Full Livery to DIY, rubber matting and deep litter, hanging water buckets?

[Palomino Mare]

Hi, couldn't think of a good tile so went with that jumbled mess;)

I have alwasy kept my horses on full livery as some nights i cannot make it up and i cannot give them any warning.

However, i'm not really happy with the way his stable is being managed. He had to leave the nice airy canadian barn with 14x14 stables to live in the "pony block" (10x12 stables) as he digs and rattled his teeth against the metal poles in the barn. he is soo much happier in this stable but they aren't keeping it very clean. the 3other "pony" stables always have tidy, nice white beds - jerrys is a mess and alwasy has icky brown shavings. I've complained on several occasions and to be honest i will never be happy with his bed unless i do it myself. For £81/week dor a small box that is dirty i think i'm hard done by. All the stables are on deep litter (they have never been cleared out) but its actually ok as far as deep litter goes - i'm not a fan.

So...my thinking is, put him on DIY (£35/week), buy rubber matts (bad feet and the stable is concrete at the front), get rid of deep litter. He lives out during the summer anyway so i think its crazy of me to pay £81/week for grass livery. Uni is dying down in time for revision so i could put him on DIY within the next 2weeks.

I do think he would have to go back to full livery during the winter though as i can't guarentee that i would be able to come up.

Not sure what kind of answers i want really...just would like to hear what you think of my situation, do you have any similar experiences - any advice??

Oh, because he's messy in his stable and the stable is small, does anyone have any idea's of how i could hang a large water bucket up to save floor space (he currently has a large rubber skip as a water bucket and it gets filled with haylege v. quickly)

thanks,

amz x

[Afellpony]

How come you pay such a high price for grass livery. I pay £20 a week for the grass livery (and it's good clean grass). If I want anythin done with him such as being ridden, it will cost me £20 an hour. I also pay for him to be fed when I'm not there to do it - but that's not too bad.

[Jessey]

I wouldn't be happy in your situation either :(

Going DIY sounds a good idea but I doubt that the yard would let you go DIY for the summer and back to full for the winter - otherwise the whole yard would be doing that while their horses are out in the summer and the YO would have a very variable income. You never know though, perhaps speak with your YO and see what they say.

Re the water bucket, you can get special ones that have a flat side so can be hung against a wall :p

[Palomino Mare]

How come you pay such a high price for grass livery. I pay £20 a week for the grass livery (and it's good clean grass). If I want anythin done with him such as being ridden, it will cost me £20 an hour. I also pay for him to be fed when I'm not there to do it - but that's not too bad.

Hi, well i'm still paying for full livery at £81 during the summer. Grass livery is normally £20 here aswell *i think* but then i would loose my stable. No body has contested this before until i brought it up last month with some other full liveries who are now thinking of doing the same.

Jessey - thanks, i have seen those buckets - do they have a good capacity?

Oh and just to add, frequently i go up at 6pm and he has no haylege/water, how this happens i don't know! i think we get forgotten about in our little block hence the slipping standards.

amz x

[Jessey]

I have reacently swapped from DIY to full (for the first time in my life) and int he first few days found things weren't done as I liked ie not enough hay to last the night and not a very clean bed - I went straight to YO and made myself very clear that it wasn't good enough for me, I insisted they were given double the ammount of hay (I pushed this with the notion that it would reduce the ammount of hard feed she would need to give them therefore keeping her costs down) and I occasionally muck out my own stable - YO soon figures that I want it cleaner and pulls her socks up again :o :D

[mu0ljk]

I change my livery from time to time. I am usually on part livery but in the summer I find that I end up doing all the work as I do evenings and the yard does mornings. As the horses are out all night I end up doing all the mucking out and all they do is bring in in the morning! :D So I change to diy for the summer and then back to part when the routine changes. I guess it depends on your YO.

[conkers]

I was in exactly the same situation - paying for full livery but constantly annoyed at the quality of mucking out and the bedding being used.

I changed to Part Livery at the beginning of April and it is the best thing that I have done. My horse now has clean bedding, plenty of hay and lots of turn out.
She's happy so I'm happy.

You may find that you find someone who does DIY who would be willing to help fetch in for you in the winter in return for you turning out in the morning meaning clean beds all year round.

[Palomino Mare]

hi,

conkers - i'm glad you are happy with your new arrangement:)

it costs an extra £1/day for them to turn your horse out so whilst he is still in i think i would have to go with that option. I am going to the yard tonight and will corner some DIY's and ask what they do in certain situations. if you cant make it up one night then all you have to do is write it in "the book" and the will do full livery for that day which is good - my prob is though that i'm not organised enough - a good learning experience then!!;)

during summer when they live out, they get brought in in the morning to get fed adn put back out - i'm not sure how this affects DIY's though...must write that on my list of questions!!

[Lgd]

I work full time (plus on-call on top of those hours) and have three on DIY plus yard maintenance (I now lease a yard with two friends).

At one point I had 2 on assisted DIY 35 miles away, working FT and was doing my PhD part-time so it is do-able while at Uni.

Mine are all on mats with a small shavings bed = 5 - 10 minutes to muck out each one and you save a fortune on shavings. Even my ultra-messy mare only goes through a bag of shavings a week, the other two last 2 weeks per bag!

Make up a weeks worth of nets at a weekend and bag up your feeds for the week ready to use - amazing how much time that saves. My trainer used to change rugs and turnout for me weekday mornings. Now I do a rota with my friends so I only do two mornings a week - takes an hour to skip out 6 horses, feed, hang nets, top up water, change rugs. If I'm on-call my friends do the girls for me in the evening.

If your horse is going out routinely let them stay in their turn-out rug overnight (unless it is wet through). Wet rugs dry quite nicely on the horse and you save time not having to change rugs in the morning.

Bucket of water outside the stable on the night to top up on the morning if they are staying in for some reason.

[Palomino Mare]

thanks Lgd, thats really useful! i'm about to put a thread up about rubber mats so look out 4 it:D

[*Grey Gelding*]

amy ** solution is - move to my yard :) its fab! u kno so! and we will be clean asap too! ed and william are great and our stables are always spotless-they skip out mid-day and like 10pm at night to keep beds spotless! plus u'd have more buddies at mine :)
xx

[Lovejoy]

Hi Amy

Sorry to hear your yard isn't pleasing you! I would feel the same as I'm a bit neurotic about clean beds. I had Rocky on DIY all over winter with full mats, and it does save a wee bit of time mucking out as his bed was 1/3 of the size so I just scooped up the bottom layer.

I moved a few weeks ago to another yard on Kilmacolm (full liv 7 days Yahoo!). Was mega worried about it, but luckily the yard is lovely and stables clean. They are on straw so Rocks is loving it!!

Hope you can sort something out....

[lizayr]

Kilmacolm, have heard thats gr8 my YO comes from there was actually thinking of joining there riding club

[Palomino Mare]

GG - nice try;) lol i know its just because you miss me dearly and have an obsession, dont worry your secrets safe with me:D

lizayr - apparently the kilmacolm RC is very good and run very well, i would join if i didnt have a fear of kilmacolm after going to school there:eek:

Wee update for you, we havn't had shavings for a week now due to poor delivery!and because jerry had been forced to go on box rest (twisted a shoe and cant risk putting him out until farrier comes - who is taking his time:rolleyes: ) things have gotten pretty dirty. so it was up to moi to sort some new shavings out!! Visted my parents today who asked if i had spoken to YO yet and i said no because i'm too scared:o so my dad is now threatening to go up and trust me thats not a good thing! i know YO will give me a disappointed look and tell me that DIY costs almost as much as FULL to try and persuade me not to...i think i will say it will give me more money to get 2lessons every week, that should get him:rolleyes:. if anyone else knows how to handle these situations please advise!!

[Lovejoy]

Kilmacolm RC is great. It is indeed very well run and has loads of things for all different levels of rider. We are lucky enough to have a few brilliant instructors (David Gatherer, Aileen Craig). They also have a 'Prelim' Group on a Sunday which is basically a bit of a laugh - nothing too serious - for riders who are inexperienced or have 'baby' horses.

Let me know if you want a contact no. or check out www.kilmacolmridingclub.org

[alwaysfallingof]

Re hanging water buckets...this thread springs to mind:

http://www.newrider.com/forum/showthread.php?t=109239&highlight=hanging+water+buckets:eek: Enough to put me off for good.

It does sound like you're in a tricky situation, I don't know what I'd do. I mean...I've always had my boy on DIY. Then again, I'm a control freak:o

Could you go on DIY and get a sharer to do the days that you can't manage in the winter? Or is it too unpredictable for that?

[Palomino Mare]

i remember that thread - it put me off the hanging water bucket idea!!tbh i'm going to try and get in a routine with the mucking out so that i'm able to keep him on DIY.
Unfortuneatly things got so bad tonight that i redid his bed and got him a fresh bale of shavings, all infront of YO who didnt dare go near a woman scorned:rolleyes:

that sunday thing sounds good fun at kilmacolm!i will look into it!

amz x

[gl1]

I own a Livery yard and it sounds like you are not getting the service you are paying for.

Try DIY and pay per service if you cant make it to the yard, or move.