
because of the hopeless weather this year we are going to have to make haylage - and round here we can only get big bale made which is fine - apart from one thing. How to charge the liveries. In the past every livery has had their own pile of hay and I simply charge them per bale for what I put on their pile. With the big bales I will have to open one and all share it as no one owner has enough horses to use a bale. So do I charge a fixed price per week for haylage, and how do I roughly work that out. Any suggestions?
 
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I'd be tempted to say ad lib haylage for everyone, but charge £10-15 a week each livery.

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Thats how I have been charged in the past. It was a different price for different size horses......
 
That's fine unless you have someone there with a laminitic Welshie of 12 hands and another with a 16.2 TB x!

If you can make square bales it is possible to charge by the slice. I know they vary a little in thickness, but when I did it, It always worked out. Cost of bale / no of slices in that bale x pieces had by horse/pony...
 
I think if it was ad-lib then I would be happy to pay the amount suggested. You can never please all of the people all of the time though.

At my old DIY yard a group of us ordered bales in, then divided the cost of the bales by the number of horses being fed and paid that. It worked well for us, I can't ever recall any "You had more than me" squabbling.

So, those with two horses would pay two shares of the cost etc.
 
I pay a small amount per day that gets added on to my livery bill. When I fed hay they were having 1/2 bale per day so YO charges me the equivalent of 1/3 bale of hay per day
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I include it in the livery price but their livery stays the same all year round, so I reckon I probably charge a fiver a week per horse. (so in summer they are contributing towards the haylage costs when we make it)
This year I had to increase the retirement charges by two pounds a week, as the contractors' costs had me almost passed out on the floor, I understand the reasoning (oil) but it still shocked me rigid.
We got in another field today and are cutting the last one tomorrow, but it will have much less nutritional value compared to June.
I am hoping for a good September when the grass continues to grow, at least here in Devon we often get slow grass growth through most of the winter, and by Feb it really starts to get going again.
This year everywhere is still bright green with all the rain, so there is no shortage of grass, meaning no supplemetary haylage feeding through summer.
I don't know about haylage, I'm battening down the hatches to reduce oil consumption, and just bought a ton and a half of coal for the woodburners.
We have a few trees can come down too and are hoping for some sun so the soalr panels get to work as well.
Going back to haylage, the biggest problem are greedy owners who feed so much their horses chuck it all over the floor and pee on it. The ones I have here are ok, but my former ones used to drive me mad, when I saw wheelbarrows of the stuff being thrown on the muckheap.
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Ok so from this I think I charge a fixed amount per week - and
the owners can use what they want. would £8 per week per horse and £5 per pony sound about right. I don't have any tiny ponies - I do have 3 14'2s but to be honest they can have as much as they want as they are competition ponies. They can't make me the Helston Bales - have to be the rounds so I have to charge per livery.
 
We get charged a flat rate for using the haylage and then it is ad lib. I think it is £11 if the horses are in 24/7 and £6 per week if the horse are out half of the day.

I know the cost is slightly lower if you have a pony rather than a horse.
 
Well I have hay left for the ones that need hay - and they can use that up until it's gone - then on to Haylage. We don't tend to have to hay the fields as we have so much grass over winter we usually manage fine - HH - a definite benefit of living in Devon. I think the liveries I have here are all really sensible and won't be greedy - I know exactly how much they leave as I put all the horses out in the morning so I will see if they are getting too much. I don't want to include it in the livery fee as fingers crossed next year we will get small bale hay again. I just have to take the grass ASAP or I loose 10 acres worth of hay so haylage is my only option. My contractor is concerned as he has no hay in yet and his corn is still wet - looking at the long range weather forecast it looks like there is not going to be a fortnight of decent weather for hay until after mid September at the earliest by which time my grass would be ruined and have no nutritional value.

I am normally not keen on haylage for the liveries as the majority don;t do enough work to merit the higher protein levels - but as it is such late hay the protein levels won't be as high as June/July hay so I think that will compensate
 
We charge a set amount, has never been above £9 per week for a horse and they take whatever the want and it pretty much works out right, it is sooo darm annoying though when you see it being thrown on the muck heap as they give too much. (very intersting to see them having tiny nets when they buy small bales of hay by the bale in summer then bam, hayledge opened, massssssive nets!)
Other yards i know locally work it out via the weight the horse has, another charged by the net (and apparently take some out if they think you have too much - quite a lot of their liveries are looking elsewhere to stable!)
i do worry a little about this year - i have been quoted £35 a bale for hayledge!!! we tend to have both big bale hayledge and hay in winter so have two bales on the go at once depending on what people need to use.
 
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