"Just checking how he is today"
Your full liveries pay for you to look after their horses because they work long hours or live some distance away. They trust you, but they still want to know. So they text. Did he go out today? Which rug is he in? Did he eat his breakfast? Could you send a photo? Each question is reasonable. There are a lot of them.
Your staff answer from their own phones, between jobs, sometimes on their days off. Some owners get photos and chatty updates because they get on well with one groom. Others get nothing because nobody thought to message them. The owners who get nothing are the ones who start wondering whether to move.
Why updates depend on who is on shift
Owner updates on a full livery yard are usually informal, which means they depend entirely on individual staff.
- Updates are sent from personal phones, not from the yard.
- Some staff are chatty, some are not, so owners get uneven service.
- Nothing records what was done each day for each horse.
- Owners ask the same questions staff have already answered for others.
- Staff feel obliged to answer outside working hours.
The care itself is often excellent. The problem is that owners cannot see it.
The cost of care nobody sees
Full livery is the yard's highest value service, and owners judge it partly on what they hear. Uneven communication makes good care look patchy. Owners who feel out of touch ask more questions, which takes more staff time.
Using personal phones also blurs boundaries for staff and leaves the yard without any record of what was said. When a question arises weeks later about when a horse last went out or when a rug was changed, nobody can answer confidently.
A daily care log owners can see
We build a daily care log that staff complete as they work, and owners can read.
- Each full and part livery horse has a daily log with the routine jobs for your yard: fed, turned out, brought in, rugs, mucked out, exercised.
- Staff tick jobs as they do them on a phone or tack room tablet. It takes seconds and records who did what and when.
- Staff can add a short note or a photo when there is something worth saying, from the yard's system rather than their own number.
- Owners open their horse's page on their phone at any time and see today's log, notes and photos.
- Owners can reply or ask a question through the same page, which goes to the yard, not to a person's private phone.
- Anything the owner needs to act on, such as a loose shoe or a rug that needs repairing, can be flagged so the owner gets a notification.
| Texts from staff phones | Daily care log | |
|---|---|---|
| What owners see | Depends on who is on shift | The same log for every horse |
| Photos | Occasional | Added when useful |
| Record of care | None | Every job, with time and name |
| Owner questions | To whoever they know | To the yard |
| Staff days off | Still getting texts | Not involved |
The log records the yard's routine care as it happens. It is not a health record, and anything about a horse's health is for the owner and their vet.
Owners who feel close to their horse
An owner at work opens her horse's page at lunchtime and sees he was turned out at eight in his lighter rug, with a photo of him rolling in the field. She does not need to text anyone. When the groom notices a small cut, she adds a note and a photo, and the owner is told straight away.
Staff stop answering texts on their days off. The yard has a record of care that it can point to when questions arise. And every full livery gets the same standard of communication, which is what they are paying for.
Do your owners keep asking how their horse is?
- Owners text staff for updates and photos.
- Some owners get much more contact than others.
- Staff answer questions on their personal phones.
- There is no daily record of each horse's care.
- Owners have questioned whether routine jobs were done.