SERIOUS WELFARE ISSUES AT LIVERY YARDS
A STUDY RUN BY THE World Horse Welfare revealed what most of us
out here in the wide world have known for a very long time. Livery Yards
are often ideal breeding ground for many a welfare problem.
The WHW ran a survey for 112 months from April 2008 to April 2009.
The result highlighted issues relating to equine welfare.
Many different issues were reported by the public such as:
 Lack of fresh water in grazing and turnout areas.
 Ragwort was a particular problem but other poisonous plants were
also reported.
 Injuries at yards was I understand quite high on the list, as were
dangers in grazing and turnout areas.
 Physical abuse and poor foot management were other problems
reported to be prevalent.
The point of the survey was to establish whether there were any worrying
trends and issues which may compromise any horse’s welfare. Clearly this
survey did just as we all might have expected – i.e. showed that there are
indeed many welfare issues at Livery Yards all over the country.
President of the BEVA (The British Equine Veterinary Association) Chris
House, chaired the Livery Yard working party.
Chris House commented:
“This survey has confirmed the presence of a wide variety of w3e4lfarerelated problems, not only in the construction of premises, but just as
important is the way the livery businesses are supervised and run”.
“Problems are surprisingly widespread. Action needs to be taken to
address this to ensure that good yards are recognised and encouraged, and
the bad ones improved.”
“The working party is compiling evidence of problems at livery yards in
order to confirm the concerns that have been expressed over many years A
proposal will be released in the coming months to address the welfare
issues that have been raised.”
I personally wonder why on earth all this has taken so long to come to the
surface. The fact that the government postponed the second part of the
Welfare act ( which was to include licensing of Livery Yards ) should
have meant that consultation should be complete3d on this issue now.
From what I have been given to understand, several equine groups stated
their concerns
over initial licencing
regulations
owing to the fact that
they
considered the bill to be
too weak to
prevent further
problems on
the welfare front. This
should, one
would have thought,
have meant
more consultation,
however I
suspect that as usual the
powers that
be, took a back seat and
did nothing to
establish the
introduction of new and more concrete regulations.
We have also been told that although the BHS Livery Yard Approvals
scheme has been up and running for some time, the criteria on which the
“approval” is based on facilities alone. This means you still cannot
guarantee that the yard will be well run and supervised. However, I have
no doubt if this is incorrect, someone will soon enlighten us.
Paula Clements