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A3 House & Pet Sitting: Specialist Rate & Booking Terms

At A3 House & Pet Sitting, we provide premium, fully insured, live-in care specifically tailored for rural properties, equestrian setups, and smallholdings. Backed by a BSc (Hons) in Equine Science and over 18 years of professional animal management experience, we ensure your estate and animals maintain their exact daily routines while you are away.

📅 Calendar-Day Billing Policy

Our service is booked and charged per calendar day (or part thereof) rather than a 24-hour cycle. This guarantees your property and animals are fully covered from the moment we arrive until the moment you safely return.

1. Standard Day Booking: A booking from Monday to Monday spans 8 calendar days and is billed as 8 full days of care.

2. Late Return Extension (Midnight Window): If you return at or past 12:00 Midnight on your scheduled return date, a flat £40 Late Return Fee applies to cover the extended night watch.

3. 📝 Planning a late flight or drive back? If you expect to return near or past midnight on your final day, please let us know when you book! This helps us plan our sleep schedule, manage late-night farm lock-ups, and ensure your invoice reflects the correct care window from the start.

4. Returns (Past 8:00 AM)If your return is past 8:00 AM the following morning, the booking rolls into a new calendar day and is charged as an additional full day of care.For example: A Monday-to-Monday trip returning past 8:00 AM on Tuesday is billed as 9 days.Please let us know the full details of your return time when booking, as back-to-back reservations are commonplace.

Master Pricing Guide: A3 House & Pet Sitting

1. Domestic Pets (Dogs & Cats)

• Base Live-In Rate (Includes 1 Dog or 1 Cat): £100 per calendar day

• Each Additional Dog: + £5 to 15 per day (1 hour exercise)

• Each Additional Cat: + £5 per day

• Puppies / Kittens (Under 12 months): + £25 per day (Due to intensive supervision and house-training needs)

• High-Medication/Senior Care: + £5 to £10 per day (For intensive medical tracking, e.g., insulin injections)

2. Specialist Equine Care (Per animal, per day)

We offer professional, knowledgeable care for high-value horses, from field-kept ponies to competition horses on strict regimens.

• Field-Kept Horse / Pony:+£10 to £20
  (Daily welfare check, water maintenance, rug checking, feeding, and injury monitoring)

• Stabled / High-Maintenance Horse:+£25 to £35
  (Full stable management including turn-out/bring-in, mucking out, rug changes, and precision feeding/supplement routines)

• Donkeys & Companions:+£10 to £15

🔒 Fixed Price Guarantee

We believe in fair, predictable pricing. Unlike online aggregator platforms, we do not charge seasonal surcharges or peak-time premiums for Bank Holidays, school holidays, Christmas, or New Year. The rate you see is the rate you pay, all year round.

🚗 Travel & Mileage: To keep our services competitive, travel from our base postcode are calculated at the standard HMRC rate of 55p per mile, using postcode-to-postcode routing in one direction.

Smallholding & Livestock Care

Because smallholdings vary heavily in setup and routine, we price these dynamically to stay highly competitive while completely covering the physical workload involved.

Poultry & Waterfowl
(Morning let-out, secure evening lock-up, feeding, water refreshing, and egg collection)

• Small Hobby Flock (1 to 6 birds): + £10 per day

• Medium Flock (7 to 15 birds): + £15 per day

• Large Flock (15+ birds): + £20+ per day (Or a custom quote depending on pond cleaning setups)

Alpacas & Llamas

Alpacas are generally low-maintenance daily but require vigilant eyes for field safety, checking body language for illness, and daily feed/water checks.

• Small Herd (1 to 4 alpacas): + £15 per day

• Medium Herd (5 to 10 alpacas): + £25 per day

• Large Herd (10+ alpacas): Custom assessment required

• Small Livestock Groups (Up to 5 Sheep / Goats / Alpacas):+£15 to £25 per day
  (Daily health/welfare check, water trough cleaning, feed management, and fence line checks)

• Larger or Mixed Smallholdings:Bespoke Daily Quote
  For highly active smallholdings, we calculate a custom, competitive flat rate based entirely on the total hours of manual labor your morning and evening routines require.

🐮 Cattle

Rate+ £15.00 to £30.00 flat fee per day (for a small family herd of up to 10 suckler cows, steers, or hobby breeds like Highlands/Dexters).What it covers: Daily visual health checks (looking for lameness or mastitis), cleaning and filling water troughs, checking electric fence lines, and distributing silage/hay using your quad bike or tractor provided a quick overview of your tractor is provided beforehand.

Farm & Machinery Support
I am fully competent and highly experienced in operating ATVs, which I drive on a regular basis.

I also hold a National Diploma from Walford College of Agriculture, passing my tractor operations modules with a Distinction. While I have a strong structural foundation in tractor driving, please note it has been some time since I last operated one. Given how much technology has advanced, I am more than happy to assist with tractor work provided a brief on-site refresher or orientation is given with your specific machinery.

🚜 Large Outfits, Smallholdings & Rural Estates

We absolutely love the energy, hard work, and rewarding routine of managing larger outfits.Whether you run a bustling multi-species smallholding, a dedicated equine facility, or a working rural estate, we are entirely in our element here.

You never have to worry that your setup is "too complex" or has "too many moving parts" for us—we thrive on the daily structure it takes to keep a large holding running like clockwork.

🚜 Practical Estate & Machinery Management

A large rural property requires more than just animal feeding. I bring formal land-based training and daily practical competence to keep your estate running seamlessly in all weather conditions:

ATV & Trailer Competence:

Highly experienced in daily quad bike operations, including moving muck, distributing feed across winter acreage, and precise trailer reversing.

College Trained Tractor Operations:

I hold a National Diploma from Walford College of Agriculture, passing my tractor operations modules with a Distinction.

This means I am formally trained in tractor driving, implements, and strict field safety.

Machinery Familiarisation:

While I have a strong foundational knowledge, it has been some time since I last operated a tractor.

Because modern agricultural technology and digital layouts vary so much, I am happy to assist with tractor work subject to a brief, 10-minute site orientation from you on your specific model.

This ensures strict adherence to your yard's safety protocols and machinery care.

Winter Land Competence: Fully prepared to handle frozen boundaries, navigate wet paddocks safely without tearing up the turf, and manage winter forage logistics.

Looking for a Viable Solution?

Please do not hesitate to reach out for a highly competitive, tailored quote. We completely understand that standard per-animal add-on rates do not translate fairly to larger operations.

For outfits of scale, we bypass the individual math and work closely with you to calculate a consolidated, all-inclusive day rate. This ensures you receive premium, dedicated estate management at a price that makes absolute commercial sense for your business.

Complete Discretion Assured

We respect the privacy and security required to run a high-value rural property. Every large-scale inquiry is handled with the strictest confidentiality.

We are fully prepared to adhere to your specific biosecurity protocols and seamlessly manage any existing ground staff or daily contractors on your schedule.

"Managing a smallholding? The larger your flock, herd, or pack, the more competitive our rates become. Contact us today for a bespoke, multi-animal discount tailored to your property."