Managing veterinary conditions in livery

[Paddiwack]

If you are on livery where certain management is needed for veterinary conditions - if those cannot be provided by the yard are they in breach of contract? I'm thinking in terms of laminitis and restricted grazing / and services like soaking hay etc. If you have to move because those things are not available, when they've said they would be, do you have to give a full month's notice?

Basically I was given a small bit of yard to use ad hoc, when the grass is too much, but now it's being used by someone else as they say I don't need it (because I manage dpony well and he's not fat 🙄). I'm petrified I won't get it back again if I need it for the frosts. I also know they don't bother with things like rinsing my soaked hay when I've asked for assistance. Nothing specific in contract of course, but I'm thinking of what to include in contract if I move elsewhere, which I'll have to as this has peed me right off! 🤦‍♀️

The facilities I have is a farm livery! It's not some fancy equestrian establishment purpose built.

Ive never been on a yard where basics like soaking hay for medical reasons, less grazing etc have been a problem. And if it was I'd move yards.

Some yards might chose to charge extra for such things as they aren't without cost but that is up to me as the owner to pay for, not the yard.

I do see liveries though who want their ponies out without muzzles 24/7, only ride a couple of times a month if at all, want to give massive haynets and adlib hay and then moan to yard owner their pony is fat and they suddenly need separate grazing, soaked hay, want the school to lunge for 30 mins a day at 6pm when it's in the highest demand in winter etc. They seem to hold the yard owner responsible for the weight they have allowed their pony to gain and want the yard owner to bend over backwards to accommodate.

If my ponies get lami because they are overweight it is my fault, not the yards. I'm DIY which means all feeding and management is down to me. I knew the facilities available before I came here and it was up to me to decide if that would work and if I had the time for DIY.

I agree with you @HighlandCowbag!

Except for the bit about moving yards if those things were not available- I would (and have!) do this, but having now been in that situation it's making me reflect that it's those places that need to change their practices or not be run as equestrian facilities.

Your farm livery sounds a great example of non-fancy basic care. You'd be as surprised as I am to discover the number of places that don't or won't facilitate basics like soaked hay!

Yes the most basic yards I have been in had some kind of injury turnout pen and would allow you to soak or steam hay (in a bin with kettles in my case never been on a yard posh enough to have a steamer). It seems like the gap between full livery and DIY is that a DIY owner you absorb the extra tasks but livery won't. Although the sums seem huge I can assure you that I have very high bills setting up and fencing land for horses ignoring the vast cost of land. Most livery costs barely cover the actual cost but are there to subsidise a yard for the owners. The physical work is massive as is the responsibility with no break. Workers are so hard to find. The costs in hard standing and fencing of no grass areas plus hay and hay storage are much higher. I do sympathise as have had my livery yard issues but do not agree that the yards need to change wholesale. Ultimately as a horse owner we have to be prepared to look after our horses and fill in the gaps in care. I hope you find a yard that can allow you to but like pretty much every poster think it will need to be DIY and I don't agree that yard owners and staff should always take that responsibility from owners.

It may not be something you agree with, but it's the legal position. I'm very glad it seems better regulation is being considered. I imagine only the strongest yards will survive.

Come back to us when you are running your own livery yard with these facilities.

Actually my yard is subsided by my legal training. Duty of care is a private law negligence concept so not something the government are enforcing or proposing enforcement of, they are far too busy with leasehold reform and planning law change which is absolutely coming for yards, I have a theory that the inheritance tax on family farms is looking to release land into housing. But to return to your point, in interpretation of duty of care you may well find the basic conditions of yards are quite adequate, welfare cases investigated even by charities have very low standards and requirements unfortunately. I have seen YOs and yard staff cut corners so you are not particularly wrong. However, hay can be soaked or if you are able with electricity steamed in a big bin but it is heavy and daily messy work. I have done it with a newborn baby and during many busy life events in the dark before work/ late at night/ early hours of the morning and it is a PIA. That is not what basic duty of care looks like, it is much harder work. Yard work at this time of the year is severe I have seen it make people ill you cannot expect horse staff to exist to sort everything out for a condition. The bills you feel are so high really aren't when cost of facilities and time are considered. There will be less yards anyway due to the massive pressures on land use especially with housing. I know this sounds rude but the question was asked and everyone has replied. You can't get a livery yard contract to enforce hay soaking. You should look for a yard with some sort of turnout pen for rehab and and a bath near a hose to soak hay ideally with a hook to drain it but cannot expect exclusive use of the pen or the bath. I do think restrictions on movement are hard on ponies so a field t/o with no rugs etc and some shelter and friends may well do them good. But that is very messy work without riding arenas usually if you are lucky good off road hacking. So for your new yard you may need to consider least facilities or DIY. It is not down to YO or the government to provide this. Maybe less people should have horses it has always been my expectation to have to look after them and like the previous poster all holidays, family, cars and jobs are worked around the horses. I could earn far far more without the horses but need to be able to look after them.

I have been a YO for many years and I won't soak hay any longer. I am now a DIY yard but did in the past have a full liveries that needed soaked hay and a lot of box rest. The cost in labour of providing full livery services is so high now that it is not worth running a livery yard. I have a friend who charges enormous livery fees but she runs a very posh yard where daily training and exercise is included in the charge, so it is completely different. Even then, I don't think she makes much out of it.

Disposing of soaked hay water is a major issue for the environment. It is also hard work. Once I turned 60 I decided that I could no longer carry on offering full livery so switched to DIY. I'm not entirely happy with it as my standards are higher than those of a lot of my liveries so I may soon give up completely. It really isn't profitable despite being at the higher end of the market.

I don't disagree with regulation of the industry, but horse owners will need to understand that a lot of small livery yards will just close up and those that continue will become much less affordable.

My own horses are kept in a herd on a partly surfaced track with free access to shelter and ad lib hay. They need minimal daily attention which suits me. I would surface the whole track but unfortunately the local planning department won't allow that. I have thought about offering track livery, but without the support of the planning department, it is not a feasible option.

@britnay I personally wouldn't run one unless I could.

@CountryCob I'm more than willing to work with YO who at least try to accommodate, given there is an epidemic of equine obesity. I think I'm feeling in part a mug, because I was that member of staff in my youth who did all the hay soaking and monitoring to a high standard for other people's horses, for next to no wages. And no, they weren't all singing and dancing yards with watertreadmills and solariums etc. Just yards which looked after every horse to a minimum standard, which included preventing metabolic issues. Soaked or dry hay was just standard, no quibble options offered ime. That seems to have got lost somewhere.

I'm still shocked by the attitude of "not my problem" when it's clear very few places can cope with the fallout, or see that soaking hay or having a small pen should be a minimum, even if shared - at least an effort is being made. It's all of our problem when the industry is under such scrutiny. If more yards had better facilities, at greater expense, fewer people would would be able to have the horses they are not able to look after properly in the first instance. I can see I'm a lone voice on here but I'm okay with that. I do appreciate the debate and time taken to respond.

I think what your asking for will just result in yards closing to the public or going solely DIY - it won't result in the owners magically being able to offer rehab facilities and round the clock care for horses who need soaked hay or restricted turnout.

I mean, you talk about cost just being split, but the other issue is lack of space - it's not possible to just buy extra land - you also need to look at the suitability, as well as needing planning permission for change of use in top.

It's a nice idea and in an ideal world it would be the default but it's just not a change I can see happening in the way you want. The reality of working with other people's animals and running a yard is that it's bloody hard work (physically and emotionally, as well as financially) and most people will just pack it in.

I'd be okay with that tbh - fewer horses leading substandard lives is a good thing. It's down to the bhs and bef to be the equestrian voice as far as planning is concerned for the industry as a whole.

So what happens to all the horses whose owners can't afford these all singing all dancing yards?

This is the thing isn't it - basic yards work perfectly well for so many people, it would be a real shame to get rid of them just because they don't suit all horses.

I can't believe somewhere to soak hay and a small pen equates to all singing and dancing tbh.

And you say they work for so many people - they clearly don't else we wouldn't have an epidemic of obesity. Or they only work up to a point until a horse needs rehab, when the solition seems just to shoot it or pass it on from pillar to post, either through other crap yards promising the earth and not delivering, or to some poor unsuspecting new owner.

I think you're coming at this as the owner of a horse who is struggling with health/digestive issues, whereas many posters are coming at it from the financial, business side of things, and that's why there's no agreement happening.

It would be great if all yards could offer what you're asking for, it really would, but the reality is that to offer those services as standard (so that every single horse can access restricted grazing at any time they want, for example) would just not be possible. It's not just about cost, it's about time, staffing, equipment, land, planning permission - it's just not that easy.

Running a business has to be profitable at the end of the day. So if you provide facilities that increase the workload needed, you either need to work longer hours or hire someone to come in and do it for you. So it's generally easier not to offer it, or to tell owners "you can soak hay here, but you need to come down and do it yourself" which is fair enough, IMO.

The same goes for penned areas for restricted grazing - yard owners can't expected to be constantly available to move horses around depending on the requirements of multiple different people - so again, you have to hire staff to do that - which is why so many will say "if you need specialist care outside of our standard service, you need to come down and DIY".

I totally get your view that it would be so much easier if all this stuff was offered as standard and yard owners were on-hand to do whatever your horse needed, but practically and physically and financially, it's just very, very difficult to offer that.

For clarity.

I run a small DIY livery yard on my farm, mostly to keep my own ponies company. I cater for retired/semi-retired ponies. The horses are in small herds and the each herd has set fields that they can rotate as required. They can have 24/7 turnout in the summer and up to 12 hours daily turnout in the winter. I allow liveries to manage their horses and fields as they wish. They can divide up fields, bring in during the summer, whatever.
We also grow our own multi species, low sugar, meadow hay. Its great for ponies as it fills them up without being too rich.
I discourage soaking hay, because the run off is not good for the environment. It can also get expensive in terms of water and electricity.
I'd love an arena, but I don't have £30k+ kicking about.

@britnay that sounds very similar to one of the yards near us, except they offer 24/7 turnout year round and it's not just for retired horses. A friend keeps her horse there and loves it. She goes down daily to see him/ride/change rugs or whatever as needed but otherwise he's generally left to his own devices.

Well that sounds fine @britnay to be fair! It's the places I've seen that don't allow anything like that, or say they provide assistance and don't/can't/won't facilitate or constantly move the goal posts that I object to. And the horses either have to be in a small stable or out at times that are dictated. 100% soaked hay should only ever be a short term fix because if the rehab is done correctly a horse's metabolism can improve.

I personally would like to see more of the type if stabling in the left over the more traditional uk stable block, which doesn't look to have much more square footage of hard standing. Perhaps the design of any new stable blocks need to change and the old style just die out.

Sure, but with the wood, concrete, and installation, that's probably an extra £1000 per pen.
These things add up. There just aren't that many liveries who are willing to pay the additional money that adding these facilities would require.

As I said earlier, staffing is a huge issue for livery yards. This is often why they cannot provide as many extra services as they would like to. A lot are having to cut down to DIY, because they simply cannot find staff to do the work required. I'm on a few yard owner groups, and there is a lot of discussion about staffing.

Honestly, it sounds like you would be a lot happier if you kept horses on your own land. Then you could have the exact facilities that you require and they could be kept exactly how you would want them to be kept.

And the horses either have to be in a small stable or out at times that are dictated

Again, this is down to staffing - if every horse has different requirements in terms of when they're allowed in or out, then someone has to be on site basically 12 hours a day in order to provide that. The same goes for soaked hay - even if it's only temporary, you still need someone there to soak it and feed it, and there just aren't enough people out there to do that. Nobody is going to take a job where you may not be needed for weeks or months, but then are required to step in with almost no notice for several days or weeks.

Yard owners generally work other jobs and can't be there all the time - so they hire staff - but hiring someone to be on site (or on-call) everyday is bloody expensive, as amazing as it would be.

The pens in your photo look amazing too - but again, to rebuild stables and install water, electricity and fencing etc. would cost an absolute fortune. Maybe it would make sense for all new yards to have to comply to new standards rather than expecting old ones to have to spend thousands and thousands of pounds.

Agree it would make sense for new yards to have newer, higher standards.

Mind you, £1000 per stable over 5 years is an extra £16 a month before they've paid for themselves and then into profit. So not all that unachievable. I'd pay it! That's where our governing bodies and rescue organisations could look to provide support through loans and or grants in some cases. There just doesn't seem to be much of a driving force to change the status quo and I get really frustrated! All horses would benefit from that type of set up tbh (for joints and psychological welfare) and it would help protect the land from some of the horrendous poaching/overstocking we see. I would think much less labour intensive too as horses not desperate to go out etc.

But you have to pay the £1000 per stable outright before you increase the costs - so for yards with 15-20 horses, that's easily £20,000. Plus, what happens to the current liveries while the work is all being done?

That's the same for any start up business or one looking to future proof though. Lending would be available for a sustainable business plan and I'm sure something like that could either be done in stages, or permission for temporary stables to go up during a transition. If we want the horse industry to be taken seriously and withstand the scrutiny its rightfully under, new ways of thinking and managing need to be brought in.

I just think that your plan would see a lot of well-managed but basic yards permanently closing, which would be a real shame.

If they're well managed then they wouldn't need to change anything...

I think that you must either be very young or just naive.