Stables and grazing

Horses are bad enough ,throw a few woman in the mix its a disaster

For any sort of livery to work, you would have to understand horses & horsey people and their needs.

Assuming horses just need grass & shelter just like any other herbivore will lead to problems.

Many people think people with horses are all loaded and see livery as easy money.

As with anything else, if you can provide a high quality service that is competitively priced, you will make money (y)
 

JCMaloney

Member
Location
LE9 2JG
You have to be firm and not afraid to confiscate their kit and horse if they don't pay. From what I have seen first hand is horse owners truly believe the world owes them, so if they can't pay, then think it should be free because you feel sorry for them. A local guy to me has the job sorted and what he does is as follows. 60 horses in on grazing deals where by they pay £15/horse/week. For that they get 2 acres but only 1 acre available at any time so the other acre can recover. He has 130 acres down to this permanently fenced into 10 acre paddocks, so in a 10 acre paddock there is only 5 horses if that makes sense and its partitioned off internally with electric fences to create the smaller paddock. He then has 100 acres of wheat and 100 acres of grass he makes haulage off.

There are 40 stables which are charged at £40/horse/week but also include the grazing as above. Water, electricity are also included. But total number of horses is 60. His turnover form this is £1900/week.

They have to buy straw off him for bedding as he will not let them import straw and they can only buy hay/haylage off him. His reasoning for this is purely weed control which he is anal about. They can buy in alternative bedding such as shavings but have to ok it past him first. He charges just under the local average price for straw/hay so that they don't argue with him about the cost.

They buy their own other food and sort their own vet and meds out and have to insure their horse against normal things.

He does everything around the yard such as supply the straw/hay when required and clears the muck heap when full. If somebody does not pay he has been known to sell the horse and equipment to recover the outstanding rent although he does not get many issues as they all know where they stand with him. He's doing all that himself and uses farm contractors for all field operations.

Got a chap around here does almost exactly the same. His wife & family do the horse work, buying of straw/hay etc is only through the farm. All the field work is contracted and he has a great big shed to build some very exclusive bird cages in for export. Everyone enjoys what they do and , as he says, its better than "buggering around with farming".
 

Grassman

Member
Location
Derbyshire
I know a neighbour who sticks a bale of silage tight up to the stable door if the owner is behind with payment.
He also did it with one of the owners cars. A bale at front and back bumper! There was one car stuck for many months like that. He sold it for scrap in the end!
 

Dry Rot

Member
Livestock Farmer
The best, and essential, clause is, "This agreement can be terminated by either side without reason given by two weeks notice on either side".

Put the fear of God into them before you start. I used to insert a clause every tme something went wrong but ended up with four pages of closely typed A4, when all I really needed was the above.

One could not pay "...because I've just got out of prison". Another left to re-enter the lunatic asylum she'd emerged from. I won't list the non-payers in consideration of bandwidth. But the best by far was the one who abandoned a Shetland pony. I did manage to find a home for it (free, same price the livery paid for it) but then (of course) I got a letter from his solicitor demanded "the balanace of the proceeds of sale". I was delighted to be able to refer him to the agreement his client had signed, agreeing to £400/week rent for a stallion, which his client's pony undoubtedly was as it had tried to mount a friend of mine. He had mistakenedly thought he'd be due for £10/week for a gelding.

Whatever you do, keep a diary. You will end up with enough stories for a decent sized book which might compensate in some small way for the suffering you will be forced to endure while collecting the material.
 
There seems to be quite a number of defamatory comments on this thread directed towards horse owners, yet farmers continue to provide liveries in various shapes and styles.

If you have researched livery as an income stream and understand its pitfalls and peculiarities and still want to give it a try, then good luck. (y)
 
Just in case it's useful to someone, bear in mind that there are a lot of horse owners who aren't looking for conventional livery. There are horse owners out there with a number of horses who would jump at the chance of a shared 'free range' barn for all their horses.

There are also a lot of owners who would like a more natural style of horse care, especially people with barefoot horses I.e. no shoes, and this type of owner likes rough or old pasture rather than lots of clover / high nitrogen levels and perhaps even a track system. A track system is something like this http://www.all-natural-horse-care.com/paddock-paradise.html or http://www.abbottsviewlivery.co.uk/trackequicentral-system/4590680876
An example of a 'natural' livery type set up is http://whisperingback.co.uk/livery/ ( I have nothing to do with any of these links btw, just trying to demonstrate the different types of livery).

It may suit those of you with old dairy tracks, hilly areas or rock strata quite close to the surface of some of your land and could even allow you to use the inside section for hay with decent elec fencing.

Hope this makes sense - I do agree with getting a decent contract in place and going on local recommendations as well.
 

4course

Member
Location
north yorks
Out of interest,what percentage of horses in livery are regularly ridden?
not as many as folks think, here we only have the old and infirm either horse or human, but ,many yards have well over 50% usually because folks have bought the wrong horse and end up stuck with it or wont/cant sell one thats grown out of
 

equine therapy

New Member
Location
uk
where are you
I am looking for grazing and barn to rent pref long term
I have miniature ponies and 3 larger ponies
They are kept similar to cattle in small groups. bedded down and fed adlib forage
kept in barn when ground wet to preserve grazing.
grazing can be stripgrazed if required
I use them for therapy work and showing, driving
looking for somewhere reasonable rent£
 

Mac10

Member
Location
SE
Thank for all your thoughts and apologies for the delay in replying - extended holiday (y)

I've done a bit of thinking and i'm cooling a bit towards the horse idea. I place quite a value on privacy and controlling who/when people are around, and also like to live as low-stress as possible, so yard politics etc don't appeal to me. Never say never but for now I'm looking at other ideas like small baling the lot for some beer money or growing more specialist crops that can be processed in the barn.
 

Billboy1

Member
There's plenty of money to be made in livery but it comes with lots of stress(at times) and occasional fall outs which are never nice don't get to friendly with client because familiarity breeds contempt
 
It was all too much for me I felt my place was no longer my own. Same happened to the lady down the road she is proper horsey she nearly had a nervous breakdown she packed it up too.

I dont think its a diversity it is a business change full stop. You need to be available all day and cant manage them both unless you have tons of cash, an already made up barn and plenty of available labour. Watching horses galloping across prime wet meadows finished my OH up seeing him close to tears. If you havent got the energy and want to wake up in the morning knowing how you want your day to pan out dont go near this kind of diversity.
 

Dolomite

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
South Yorkshire
By all accounts you may be wise looking into how the new changes in rural business rates could affect a equine based business or branch of such as grazing or livery. Some very in the know folk I deal with seem to think the tax man will look on land and incomes from these as non agricultural and not food production. The finer details are to be outlined but looking more and more likely (These people are highly trained land agents and also farm). If this is the case you will qualify for the much higher business rates. Which you would have to pass on to the customers.

Not wanting to down do your idea and the suggestions from others, but it could be a potential problem that will need to be addressed.
 
My FIL was always particular about having sheep grazing in with the horses and making sure any showjumps were moved regularly so that the bits of payments he claimed on those grass fields were not questioned.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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