03/03/2025
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?! Business rates-what are those? Why is Henry the cob 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 his stable? Also, I know it’s 9 p.m., but can you hold him for the farrier in the morning? And can you ride him while I go on holiday for 3 weeks… for free? No? Well, I’m not coming back next month then. You must not really care about horses.” (Meanwhile, your £10 a week “DIY” livery barely covers a bale of hay, let alone your sanity.) I can’t believe Katie has the cheek to ask us for a discount because she can’t afford a new saddle for Blaze! No Joyce, your horse can’t have another haynet, that’s his third today-you will be complaining he needs starving come summer! And Steve wants his horse in a mud free paddock in December after a week of rain! And no Laura, I won’t bring your horse in at 5am instead of 6am for your show-I will be asleep! Feel free to come in and do it yourself or pay for a stable for the night. I’m sorry we have to charge you for the bedding and our mucking out time and efforts, but it’s cheaper than your fortnightly mani pedi!
Act 4: The Break-Even Point (aka Fantasy Land) - After 12 months of 6 a.m. starts, seven mental breakdowns, and selling a kidney to pay for the 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 the livery prices!
Act 5: The Future – You do decide to raise prices by £1 a day so you don’t have to live off baked potatoes and crackers (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, Unlimited buffet, 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 the clients are all crawling back to you, 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 hay for one horse for winter” 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 glass of wine at the pub after month 7, and whether Henry the cob 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 hobby and it’s also not 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 and mentally draining full-time job. If we don’t appreciate our livery yard owners, well, you won’t have a place in future to put your darling fur baby.
