Forage is most of what your horse eats, so begin there rather than with the feed room's tidy shelves. Ask whether the yard feeds hay or haylage, which the yard buys in, and whether the supply stays consistent through the year or changes with price and season. Ask how forage is rationed: weighed, given by the section, or effectively as much as the horse will eat, and how that changes for a horse who gains weight easily or one who drops condition in winter. Ask whether nets are used, whether forage is put in before the horse comes in so he never stands in an empty stable, and what happens on the days turnout is cancelled for weather.
Soaking, supplements and your own feed
If your horse coughs on dry hay, ask directly whether staff will soak or steam it, for how long the yard usually soaks, and where soaked hay is drained so the stable yard does not flood in winter. Ask whether a horse who needs forage little and often, or a late-night net, can be accommodated or whether that falls to you. Ask whether you can see and smell the current forage before you commit — it should come out of the bale sweet and clean, not dusty, dark or musty — because you are buying that forage every day of the year, not the bale that happened to be open for your visit. On hard feed, ask whether the yard supplies a standard feed or expects owners to provide their own, how feeds are labelled and stored against mix-ups between horses, and whether supplements and balancers you send in will be added exactly as you direct. Ask who makes up feeds if the usual person is away, because that is when the wrong bucket most often reaches the wrong horse.
Bedding, mucking out and the honest extras
Ask which bedding the yard uses — straw, shavings, pellets or paper — and whether you may choose, since a horse who eats his bed or has a dust sensitivity may rule one out. Ask how the bed is managed day to day: fully mucked out, deep littered and dug out weekly, or skipped out and topped up, and how often banks are pulled down and the floor disinfected. Ask how wet bedding disposal works, whether extra bales sit on your bill, and what a rug change, a held horse for the farrier or a late-night check costs on top of livery. Yards are rarely evasive on purpose, but inclusions left unasked become the charges argued about later.
Turning answers into a written routine
Before you move in, convert what you were told into a short written routine for your own horse: forage type and rough amount, soaking instructions, feed and supplement directions, bedding and any stable habits that matter, such as leaving a companion in sight. Agree who does each job on yard days and on your days, so nothing depends on memory or on a note pinned to a feed-room door. Set that routine up in KinsLe's Care Teams, where feeding, soaking and stable duties for your horse can be assigned to the people doing them and marked complete with a timestamp, so a missed soaked net or a doubled feed shows up the same day rather than at the end of the month.