Opened in 2009, nestled in the beautiful Dart Valley, tucked away from main roads Lowertown Farm is the ideal location to retire your horse.
At Lowertown Farm we aim to provide affordable tailor-made packages to suit your horse during their retirement.
We believe it’s important to provide a loving, caring home for horses no matter what age or reason for their retirement. They are kept within a herd environment with other horses that match their individual personalities and their seasonal grazing requirements. Providing that individual, specialist care for your horse is vital whilst allowing them time to be ‘just horses’ during their retirement.
At Lowertown Farm your horse will be kept in a secure, tranquil and relaxed environment. Our fields are full of natural shelter, gentle slopes, thick hedgerows for browsing and water troughs with fresh spring water. Due to our location on Dartmoor, there are few flies during the summer to irritate the horses and we often have a gentle breeze throughout those hot, sunny days, a perfect escape!
The cost of livery is spread throughout the year for all clients. Commonly older horses stiffen up during periods of stabling. This is why we offer 24/7 turnout at our yard – a popular choice for all breeds of horses. Your horse can then choose how active they would like to be in older life, it’s especially good for those who suffer from joint stiffness, swellings, respiratory issues and arthritis.
All the horses live out through the summer months, then during the winter, those who need to be stabled can be in our spacious stables. Even those who are stabled during the winter months get on average nine hours of turnout during daylight hours to ease any stiffness.
We maintain a full fieldwork program – correcting the fields after winter, limiting the weeds and ensuring good pasture growth, we also have a full worming program with assistance and advice from Westgate Laboratory.
All of our haylage is produced by us on the farm to ensure its quality, made when the weather is just right and fed throughout the winter. We have excellent 24hr cover vets who we highly recommend but if you wish to remain with your own vets then that’s great.
There are no restrictions on accessing your horse and we speak to, or email, owners regularly along with Facebook photos and updates. Keeping owners as involved as they would like to be throughout their horses retirement.
Hannah studied equestrianism for a number of years at Duchy College in Cornwall. She started riding at the age of two years old having won a raffle for a pony ride, over a period of 30 years she’s gained experience of dealing with all types of horse ex-racers, working hunters, polo ponies, and feral Dartmoor ponies. Hannah also volunteers with the Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust handling their feral offspring and adding value to help other farmers.
Having lived at Lowertown Farm for many years Luke and Hannah have established professional relationships with our vets, farrier, horse dentist (who kept his horse with us during a period of rehabilitation) and physios all of whom will come at very short notice to our yard to assist with any issues.
As we purely specialise in retirement livery, your horse won’t have the stresses of daily life with other horses coming and going that you would find at other livery yards – in fact, only one horse at Lowertown is ridden – Hannah’s own horse.
We can recommend a couple of horse transportation companies to assist traveling your horse to us, all horses should be passported.
Packages generally include:
- Haylage in the winter months
- Basic hard feed when required (Supplements are an additional cost)
- Grass 24/7, stables for retired horses sometimes available
- Pampering and daily attention – inc carrots & apples
- Rug changing & yearly cleaning (repairs extra)
- Worming programme inc worm counts
- Regular foot trimming
- Regular emails and photos on our Facebook page, just in case you don’t have time to visit
Of course, if there is anything specific you require just ask! Our livery is designed to suit the individual.
As we like our liveries to have a bit of extra TLC in their lives, we like our yard to remain small in comparison to other retirement yards.
“Hannah gives all the horses kind and attentive care in her peacefully situated yard. Communication and service are thoughtful and professional. Highly recommended”
Please do not hesitate to get in contact to discuss any of our services!