I just want to share my story of being a livery at a very small family run livery yard in Keston, I went to see the yard and although it had a lot of disused stables and only one other livery, i thought that it would be a nice place to stable my beautiful 16.2hh Thoroughbred horse. The farm has 16 acres of very good grazing so was very excited to get my horse out into the huge fields, I was told that the school was a true 20 by 40 arena but they were working towards putting a surface on it, they asked me what type of livery I would like and I opted for a assisted DIY where they would provide the hay, turn out and bring in 7 days per week and 3 days muck out, I would provide feed and bedding and grooming, and I would exercise my own horse….
Within my first week I noticed the school wasn’t the true 20×40 size they had originally said it was, it was actually 16×40 and the surface was actually mainly dirt and huge stones… I spoke to them and told them that I was not happy about this but they brushed me off!! then within the next coming weeks my tub thugs were being swapped over for their damaged ones, and their cat had attacked my one year old saddle, scratching the leather to pieces on the seat area, again they just brushed me off!!!!
They also said as the grazing was so goody hay they only feed a small ikea bag of hay per night…. I didn’t really like this idea but their own horses seemed OK with it, and the grazing was very good allowing them to stay out until 8pm,! but as the weather changed I spoke to them asking if it was ok to now start giving my horse a full Haynet per night, they said this was “no problem” and I asked again whether it was ad lib hay, of which they replied yes!!!!!
I had noticed too that my bedding had been going down really quickly too, after putting in a bale of hunters the next day his bed would be very low in bedding I actually thought my horse could possibly be eating it, so I decided to set up my little camera to see what my horse was doing of a night,
To my utter horror what I discovered was even worse!!!!!!
On the video I found that approx 15 minutes after I left tge yard the main guy was going into my stable and taking every bit of hay out of my horses stable and giving it to his own horses…..I videoed for a few more nights and each and every time they were going in and removing my horses hay, I then immediately handed my notice in and continued to film them doing this!
On the day that I left the yard I confronted the main guy and asked why he had been taking the hay, that I’d paid for out of my stable every night, he said he wasn’t so I proceeded to show him the videos of which he replied “whatever!!!!!'” Please feel free to contact me if you are thinking of moving to a small family run yard in Keston in Kent and I will tell you the name of the yard and name the family too, I’m absolutely livid!!!!!! swmakeup@aol.com horse and hounHorse and hounddYour horse magazine
sherriewarwickhairandmakeupartist 