A bit of a livery pickle!

[Ace87]

Hi Guys I wonder if any of you can help?

I'm currently at a small livery yard with about 15 horses and it was perfect up until a month ago. We had a list of repairs that our yard owner gave us saying would all be completed within a month, of which one of these have been done and even that hasn't been followed up.

We were all starting to get a little hacked off with the constant broken promises but we have acres and acres of private hacking in beautiful countryside so decided not to make too much of a fuss..

This was until yesterday when I took Ace out for a hack with mum and Magpie and I discover that the yard owner has let her husbands farm boys plough all out bridleways into the fields and left us with a meter wide strip to hack along with a 4ft ditch on one side and a ploughed field on the other!!

Add to this that when we had all that horrid heavy rain in May the field drains burst and the school has never drained properly since so is not a mushy mess and it is also too short to canter any horse over about 14.2hh!

I've spoken to the other women at the yard and we are all thouroughly hacked off but do we approach the yard owner threatning to leave unless things change or do we just up and leave? If so does anyone know a livery yard in south beds/dunstable area with 5 spaces!?!


So confused as to what to do!!

Thanks!

 

[skewbald-mad]

i would discuss it with Y/O first, just the threat of you all leaving will prob be enough to spur her on to do something, as that would be alot of money lost!

 

[Alfies-slave]

They were not being spiteful by ploughing up the headlands. The price of grain has massively increased and so it is more profitable to plant the headlands rather than claim the subsidy. My husband has ploughed all our headlands and he knows I am gutted... and that is his own wife! However, farming is hard enough these days and thorse few extra tones of crop will make a big difference to the bottom line.

Call a yard meeting , somewhere neutral like the back room of the local pub and discuss the riders concerns with the YO's.

At this time of year farmers are massively busy, expecting repairs to be done instantly is unrealistic. They promised the repairs would be done... but no farmer would do them during harvest time. Wit till they have their winter wheat planted and then see!

 

[Ace87]

I totally understand about the farmers current situation! The repairs aren't down to the farmer as it is his wife and her mother who run the yard and the have 3 handymen employed specifically for the stable yard - they just never seem to do anything at all! It's all very frustrating!

Have had a word with Y/O and she said we should just ride in the ploughed area of the field!! I for one won't be doing this as Ace can't cope with the fact that his legs sink into the ploughed ground and he panics.

I think I may just have to move to somewhere I can actually have an occasional canter. If anyone knows any yards near Leighton Buzzard let me know!