Keeping your horse on a livery yard can often work out just fine, but for some it is a different story. We asked you for your livery yard nightmares and this is what you told us…
1. When fellow liveries don’t treat their horses properly, such as leaving them stood in their dirty stables for days at a time or turning up late in the mornings
2. Thieves aren’t present in every livery yard by any means, but one yard had a repeat offender who was eventually caught by hidden cameras
3. One unfortunate owner was charged one month’s notice when her horse was put to sleep
4. Finding your grazing area has been reduced by someone moving the electric fencing to give their horses a larger turnout area
5. Finding your horse with their top stable door shut, with no water and dripping in sweat all because he used to kick the door
6. One livery client found out her livery yard owner had loaned out her horse to another client to ride. When the livery yard owner was confronted about this, she told the client that she had the best trained horse in the yard and that was why it had been loaned!
7. A yard charged for hay by the lb. Only the yard owner was allowed to make haynets up and upon repeated re-weighing by the client, who had ordered and paid for 20lb haynets, she found that they in fact weighed just 14lb
8. Staff at one livery yard, which frequently held shows, used mouldy leftover hay and haylage left by external competitors to re-stuff livery horses’ haynets
Continued below…
16 barmy livery yard rules you’ll struggle to believe are true
Take a look at these rules that some
9. While some yards have no option but to restrict turnout in the winter, one insisted that horses were limited to a half day of turnout every other day up until May. When clients were allowed to turn their horses out, it had to be between the hours of 8am and 5pm, which made life difficult for those with a 9-5 job. If your horse wasn’t in by 5pm, the yard owner would do it for you and charge you £3 each way for turn out and bring in, which quickly adds up
