Your ideal livery yard.

[QuietTiger]

Need MNetters thoughts please, as it has been a long time since I have kept my horse at livery. :)

Dh and I are thinking about the idea of setting up a livery yard as a diversification from farming, so the livery will be on the farm. The question is, what facilities would you consider essential in the ideal livery yard and what would be your ideal facilities?

Roughly, the facilities we plan to provide are 30, 12ftx12ft loose boxes in american barn stabling, in converted sheds and there would be a large indoor school, as well as a 20m round pen outside. We would also provide assisted DIY livery. There would be summer and winter grazing, with the fields split off into small paddocks for no more than 2-3 horses, of about 2 acres each. Good parking for horse boxes and cars.

We'd be looking to charge around £25 - £30 p/week rental for box and grazing, with hay & straw on top.

What do you guys reckon?

TIA Quiet Tiger

Sounds ideal-where are you?

Will you be kid friendly? Some places welcome children, whilst others are popular because kids aren't allowed......you may want to specify either way

Also, have you allowed room for tack / feed storage? That's a problem where I am.

What would the deal be with turnout? Have jut moved dpony to new yard which is fab in so may way but I'm very stressed because although there is year round turnout it's time limited. Dpony is used to being out for 8 hours at a time and behaves like a maniac when taken out for his 3 hours. Do love the rubber matting and rug racks (bailer twine and broom handles!) though. Also a wash box and hot water being available are bliss! Am assuming you will have tack and feed rooms?

We pay £50 pw for part livery(stable, grazing, one bale of shavings, feed and haylage included). Have use of indoor school, 2x outdoor, jumping fields from May-Oct and xc on site. Can get to bridle path w/o going on roads.

Friends of ours had to fight for 3 years to get planning permission for a menage though.

You may want to consider buying in hay / straw / feed / bedding to sell to liveries.........makes it easier for them and may make you a little extra.

I'd want tack, feed and rug storage - its a pain keeping all the stuff just under our saddle rack. Also toilet, handwashing and somewhere to make a coffee. Reliable auto fill troughs in the paddocks.

Would be great if you could rent space to store bulk hay or could buy it more easily than on a bale by bale basis with the cost uncertainty

Yes, we'd have a lockable tack room and DH has come up with the idea of storage space next to the horses box of about 6ft in between the boxes, so the whole area would be 12ftx12ft box + 6ftx12ft storage, IYSWIM. The one thing I hated on a shared livery yard was shared storage space as I was/am really anal tidy & organised with my horse stuff and other people were not so much.

Elephantpoo - we're in South Wales, just outside Cardiff. We'd supply/sell our own hay and straw as it we will still have 460 acres of "working" farm!

CMOTDibbler - We'd have a toilet and as DH put it, a break room with a fridge and kettle because women like to natter! The plan would be to provide enough storage for a weeks supply of straw/hay and then DH would deliver it on a set day in the week with the bill charged at the end of the month with the livery bill.

Marialuisa - Because we'd have allocated winter and summer grazing, we'd probably have restricted grazing in winter to stop too much poaching & mud, and in summer, 24 hour turn-out if people want it.

Don't know about kid friendly yet - certainly won't have dogs as we'll have livestock and they are a liability. We will be pro-natural horsemanship though, and advertise as such, because my leaning is toward that and my horses go barefoot - their equine podiatrist has said there is a huge shortage of yards where people are sympathetic to that approach and so there is a high demand.

We're in the luxurious position of being able to design it from scratch over the next 18 months, so we are able to get it right first time - hence all the questions about what people want.

Please keep the thoughts coming - they are very helpful. :)

Our yard has back person, farrier, dentist etc visiting on a regular schedule which is great.

Not a "physical need" but we're a million times happier somewhere the YO has been clear and upfront about how things work and knowing what expectations are on both sides.

Also, any steps you can take to minimise mud in the winter, taps not miles from some stables for people carrying water buckets and rubbish bins.

Wish I still lived in Cardiff

How is your hacking access ? Would you think about a cross country course round your headlands to expand the out options ?

Oh, and a long way off, but a clear price list for extras (bring in for farrier etc) and an easy way of telling everyone (could be as simple as a FB group) when the next scheduled vet/saddler/farrier etc visit is so that its easy to share costs would be nice

I have been thinking a lot about what my ideal yard would be having recently moved yards and loving some aspects of my new yard, but missing some aspects of my old yard.

I think the idea your DH had about individual lockable space next to each stable would be great, I had that at my old yard and really miss it.

My ideal yard would be child friendly and have access to 24/7 year round turnout with good fencing and field shelters. It would have a school with jumps, access to good hacking and no busy roads. A cross country course of sorts - even if it was more just a field with jumps would be brilliant.

It would have a loo and a little kitchen.

It would also be reasonably priced and everyone would get along - that would be the perfect yard!

topical as am shopping around again following some yuckiness, my most important things are:

24/7 year round turnout
miles and miles of really good hacking, preferably without too much road work

they are the essentials but I also like own storage area and secure tack room with alarm etc., and not having to carry water for miles to field would be nice

Oh no Mitchie :s

Oh yes, I agree with what marialuisa said. It's very important to know what is expected on both sides.
And a clear price list for extras, like CMOTdibbler suggested (wish I lived in Cardiff too )

The things I value most at our yard (which we would never want to leave, even if we won the lottery and could afford big house with land etc) are:
Yard owners poo pick daily and keep water topped up in fields
Horses can live out all year if that suits them
They will do as much or as little care as you want
They know every horse and their preferences and really care about them. Yard owner is very good at making sure horses are in fields in groups which get on well together
It's a bit scruffy which puts off the highly competitive types
Everyone gets along, people are friendly, help each other, but nobody is intrusive
We have an indoor school, jumping field and miles of off road hacking, and a very horsey village with horsey pub
Straw, hay and haylage freely available and good quality
It is fantastically cheap (£18 a week for grass livery, £20 a week with stable)
We are happy there and so are our horses

We've had our horses on livery before but they are at home now except for DD's Section B which is on full livery - 140 pounds a week.

The things that we'd need have mostly been mentioned before. The reasons we send horses back to liveries - either for a short while or for lessons are:

1. Schooling - particularly over jumps. Will you be providing jumps for use in your menage - you can definitely charge more for this. We pay 5 pounds an hour on top of a lesson fee to use the jumps at our local stables or 15 pounds just to school over them.

1. Assisted livery is good. We both work so getting horses in at night is a pain in the Winter and we'd pay extra if somebody did it for us.

1. Clinics. Our local livery runs clinics with various minor celeb trainers and these are a real money spinner for them and good for us.

1. Floodlights on menage - unnecessary of course if you have an indoor one but would be a marvellous bonus to be able to ride in the evenings in the Autumn/early spring.

1. You seem to be on the ball about having a private area for each person's tack and feed but what about hay, shavings and straw - will it be communal or will each person have to have a (bulky) area for their own stuff.

1. Long term you may want to think about putting up some cross country jumps on your land which you could hire out to both your liveries and others in a sort of UK Chasers style deal.

Good luck - sounds great!

Ooh, so many things! For me, essentials are:

24/7 turnout all year round
school of some kind
off-road, varied hacking
lockable storage
knowledgeable help on hand (owner or liveries) as I'm a novice

Nice things are (or would be!):
indoor school
no poo picking (less work for me and less squabbling about who does it!)
covered tacking up area
events on yard (little shows etc) - especially for those with no transport
friendly liveries
floodlights on outdoor school
hay is provided in the cost of livery at my yard and as well as the convenience, this means you know where you stand with bills, none of this charge-you-for-using-a-bit-of-hay stuff

Oh, forgot toilets! I've been to two yards with no toilets .

Your set up sounds lovely. The tack space idea sounds fantastic. I'm not sure I'd be happy about restricted grazing in the winter. Poaching can be an issue, but I wouldn't want my ponies stuck in stables for long hours at a time. Not only would they get really upset, I'd have to feed them tons of hay which would cost more. Could you factor in to your plans Things like gateways and water troughs away from corners, and hardcore or road scalpings in the gateways? You can get special matting to help stop poaching. Barefoot horses do less damage to the ground generally. I never put gates in the closest part of the field to homes the ponies congregate there at bed time.
Other than that, automatic drinkers would be nice, but not essential.

Some sort of lighting between stables and fields. Our yard is on a working farm and the fields are quite a walk from the stables which isn't a problem now but am dreading it when it's pitch black in winter

Clear worming policy - which includes the DIY liveries

A seperate isolation area for new liveries or those with suspicious illness - especially if some horses might be competition animals.

My current yard, which is the best I have experienced has some important features for me.
Automatic waterers (stable and field)
Integral tack lockers which are accessed from outside of the stable and secured with your own lock. This means that you are not relying on other people to secure your valuble tack.
An arena that is is large enough for full course of showjumps
A warm and friendly atmosphere. Our horses are our pleasure and the yard should reflect that

hello - just came across your old post - did you ever set up a livery yard ?

Sounds good as standard. Mine has just moved to a track system with 24/7 turnout year round which is pretty unique but a really big deal for mine as he has become stressed this last winter with the routine and his stable. He's also out in a herd of 11 which they all love and has totally rebalanced him but they're all barefoot which is the only way I could risk it as have had fracture caused by a kick.

Will hay/bedding be included? That's always useful I think.

Sounds like a great yard.

I love mine. The stables are big, the arenas are massive and well looked after. The yard owner is the best part though, she's put up with my horse since he arrived needing to be on box rest, organised for other horses to be in to stop him causing a fuss, organised for him to have a small turnout area when needed and in general just put up with my horses weirdness. Not many do, but she thinks he's daft but a nice daft. I think the yard owner is what makes a yard. You can have the best facilities ever, but if the yard owner is useless, theres no point to it all. I've been on yards like that and it just doesnt work unfortunately.

Still in the process of doing it. We've had a slight change in direction in that we're going down the retirement livery route, with a few full liveries instead of assisted DIY. I also have a small stud, with stud experience and we've taken in a few stud liveries. It's still a work in progress.

Full retirement liveries (and, indeed, stud liveries - or youngstock livery) is a much less intrusive, and more lucrative way of running a yard, I think. It's the only kind of yard I'd ever consider running!