TRANSPORTING HORSES OVERSEAS - WHAT IT ENTAILS

We asked a well known horse transporter to write an article about transporting horses across the Europe and this is what they wrote;

RELOCATING abroad with your herd? http://www.locltd.com/

How do you manage the process of taking your horses with you? They’re part of your family and you need to ensure their safety and wellbeing, but you’ve got a to-do list as long as your arm of what you need to do in order to up-sticks and relocate your house contents and family to your new home. You’ll be getting quotes from your removal firm (or for van hire if you’re driving to your new home). You’re trying to tie up loose ends with your current livery yard or own property as well as ensuring your horses have a new yard to go to when you move – who needs the extra hassle of trying to plan and take care of the horse transport as well? You’ll save the grey hairs and worry if you put your trust in a professional horse transport company like LOC Ltd that will take care of all the logistics for you.

LOC are totally geared towards helping you move. http://www.locltd.com/

For starters your horses will need passports to travel – that’s an EU regulation.

They will also need EU Health papers – also known as ITAHC - Intra Trade Animal Health Certificates. You can do these yourself and go through the process of applying for them via APHA (Animal Plant Health Agency), or your transporter will do this for you.

Within 48 hours of your horses leaving the UK, they will need the health certificates signed off by a ministry (OV) vet to confirm that your horses are fit to undertake the journey and are free from any contagious diseases.

When you’re planning the final stages of your move you don’t want the hassle of arranging all of this yourself so LOC as your transporter would do this for you and can have a local vet sign your horses off after they’ve been picked up.

If needs be, your horses can stay with LOC while you finalise your last bits and pieces, we have both stabling and turn out on secure premises, so we’d be happy to have your horses stay with us for a short while so that you can head over to your new home and sort out stables, fencing and all the rest.

But what happens next?

You’re handing your much-loved family members over into someone else’s care after all. Depending on the locations of where your horses are travelling from and to will of course dictate the journey duration – as will whether you choose a shared, co-load or private dedicated charter load. For long distance trips to and from Europe, all horses will be offloaded at overnight horse B&B facilities on route so that they can get their heads down and rest up before the next leg of the journey. Don’t think you’ll be out of touch with them either, as you’ll be given the drivers names and contact number on the truck so that you can keep up to date with where your horses are and how they are travelling – even with pictures!

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Our team of pro-driver/grooms will let you know their planned arrival time so that you can be ready to meet your horses coming off the truck. Occasionally due to the sheer size of our international horse transport vehicle we may need to meet you somewhere nearby with easy access to offload – especially if your new property has very narrow access or bridges with height/width/weight restrictions. We’ll need your help for this part as you know your area better than we do so remember to let us know about any areas where access could be tricky so that we can ensure your horses transport is as straightforward as possible.

For smaller loads or individual horses, we also have a fleet of 3.5 tonne 2 stall boxes that can provide direct, door to door transport.

Whatever your transport needs for your horses do feel free to get in touch with the team al LOC http://www.locltd.com/International Horse Transport and we’d be happy to help. 

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