Chicken or egg?!

bluntcrayon

bluntcrayon

New Member
Oct 21, 2009
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Chelmsford
Just pondering really.... when you get your first horse, do you need to find a livery yard with a place first and then start looking, or do you find a horse you want to buy and then find a livery yard? Just cos I get the impression some yards have restrictions e.g. mares/geldings only which might limit your search... or they want to know about the horse before it arrives... but then again you can't buy a horse and keep it in your garden until a suitable stable becomes available?? And the seller might not want to keep hold of it indefinitely?? I'm sure there is a perfectly sensible and obvious answer but it is puzzling me!
 
in my recent personal experience - i looked around for several suitable livery options before i started looking for my pony. Upon finding my pony and whilst waiting for her to be vetted i decided on which livery option i wanted to go for (ie i chose the one which best suited the training needs etc of new pony) and then reserved my stable on that yard.
Havent looked back since :)
 
Its a difficult one!

For me i had a pony on loan so when she was PTS, i kept my new horse at the same yard. So in effect i already had a place before finding my horse.

A friend recently started looking for a horse and not knowing many horsey people locally (she lives an hour + from me) is struggling generally! Having not had a horse, she does not know many yards locally. I suggested to her to start looking at yards before much longer in case she finds perfect horse. The ones she has found are full or have waiting lists and we are both surprised at how few places there are in her area! She can be put on a waiting list so i suggested that she put up signs in tack shops and starts talking to people to find smaller private yards, however as a novice owner needs and wants the back up and support of other people, hence making it more difficult!

Moral of that story being if she had bought a horse there would be no where relatively near to her to keep the horse and therefor would have been extremely stuck!!!


So, i conclude, place at a yard is needed before buying an equine friend :D
 
Kc Mac said:
Its a difficult one!
Click to expand...

Oh good, glad I'm not just being thick :) yeah I was thinking that you'd need the yard sorted first. I suppose also some sellers want a '5* home' and vet the buyer. But would you have to start paying for the stable to keep it free? And what if you then didn't find a horse for a few weeks/months? Would you have to pay for livery on an empty stable :confused:
 
i guess that would depend on the yard and on how long you had to wait. My yard would reserve the stable for free for two weeks, any longer after that you had to start paying livery even if no pony.

Also being non-horsey when i started looking i had no idea where to start. I found my yard when i went to see another one (just along the lane) that had put an ad online somewhere. The lady was busy and asked me to come back in 40 minutes so i walked down the lane to the my now yard and liked them much better! Had i not luckily found the one ad online i would never have found my present yard.

The only other two ways i could think of to find them was to ask in the local tack shops and to simply drive around the 'horsey' area here and stop to ask people with stables!

I found finding a yard far harder than finding a pony!
 
I already had pony as bought her from sort of loaning her, so she had a stable, but at new yard I put down a monnths rent as desposit until we were able to move (financial reasons as I was waiting to start my job)
 
with our first pony, we found the yard first. it was a small RS and we had a few lessons there as our new YO was helping us with our search and needed to see what we could do. we weren't required to pay a deposit or anything, but it was a teeny yard. other yards i've been at have charged prospective owners to reserve a place. Think last place was a fiver a week to reserve a spot.
 
I bought the horse then went on a mad week drive around looking for a suitable yard. It is about 20 mins drive from me.
 
I would probably go for finding the livery yard first and see if you can pay a reduced holding rate for the box
 
Moved in to new house 2 weeks before I was posted to Iraq for 6 months on my 1 week 'holiday' home i went yard hunting located a yard 1 1/2 miles from house loved it and went on waiting list. A place came up in Oct I was still in Iraq and yeap no horse! I paid for Nov and Dec for an empty stable as didn't get back until 1 dec. Lucky for me my OH found me the perfect horse while I was away and he arrived at the yard 21 Jan 09.

So yeap yard first but it can cost you a lot for an empty stable!
 
I was working at some stables when I bought my first horse, luckily there was an empty stable so she moved to where I worked.

I think it's important to find ther yard first, if you find a horse and then need to find a yard quickly mistakes can be made. Plus if the yard owner or manager of the chosen yard is knowledgeable, and you'd hope they are, they may be able to give a second opinion on any prospective purchases :)
 
For me I had lessons regularly at the yard where I ended up keeping our Joe - just seemed a logical solution as YO offered up lots of good advice etc and I wouldn't have dreamt of keeping him anywhere else at that time. I guess if you were already knowledgeable and horsey then you could pick and choose where to keep them - all depends really.
 
I found somewhere before I bought. Its not that easy in the Area I live,
but not particularly hard IF you know the right people.

I was there 3 years but have now moved to a little place on my own
and bought Egbert as a companion and for my G.Daughter.

Think you need to look at some Yards to see what your options are
and then go looking seriously;):)
 
Just went through this (as you've probably gathered from the blizzard of posts about Kali) and we started looking for a yard when we very first got serious about viewing horses. I knew we could have done DIY in terms of horse knowledge and ability (our share mares were on a DIY yard) but because of my work schedule felt I needed either full or assisted. There were some restrictions to all of the yards we looked at . . . no vices, only geldings, no outdoor school, no hacking, etc. . . . but at least we knew what our yard options were as we went to see horses. It wasn't deliberate, but we only looked at geldings (so the "no mares" thing wasn't an issue anyway). By the time we looked at Kali, I had knew which yard I preferred AND knew the yard we really liked had space.

It IS a daunting process. Never mind trying strange horses in front of their owners (not to mention wondering if said horse is going to kill you or your teenage daughter) . . . there's also choosing a livery yard, choosing someone to do the vetting (if the horse isn't local), choosing a vet, choosing a farrier, choosing a saddler, choosing an equine dentist . . . yada yada yada.

The thing to remember is that decisions can be un-made. If you don't like the yard you're on, you can change. Ditto farrier, vet, trainer, dentist, etc. Experience will show you that you either made the right decision or that you'd rather be somewhere else.

I found our yard advertised in Horse and Hound . . . local tack shops generally have yards advertised on their noticeboard. Riding instructors are a good source of info too.

You're right . . . it is a puzzle.

N
 
I initially found the yard and then went looking for the horse..but then couldn't find a horse.. I then found a cheaper yard and yet still couldn't find a horse..then found a horse who failed the vetting and realised that the cheaper yard was cheaper for a reason so went back to the original yard... started travelling stupid distances across the country to find a horse.. Luckily the YO wasn't that bothered about getting liveries, more interested in having the right people rather than just 'people', so I never had to pay to hold a stable. Alas I couldn't find the right horse so I called off the search until after this winter.

At the start of November '09 the YO of the original yard called me and said I think I've found you a horse, a friend has just brought him over from Ireland and they're bringing him down to the yard for you to have a play with and get to know for a couple of weeks. Alas, it was horsey love at first sight!

So when I eventually bought him, all I had to do was transport him about 30ft from one stable to another! Was quite possibly the least dramatic and least traumatic purchase ever and makes me feel a bit bitter that I spent better part of £900 on petrol and failed vettings only to find my horse 30ft away from where I started ;):D
 
It depends on your needs and what about locally.

I wanted 24/7 turnout for mine and that's hard to find here. In fact good yards with lots of turnout in winter are hard to find. So for me the priority was knowing I could provide for the needs of the horse before I went ahead and bought her. If I would have had to have paid full price to hold a place at the right yard then I would have. It's money I would have to spend when I have the horse anyway so no great shakes to me. :)
 
bluntcrayon said:
Just pondering really.... when you get your first horse, do you need to find a livery yard with a place first and then start looking, or do you find a horse you want to buy and then find a livery yard? Just cos I get the impression some yards have restrictions e.g. mares/geldings only which might limit your search... or they want to know about the horse before it arrives... but then again you can't buy a horse and keep it in your garden until a suitable stable becomes available?? And the seller might not want to keep hold of it indefinitely?? I'm sure there is a perfectly sensible and obvious answer but it is puzzling me!
Click to expand...

You buy a horse that's staying at your friends until sold, then rent her other field:), i know lucky eh:D
 
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