credit crunch

[rebanna]

omg just been and got the food for the crab's it's gone up and dubled in price darent go buy horse food i need some more but im dreading the price garlic powder had gone up £2 in a mounth

[gingernut]

When P went away i bought a bag of horse feed it was just under a tenner and now when I need to but some its nearly £12!! Glad I have a shetland as a mate instead of a actual pony (!) as his one bag of Hoof Kind lasts him about 6 months and costs just under £6 a bag! There's no way I can get a place of my own again now - gutted!!

[Becca]

how the hell can you fit £50 in a 1.2? 50 bloody quid!

[rebanna]

mine's only a 999cc it's costing over £45

[florence]

I've recently had the vet out and he said my boy needs his teeth done every 6 months. That's £38.12 for call out plus £37.15 for teeth - £150.54 per year for teeth rasping! Then he's on bute all the time now - 1 sachet per day unless the ground gets hard and he gets a bit worse, then it's 2 per day until I can reduce it - that's why I'm rather liking the wet weather at the moment. Bute is £80.86 for a box of 100. I'm sure it's all going to go up soon, the same as everything else. My job's not that safe at the moment, either. It's all getting rather scary!

[racaille]

Moving abroad isn't that scary when you actually do it! We moved the kids to France when they were 7 and 3, they picked up the language quickly because we put them straight into French school. It IS cheaper here, but the real difference is the quality of living.
But the credit crunch is hitting everyone, even here, as the cost of fuel keeps on rising. We've turned our central heating boiler off: in winter we heat the house with a permanent, huge fire in the sitting room, burning pine logs from the endless trees we have to cut down (you have to have the chimney swept twice each winter but it's still way cheaper than oil - 50 euros for the sweep compared with 500 euros for a quarter of a tank of oil!!!!) In summer we have hot water from the solar panel. It does mean being a bit circumspect with the water (no hot showers at midnight, for instance) but it seems to be working so far.
We are also trading down the car for something smaller and basic. I have given up my dream of a hunky tow car and will have to go on relying on my chum's.
PS Read that New Zealand is crying out for skilled people - and you don't even have to learn another lingo!

[gingernut]

I went to New Zealand last year and absolutely loved it sadly though I don't think a secretary counts as a skilled worker!! Shame as I would have loved to live near Christchurch.

[kateflashy]

things like vets are so much cheaper here just an example when i lost mash, the vet was out 3x a day for 4 days , she was on a saline drip, plus finadine injections , and gawd knows what else , the total bill was just 300€ so about £230 in uk it would of cost that a day

plus our vets dont insist on seeing the animals when fred got his abcess we just went to th surgery and asked for penicillian and bute , and they just gave it out ,
even for the cats and dogs when the kitten had a cold , we just told them and they gave us antibiotics

though diesel has gone up here , it does go down in price as well , depending on the wholesale price i supose

[florence]

Kate, that's so incredibly cheap. As you know, you'd never get penicillin from a vet here without them seeing the horse. As for bute, I get them to post it to me but they do have to come out and check him periodically - I just make sure it's when he has his vaccination and teeth rasp. The thing is, here they've got you. They all charge around the same and most owners are like me and would never chance leaving out wormers, vaccinations or teeth rasping or calling the vet out as necessary. It's just a false economy because it can cause so many things to go wrong further down the line; it then costs an absolute fortune.

[kateflashy]

we buy our wormers from the pharmacy they are 10€
but even the flutet we can just get from the vet and inject my self
i did study equine medical disorders and internal medicine so i (hope) im pretty knowledgable when it comes down to diagnosis of whats wrong