Would you want to run a livery yard?

WOULD YOU WANT TO RUN A LIVERY YARD?

2024

Running a yard is part of a service industry within the animal care industy.  It requires knowledgeable and responsible managers – and there are many good managers out there.  Yet the equine industry as a whole totally undervalues this sector.  Are you one of those Yard Managers or do you hope one day to be a Yard Owner?

Yard Manager and Yard Owner – the two titles are more or less interchangeable – yet some consider the manager to be simply the manager of the horses but of course this is not necessarily the case. The Manager may rent the land and the property so they own the business and would be classed as Yard Owners just as much as Yard Managers.

So – why DO people run their livery yards? Is it to make money – or at least to give them a living wage? Is it to earn enough from their liveries to enable them to simply ‘keep their own horse’? Is it to enable them to compete their own horse/s? Is it because they love it and do all the work and time it takes for free? Is it because they own the property and need to make money from it to cover the cost of a mortgage? Is it because they own the property and enjoy having other like minded people around them? Is it because they rent a yard and are running it as a business? Are they making a good living from the yard? If they are not taking a wage, why are they doing it?

If they are not taking a wage, then they are basically giving the livery owners and their horses their own time for free.

This is a sector of the industry which is currently totally undervalued. The livery yard sector looks after a huge proportion of our privately owned horses in the UK and those doing the caring and those providing the housing and or land are providing a service.

Have you ever thought about the total worth of the horses at a yard  whether large or small. Have you thought about the responsibilities of having such valuable animals in your own care.  Even just having them on the property means they are the responsibility of the yard manager/owner. Even one or two not so valuable horses can add up to several hundreds or thousands of pounds?

Should the yard manager/owner be valued by the horse owners for taking on the huge responsibility of caring for hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of horses in their care?

Many yard owners/managers are not running profitable businesses, they are not covering their costs or making a decent wage. However, they all feel they cannot increase prices because they worry that the horse owners will move to another yard.  Would they though? Well currently, it is quite likely that you would!

HOWEVER, if the yard IS a genuinely good one, it would probably only mean a loss of some or one or two liveries for a few weeks until the yard was full again.  Once people move to poorly run yards and start to realise their previous yard was in fact offering a good service and their horse was safer with that yard they may rethink.

We know that the good yards all have a waiting list even if the prices are high.  Word gets round in the equestrian community so very very quickly. Whether it is a good or bad reputation – horse owners will hear about it within a week or less.

Some horse owners are prepared and more than than happy to pay over the odds if the livery yard is well run. This is especially so if the yard owner/manager is reasonable, fair and happy and the horse owner feels their horse is in safe responsible hands and is as well looked after as they would if they were in their own full time care.

If you were a yard owner yourself, would you rather have two or three good and well paying liveries and earn a decent wage, than a yard full of ‘not so easy’ liveries who penny pinch and moan and winge all the time and make you an unhappy and stressed person even with the good livery owners?

Horse owners have a responsibility too.

If they are penny pinching, they shoud be asking themselves if they can really afford to keep a horse. Is this the yard hoppers issue? Many owners keep horses when in realisty their personal financial situation does not really lend itself to horse ownership. If some horse owners sat down and worked it out financially, they probably wouldn’t in all honesty, be able to continue to keep their horse.  In these circumstances the welfare of the horse is at stake.

Financially strapped owners often struggle with livery bills – yard managers also then get stressed owing to their own financial situation (bills being paid late or unpaid). The yard is not such a happy place when this happens. Cheaper yards are bound to attract those who are struggling to keep their horse well which causes a knock on effect and the yard reputation starts to fail.

No one wants a bad reputation yet it is happens so easily with yards which have a one or two poorly kept liveries.  It proves the yard is not keeping up standards by setting policies to prevent such things happening in the first place.

Whether you are a yard owner or a horse owner, do you really want to be hearing via the grapevine that the reputation of your yard is:   ‘cheap but not particularly well run’?

If yard managers have a sound business plan, decent facilities and sufficient land with a USP (unique selling point), they will easily be able to market their services appropriately and effectively – providing there is a target market for that service in their area.

To survive, yard owners are going to have to raise their game and think seriously about this.

All of these things are covered in the Livery Yard Managers course offered by Lingfield Equine Distance Learning. An Accredited course with UK Rural Skills – the fee for the new course is £432 payable in instalments.

This is not an equine management course but a yard management and set up course. It is aimed at those who are already experienced and knowledgeable about equine care.

If you are a yard manager/owner and have all of those things in place at your yard (business plan, decent facilities, sufficient land, an awareness of how to set up accounts, a USP etc.) you should easily be able to charge what you need to cover your costs such as insurances, rubbish and muck removal, field and building maintenance, council taxes etc., and in order to pay yourself for the work you do and the responsibilities you carry and pay for.  Yard managers/owners should always offer value for money – but not at cost to themselves. If you do not charge for your time, all it tends to do is, to de-value the industry as a whole. It is surely about time that ALL livery yard managers valued themselves more It is surely about time that ALL livery horse owners realised the importance and  responsibility of that service and paid a sensible price for it. If you are a knowledgeable professional, you deserve to be paid as such.

If on the other hand you are a livery yard user, whether that is DIY, grass livery, assisted, part or full livery, your horse deserves that you to care about the service you use for his or her housing and care.  Think also about what the groom or freelancer earns who works in that yard.  It is a responsible job.  As a yard user even if on DIY, your horse could get sick or injured if the yard staff (or management) are not doing their job properly.

What is the average groom’s salary like compared to yours (the horse owner). Most earn just £10-£15 pounds an hour.  They have to pay fuel out of that as well as clothes and they have to live and eat just like you do.  Perhaps as the horse owner you should value their services as part of the yard management team more.  Even if your DIY charges increase it is part of the whole yard package you should be considering.

If horse owners are to continue to be able to keep their horses at livery they are also going to have to raise their game and be aware that it is going to cost more to keep a horse in the very near future.   If they don’t, more and more yards will be going the same route and closing down.

Some good grooms in the South East of England in 2023 rebelled and now charge £25 an hour.  They have waiting lists for clients and yards willing to pay them. A good groom is worth their weight in gold because you KNOW they are on the yard and you can leave them in charge of your horse and they will do a good job.  Good grooms are the backbone of the livery yard.

How much do you pay for someone to care for your dog? which after all requires far less in the way of care, housing and knowledge. What does a house cleaning service charge or a house painter charge an hour?  The skills the horse groom has gained are arguably more chalenging and technical, and the responsibilities are high when you consider the extent of vets bills which could result as a result of bad yard management and biosecurity.

This is an industry that undervalues itself – and the average horse owner also undervalues the services that many yards provide.