Livery's going up!

[MrFibble]

By 6% next month due to the increased cost of hay, silage, feed, straw and fuel. Not too disturbed by this as the price hasn't moved for a couple of years but thought this was quite a steep hike and wondered if anyone else is seeing this?

Have prices really increased that much? We are on DIY so we buy everything ourselves but we are paying the same as last year for feed, hay and farrier, the only thing that has got really expensive is bedding.

Mine went up a lot last year, not sure I could handle another increase - it was more than 6% I'd think, used to be £50 a week to live in and £25 living out, plus feed. Now it is £70 a week stabled and £50 to live out, inclusive of feed/hay/bedding etc.

Roll on summer when they can both sleep out!

MrFibble, in your OP do you mean silage or haylage? Just a bit worried as I've always thought that horses should never be fed silage due to the risk of botulism.

(happy to be corrected by more up-to-date science )

Um.... My message just disappeared.

It's not normal silage - it's special horse silage but I did not know the right term when I translated it from Luxembourgish. Sorry for confusion!

Oh that's good then .

We're still paying £4 per bale of hay which seems to have been fairly static over the past couple of years. Shavings though just seem to keep going up (although think Pixel pays the most eyewatering amount) ours are now £7.50 for a bog standard bale.

Nope, I've never heard of horse silage either!

we pay £75/week for full livery ( includes hay/feed/turnout /bring in /muck out) but doesn't include exercise or lunging of pony, second pony we pay £ 20 week for live out ( includes hay/feed and being in for rug changes) is this good ?

mummydoc, am not up-to-date with livery prices but depending on where you are, yours sound quite good. In fact, £20 for what you get for your live-out pony sounds more than reasonable I would say. Although when you can't even get to ride them it all feels a bit too much doesn't it.

Mitchy, am a bit at what you pay for live-out tbh. Or is that including his schooling?

no, schooling is £85 a week but that is quite heavily discounted, would normally be about £135 for 5 sessions a week I think

but haven't been able to start that yet, thanks to weather. £20 a week sounds amazingly good value!

really, by the time I add supplements, insurance, farrier and lessons the horses cost more per week than my mortgage per month (or poss 2 months) but do have v small mortgage, luckily, well, is v small house

but longer term will move and keep them at home, definitely

no wonder I have weeks of feeling extremely poor really

but I console myself, if I'd had a new boiler instead of a new pony it would probably cost just as much to run in this weather?

I am very lucky as yard is owned by my best friend and run by a really nice lady who do more than they really need , in return i often wander up in the mornings and muck in with mucking out or filling haynets or make the coffees !!!

I pay £30 each horse, which includes a decent sized rubber lined stable, a tack room, use of the small arena and i have a field of about half an acre for my two to share. I am hoping i can get the bigger field this year as i am the only person there and have a baby due in august so having a bigger field means they can live out for longer over the summer. The bigger field is 1 1/2 acres but the other liveries that were here used to pay the same amount and have it for one horse,

mitchy just seen you pay £50 / week for live out . Does that include them bringing in pony and changing rugs and feeding etc? or do you have to do that ? seems alot of money

So 345 euro a month isn't too bad then all things considered? I have to pay an extra 20 euro a month from May to October for grazing but not in the winter since the yard won't turn out from 1st Nov to 1st May.

ah no, that is all included mummydoc - we've also got 3 schools (big for jumping, standard dressage type and small) and x country course and lots of private off-road hacking that we share with a neighbouring yard including my special favourite canter tracks

don't know how to translate euros into £?

turn out is about 1 1/2 acres per horse year round which is quite generous, was a bit when realised other places separate all the liveries into tiny patches of grass - big horse shares 10 acre plot with 3 or 4 others, fat little ponies get slightly less

no indoor school though, am happy overall (despite blip last year over bedding, but then I watched Barney vacuum it all up one night, in a couple of hours, and put him straight onto shavings and we are all friends again)

Mitchy - it works out at about 310 pounds per calendar month. We have one indoor school, one out door school and shared all weather turn out just off the yard but this is just for when you're there and is luck of the draw.

Our summer grazing is small - about 3/4s of an acre - and my girls share it with another 2 mares from 10.30 to 16.00. No water in the field so not ideal really but the yard is only 3 minutes walk from my house...

that doesn't sound too bad - really don't want to know how much mine come to a month, I just pay a month in advance on alternate fortnights for each one so the pain is slightly less

think is probably about £500 a month though

sometimes I pay a couple of months in advance to get ahead, is difficult when self-employed and not having fixed income, but equally yard are v good about waiting a week or two (or I know some customers haven't paid for a couple of months ) during leaner times

We'll have been here 8 years in July and come to think of it I can't remember the rent having gone up in that time. Now that I've said that it will, just you watch.

Mitchy i had a little brainwave wrt your pony climbing over stable door last night.

A yard i used to work in had a horse that was a terrible windsucker and they ran some electric tape round the edge of the stable (where all the teeth marks were) and had a battery attached to it.

Perhaps having some electric tape along the top of the door would stop him?

Or someone hiding out of sight, armed with a hose with one of those pressure guns on the end. A few squirts with one of those whenever his hooves appeared over the door would soon deter him.

Best not to combine with the electric tape idea though.

ah thank you for thinking of us

he's actually not been too too bad lately

maybe the cold has numbed him into submission?

the bringing in and turning out at frequent intervals seems to have stopped him panicking that he will be trapped in a stable for hours and hours anyway - but wouldn't a normal pony think, hurrah, somewhere warm and cosy to lie down for a bit, huge pile of hay all for self instead of sharing with field mates etc?

I would, if I was a pony

Unfortunately Mitchy, you are under the impression that ponies 'think'

We put our TB out in the little turnout pen today (been in all week) and he went mad for about 1min then just stood there for the next 30mins, literally stood there looking like a simpleton.

haha

yes, when will I learn?