Kelburn Equestrian Centre

🦄PONY FUNDAY'S SUMMER HOLIDAYS 🦄

Thursday 23rd July
Monday 3rd August
Wednesday 12th August

🐎A great fun day for your child to be outside in the fresh air, to make new friends and enjoy lots of pony time🐴
PLEASE NOTE PARENTS DO NOT STAY WITH THEIR CHILD

🐴Suitable for children 5yrs to 11yrs
🐎Children don't need to have any previous pony experience.
🏇We are able to send out e- vouchers If you would like to give these days as a unique gift.

🦄Activities to include🦄
🐴Pony grooming
❤Pony riding
🐎Pony leading
🤸‍♀️Fun games
☕🍪Hot chocolate and cookies or 🌞 ice lollies weather dependent
🐴Pony care and management
💃Fun time in the kelburn playbarn

🐎If you would like more information please email [email protected] or send a message using the WhatsApp button.

🎁We also do riding lessons, treks, experience sessions, pony rides, pony parties and more.....

𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑫𝒊𝒅 𝑾𝒆 𝑺𝒕𝒐𝒑 𝑨𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑹𝒊𝒔𝒌?

Long one so grab a cuppa or wine glass😋

A rider falls from a horse and, understandably, our first concern is for the rider. Are they injured? Do they need medical attention? How serious is it? Nobody involved in horses wants to see a rider hurt, whether they are a child having their first lesson or an experienced rider who has spent a lifetime in the saddle. Rider welfare matters, and it should matter.

What interests me, however, is how the conversation has changed. A fall was once viewed as an unfortunate but accepted part of learning to ride. Nobody welcomed it, but there was an understanding that horses are animals rather than machines and that participating in an equestrian sport carried a degree of risk. Increasingly, though, there seems to be an expectation that a fall must have a cause beyond the obvious reality that a person was sitting on a horse. More often than not, the search begins for someone who can be held responsible.

That shift should concern all of us because horses occupy a rather awkward position in modern society. We continue to promote horse riding as an activity that develops confidence, resilience, independence and responsibility, yet we seem less willing than ever to accept the risks that inevitably accompany those lessons. We encourage children to challenge themselves, but increasingly expect every challenge to come with a guarantee of safety. The difficulty is that horses have never offered such guarantees.

A good riding school can reduce risk enormously. Suitable horses, qualified instructors, sensible procedures and appropriate supervision all play an important role. What a riding school cannot do is remove risk entirely. The quietest schoolmaster can spook. The most experienced rider can lose their balance. A horse can trip, stumble or react in a split second. None of those things automatically indicate negligence. Often they simply indicate that a horse has behaved like a horse.

The consequences of forgetting this are already becoming apparent. Riding schools face rising insurance costs, increasing regulation and mounting pressure from a culture that often struggles to distinguish between risk and wrongdoing. Many are operating on tight margins, and some have already closed their gates. Those losses are often discussed in terms of economics, but they also represent the loss of places where people learn to understand horses in the first place.

This is where I believe the discussion overlaps with social licence. We often talk about social licence through the lens of horse welfare, and rightly so, but perhaps we spend less time considering whether society still understands horses themselves. Public support for any activity depends upon understanding it. If the wider public no longer accepts that horses are living animals capable of unpredictable behaviour, then every accident risks being viewed as evidence of failure rather than an unfortunate reality of working with animals.

I sometimes wonder whether the greatest threat to the future of riding schools is not horses themselves, but society’s changing relationship with risk. We seem increasingly uncomfortable with activities that cannot be wrapped in guarantees and disclaimers. Yet the very qualities that make horses such valuable teachers are the same qualities that prevent them from being completely predictable. They teach responsibility because they are not machines. They teach patience because they do not always do what we ask. They teach humility because, no matter how experienced we become, there is always an element beyond our control.

If we continue down a path where every fall must have somebody to blame, we may eventually find ourselves protecting people from horses by removing their opportunities to experience them altogether. It sounds far-fetched, but riding simulators are already becoming increasingly sophisticated. One cannot help wondering whether a future society that becomes unwilling to tolerate risk around real horses may decide that a machine is preferable to the real thing.

That would be a tremendous loss. Riding schools are often where people first learn responsibility, resilience and respect for another living creature. The irony is that those lessons only exist because there is an element of uncertainty. Remove that uncertainty entirely and, in many ways, you remove the horse as well. More importantly, you weaken the public understanding upon which our social licence depends. Once society stops understanding horses, it becomes far harder to justify keeping them at the centre of our communities, our sports and our lives.

Thank you to BHS Scotland for coming to the yard today to weigh and fat score all the horses and ponies.
Unfortunately nobody this year got a best in shape rosette 🙈🐷

Please read the post as its full of important information, however don't forget to look at the photo, you may recognise our amazing estate and a few of our liveries ❤🐴
Kelburn Castle & Estate
Kelburn Equestrian Centre
BHS Scotland

Walkers, cyclists/mountain bikers, horse riders, dog walkers, and other non-motorised users have equal rights of responsible access in Scotland, so we need to share the space.

The Scottish Outdoor Access Code is based on three key principles, and these apply equally to the public and to land managers.

- Always pass others at a walk
- Make sure others can see or hear you
- Be nice, say “hi” and “thank you”
- Give everyone plenty of space
- Be prepared to wait or move to allow others to pass
- Wear Hi-Viz
- Choose a route that suits your abilities
- Find another route until the path dries out if it is poached
- Think about the cumulative effect of repeatedly using the same route, especially if other access takers use it too.

British Horse Society is the largest and most influential equestrian charity in Scotland and the UK. BHS is committed to protecting and promoting the interests of all horses and the people who care for them through our work in education, welfare, safety and access. Access to safe off-road riding routes is vital to the health and wellbeing of horses and their riders

Celebrating and promoting over 20 years of SOAC
- Respect the interests of other people
- Care for the environment
- Take responsibility for your own actions

This project is supported by NatureScot

Our staff member Emily Mckenzie has left us for pastures new, making a career change away from horses. Emily has worked and volunteered here with us for many years, has been an extremely hard worker and a great member of the team, we will all miss her being around.
We had a leaving party for Emily at the weekend, thank you to everyone that came to see her off 🙂🍾

🐎 Do liveries understand the true costs of running a livery yard and are we at a point where it is no longer sustainable

I’m constantly seeing posts currently with liveries asking if it’s normal for their to be too many horses on a yard , or maintenance not done , no turnout , overcharging for hay / haylage and whilst these are real issues they use terminology such as “greedy yard owners “ squeezing more profit “ is this what people truly believe ?

I’d genuinely like to open a discussion about livery prices and whether they actually reflect the true cost of running a yard.

Average DIY livery in Scotland seems to sit somewhere around £25–£45 per week, depending on facilities and location. But with rising costs across the board, many yard owners are quietly struggling just to break even.

The reality is that running a yard now involves far more than providing a field and a stable:

• Land costs or mortgages
• Insurance, business rates & compliance
• Arena upkeep, fencing, drainage & repairs
• Water, electricity & waste management
• Machinery, fuel and constant maintenance
• Daily management time — even on DIY yards

Because prices often can’t rise enough to match costs, what happens instead?

➡️ Yards become overcrowded just to stay afloat
➡️ Maintenance gets delayed because funds aren’t there
➡️ Facilities deteriorate
➡️ Liveries become unhappy with standards
➡️ Yard owners burn out trying to do more with less

Yet if liveries reflected the true cost, DIY might realistically need to sit closer to £55–£75+ per week in many areas.

And here’s the uncomfortable question:

Are we at a point where horse ownership is actually a luxury — but pricing hasn’t caught up with that reality?

What would happen if prices had to rise dramatically to make it viable people are already struggling , many people who love their horses like family are already struggling to keep them what can be done

Many people already struggle with costs, and no one wants horses to become inaccessible. But if yards can’t make ends meet, we risk losing good yards altogether.

I already know many yard owners who are at breaking point and either closing , quitting , taking in a second job , or changing direction completely

So what can be done?

👉 Are liveries prepared to pay the real cost if it meant sustainable yards and better facilities?
👉 Should yards be more transparent about their expenses?
👉 Do we need different models of livery or shared responsibility?
👉 How do we balance affordability with long-term sustainability?

📈 Just putting this into perspective…

Over the last few years, the cost of running a yard has gone up massively. Roughly speaking, this is what many yards across Scotland/UK have been dealing with:

• Staff wages / minimum wage — up around 35–45%
• Fuel & diesel for machinery — went up hugely and still around 30–40% higher than before
• Electricity — up roughly 80–150% depending on contracts
• Gas / heating — up 70–120%
• Hay & forage costs — up 40–70%
• Bedding (shavings/straw) — up 30–60%
• Building materials & timber — up 40–80%
• Machinery repairs & parts — up 25–50%
• Contractor work (topping, rolling, muck removal etc) — up 30–50%
• Insurance — up 20–40%
• Water, drainage & general maintenance — steadily rising
• Regulations, waste disposal & compliance — constantly increasing

But in many places DIY livery has only gone up by about £5–£10 a week, if it’s increased a

👉 Ar livery prices now years behind actual running costs?
👉 Is overcrowding happening because yards have to fill spaces just to survive?
👉 What would a sustainable, realistic livery price actually look like?

Genuinely interested to hear thoughts from both yard owners and liveries as ultimately it affects us all and the long term care and welfare needs of the horses we all love

Image is AI so don’t freak out however my fields pretty much currently resemble this 😩

🐴 PONY FUNDAY 🥳
📅 Thursday 9th & Friday 17th April
👧 Ages 5–11
⏰ 10:30am – 4pm
A full day of fun-filled pony activities and group adventures. Children will get hands-on experience with ponies, including riding, grooming, pony games, and learning basic stable care. The day may also include an Easter egg hunt, play barn visit, and time exploring the secret forest, making it a great mix of learning, outdoor fun, and pony time.

📩 To book: Message via WhatsApp or email [email protected]

🐴 PONY RIDES 🦄
📅 Weekends: 4th & 5th April, 11th & 12th April
⏰ 12pm – 4pm
Pony rides at the country centre during their Easter event.
✅ No booking needed – just come along
👶 Suitable for ages 2+ (max weight 60kg)