Small yards rarely lose money on one big bill; they leak it through untracked bales, half-remembered deliveries and bedding used faster than anyone realised. A simple stock book — deliveries in, usage out, a monthly reckoning — plugs the leak and turns budgeting from a feeling into a set of facts.
The deliveries-in list
Log every delivery on the day it arrives: the date, what came, how much of it, and the running total it brings your stock to. For hay and haylage, give each delivery a batch identity — the delivery date is label enough — and note where it came from and how it looked: which field or cut if you know it, whether the bales are heavy or light, dusty or sweet-smelling. That batch note takes a minute and pays for itself the first time a horse starts leaving his hay untouched, because the answer is usually sitting in the delivery list rather than in the horse. Feed deliveries deserve the same treatment, with opened bags marked as they move from store to feed room.
Track use, not just arrival
Stock disappears through daily use, so tally the outgoings weekly: bales of bedding opened per stable, bags of feed finished, hay drawn from which batch. Per-stable bedding figures are quietly revealing — one horse may go through twice another's bedding because he is messier, wetter in the box, or being mucked out by a heavier hand, and you cannot manage what you cannot see. Feed use per week, set against the number of horses on the yard, tells you exactly how long a delivery will last, which turns reordering from a guess into a date on the calendar.
Reorder points stop the winter scramble
For each staple, set a reorder point: the stock level at which you order more, leaving enough in the barn to cover the gap until the delivery lands. Hay arranged calmly and in good time is usually better hay on better terms than hay begged for mid-winter when every yard in the county is short. Your usage tallies make the reorder point honest, because you know the yard's true weekly draw on each item, so the buffer is sized to your yard rather than to optimism. Write the reorder points at the front of the stock book, where whoever checks the stock will actually see them.
The monthly reckoning
Once a month, put the two lists together: what came in, what was used, and what it all cost, divided by the number of horses to give a cost per horse for feed and bedding. That single figure is the backbone of a small yard's budget. It prices liveries honestly, shows whether a change of bedding type or supplier actually saved anything once usage is counted, and warns early when costs are creeping. A year of monthly figures smooths into a budget you can plan a whole season on, and it gives you solid ground for any conversation about livery prices.
Records like these are only useful while they are findable, and KinsLe's Pet Passport keeps a holding's paperwork together in one portable packet, so delivery notes, batch records and monthly figures sit alongside the horses' own details instead of scattering across the feed room.