02/03/2025
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐘𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐞:
Act 1: The Dream – “I love horses! I’ll run a livery yard! It’ll be magical! I’ll be my own boss, spend my days in the fresh air, and make a bit of money too!” (Spoiler: You won’t.)
Act 2: The Reality Check – “An outdoor arena costs £70k to build?! And £100 a week to maintain?! Insurance is £5k a year?! Why is Henry the Shire using my £6 fence posts as toothpicks and scratching posts?! Someone call the insurance company, Henry is clearly a menace!” (And he’s just getting started.)
Act 3: The Clients – “Hiya, just wondering if you could knock £10 off my livery because my horse only uses ¾ of the stable? Also, I know it’s 9 p.m., but can you look after him while I go on holiday for 3 weeks… for free? No? Well, I’m not coming back next month. You must not really care about horses.” (Meanwhile, your £10 a week “DIY” livery barely covers a bale of hay, let alone your sanity.)
Act 4: The Break-Even Point (aka Fantasy Land) After 12 months of 4 a.m. starts, seven mental breakdowns, and selling a kidney to pay for hay (£7.50 a bale, thank you very much), you finally sit down to do the maths and discover you’re making… 47p an hour. Fantastic. That’s enough for one fence post for Henry to break in under 5 minutes. And we won’t even talk about the £15 per hour freelancers charge to muck out ( they are well entitled to it) unless you want your stables smelling like a spring meadow, in which case, sure, let’s raise those prices!
Act 5: The Future – You raise prices by £1 a week so you don’t have to live off beans on toast (again). Half the yard threatens to leave. The other half actually does. A new, shiny yard opens down the road, promising “Full Service, Indoor Arena, Heated Water Troughs, and Unicorns” for half the price. You wait patiently. Six months later, their arena looks like a swamp, their heated water troughs are now frozen, and their clients are crawling back, having lost half their buckets, of course.
My Existential Crisis: Seriously, though. Have you ever thought you’ve got it all planned out and then Googled something like “cost of a 20x40m arena” and felt your soul leave your body? I’m terrified of opening my own livery yard in the future. I’m not just worrying about fence posts, horse feed, and clients who think they can negotiate the cost of stables with a bartering system. No, I’m also worrying about whether I’ll ever sleep again, if I’ll still be able to afford a pint at the pub after month 2, and whether Henry the Shire will declare war on my wallet. So, if anyone has any tips on surviving this (besides investing in a large quantity of wine and savings), please, send them my way. It’s going to be a long ride!
Moral of the story? Running a livery yard isn’t a business, it’s an Olympic endurance event where you pay £6 for a fence post that Henry will destroy in 3 hours. Be nice to your yard owner, appreciate the fact that they haven’t set fire to the muck heap yet, and remember: horses may be your hobby, but for some poor souls, they’re an exceptionally expensive full-time job if we don’t mind our livery yard owners well you won’t have a place in future to put your darling fur baby.
