To ask you not to feed horses you don’t know

[lastqueenofscotland]

With the weather improving and the government giving us the green light to travel to other places. If you are off walking around where horses are kept please don’t feed them without the permission of the owner.

Some horses have laminitis and you feeding them treats can cause this to flare up and in some cases cause them to need to be put to sleep.
Some things you feed them could disagree with them, horses can’t be sick, this could literally kill them.
Horses can be territorial around food and incredibly aggressive. This is dangerous for you or if they decide they are jealous of their field mate getting fed and decide to beat them up.

Please please please just leave other people’s animals alone unless you’ve permission from the owners.

Yanbu. I think there should be an automatic fine of at least £1k, money to go to a central fund to cover the vet bills. Actually chopping off the offenders hand, or the supervising adults hand would suit me. I'm genuinely trying to find a way to make a do not feed sign that has a hidden underside showing the most gruesome photos of dead and dying horses I can find, but don't want decent none feeding people and passers by to accidentally see and be horrified. I might settle for a graphic description of the longest 20 minutes of my life, standing with a horse with a leg snapped in two following a fight over food. Luckily only 20 minutes because a local farmer was able to shoot it rather than waiting for the vet. As evidenced by this thread, people don't know or in some cases care about colic, choke, laminitis.

You don't need to be experienced or a genius to know whether an animal belongs to you or to remember whether you've been given permission to feed it, so I fail to understand why people get so confused about whether they have a right to feed random animals.

@Soontobe60 does the same apply to your dc and home? Or if I come and throw sweets, alcohol and cigarettes to your dc would you consider it your own fault for not caging in your garden sufficiently?

@Mustfly tbh, I couldn't give a fuck about your pleasure, or the dc you are bringing up to believe animals are toys. I care about the animals welfare. Strangely I don't have horses to provide a lockdown petting zoo for the entitled and their offspring. I'd suggest you watch some videos of horses choking, suffering a laminitis attack, colic, a broken leg etc but it's fairly obvious you don't give a fuck about the consequences.

Why don't you buy your dc their own? Being clueless you'll need an expensive livery package but that's less than the vet bills people like you cause so you won't mind if your dc get some pleasure in these dark times. Then you, your dc and all the entitled fuckwits you're defending can feed it till it meets a gruesome end. It might be a bit traumatic for your dc watching their pet roll round in agony, or waiting for the vet to put it out of its misery because it's field mate has shattered its leg, or watching an animal suffer and die needlessly. But all worth it for the pleasure you feel in feeding.

Apples, carrots and parsnips are all high sugar enough to bring one of mine out into itchy lumps. A friend of mine had four or five grazing muzzles cut through as someone obviously thought she was being cruel.

There are an awful lot of people who know nothing about the countryside. This includes a proportion of the people who live in it but don't have anything to do with it except the odd walk. They don't understand about sheep and dogs, or about footpaths, and don't know anything about horses. They don't understand fire risk either - the other day I had to ask a trio of teenagers to put out the fire they'd lit in the woods; never mind that it's not their woods, the leaf litter was really dry. As I told them, I've had to call the fire service out there once before.

I'm starting to think that there needs to be a quick module squeezed into the curriculum at about Y4 and again at Y9 called Rural Reality or something, which includes a visit to a farm.

I never understood this. Their teeth are fucking massive! Who in their right mind would put their hand near that?!

I grew up in a city where you often get horses grazing in paddocks here and there. I remember being taken as a child to look at them. We got a lecture before each horse watching outing about how dangerous they were and how our parents once knew someone who lived next door to some who’s nephew’s wife’s sister’s friend’s husband’s distant relative’s boyfriend’s friend’s mother in law had been killed by a horse. What kind of moron let’s their child go anywhere near an unknown animal of that size?

mustfly you may think you are bringing up your children nicely. But you aren't. You are bringing them up to be animal abusers, because that IS what you are doing. Countless posters here have said why it's dangerous but you persist in your entitled little bubble because its something you like doing.

My horse is a fatty, he can literally get fat on fresh air. We have to monitor his weight and he is allowed a carrot or apple a couple of times a week. His weight would be even more unmanageable if he was getting 20 carrots a day from people walking past.
He gave himself colic the other day from gorging on too much grass.
Please please please do not feed horses. Pat them, give them a scratch if you wish but please don’t feed them

Feeding treats that you think are harmless can be as dangerous as giving a diabetic a bag of jelly babies.
I used to have a constant battle with my neighbours emptying their lawn mower into my horses field, they just wouldn't be told.
Also the idiots who lob their dog poo bags into fields, bizarrely horses find them irristable and there's been several cases of choke and colic from eating them.
One of my horses will stamp on dogs/ cats/ chickens if they come near him yet I'm nasty to shout at people to get their dogs out of the field.

@Mustfly feeding any equine you don't know just because it's nice treat for your DC to do is the same as me feeding your dog a nice treat of grapes and dark chocolate.

Aka might not kill but can and frequently does.

I think we need to explain to folk like @Mustfly what laminitis and colic do to a horse.

Laminitis- is basically an intolerance / allergy to sugar. Any sugar. Grass sugar carrot sugar apple sugar hay sugar sugar sugar whatever. It inflames the laminae in the hoof, which support a bone in the foot called the pedal bone. If you imagine the laminae are like your gums and the pedal bone is a tooth.

When the laminae inflame, it weakens the support to the pedal bone. Add in the sheer weight of the horse on that bone that has no support, and you have a very bad problem.

The bone will start to rotate, drop, and come through the bottom of the hoof. It is unbearably painful, and often fatal.

Colic- the build up of gasses in the stomach which cannot be burped out as a horses cardiac sphincter into the stomach is a one way valve. They can’t burp or be sick. Which means the only way out is a massively long intestinal tract which often isn’t effective. The stomach blows up and stretches and stretches and most likely the horse dies in agony, even if found.

We’re having a huge problem. My horse is kept at the bottom of a national park and folk think it’s their god given right to feed / speak / take pictures of our horses, and also our wee pack of goats.

I was standing rinsing a really nasty and very obviously leg injury on a horse yesterday which had occurred in the field- blood everywhere, I’m on the phone to the vet with one hand hose in the other, sporting my own pretty horrific facial injuries from an unrelated injury.

Some woman who’d taken it upon herself to walk through the yard (coming off the paths) whipped out her phone camera and started taking pictures, and gave me utter dogs abuse when I asked her not to. The last thing you want is some random having pictures of your horse injured and potentially lobbing them on Facebook as part of her ‘daily exercise’ log.

Don’t get me started on dogs off leads either. We’ve lost lambs this week too.

Safe to say the entitled public are getting on my wick at the minute. Thank you for the space to have a vent.

@Vieve1325 I don't agree with all you've said there.

Obviously the situation of an injured horse and yourself is a bit different but taking a picture of a horse in a field I don't think crosses a line. My yard used to look out on a public footpath but we had brambles between the field and the path so they couldn't touch them but no one ever had an issue of them taking pictures or talking to them.

Saying 'hello, aren't you cute' to a horse will not injure it or cause any issues.

@grumpyorange if you can walk close enough past a horse in a field, fine.

But not walking off a public path, into a private yard, where people are carrying out care. Since this whole Covid situation has started, we’ve constantly been chasing people off the yard - in trying to touch / feed horses, using our toilet and water facilities to hose dogs off etc. To wander into private property and then start snapping is just not on.

I suppose it is a security issue. I wouldn't necessarily want photographs of my horses, yard, quad bike, tack etc ending up on someone else's social media advertising where they are located. Especially if someone has trespassed into private land to do so. Fine if they end up in the background shot from a public right of way but I'd object to a dedicated photo shoot. Again switch it around how would you feel I started randomly taking photos of your kids and garden without asking? Say hello, your cute fine. Then move on.

Like your username, BillyCongo - I owned a half-brother of his a long time ago, fabulous horse :)

@BillyCongo agree. Nice pictures popped up of identifiable horse tied outside their stable with the yard logo / name visible on signs etc, wearing their tack...

I also have the safety fear too. My horse is sweet but she’s fidgety. I left her for 20 seconds last month to grab my hat, came back round the corner and a family were trying to talk and pat to her. Two young kids very close, one on a little tricycle thing. Luckily she wasn’t scared of the bike but she if she’d swung her arse she’d have been over the top of them without a second thought.

They were ‘looking for a toilet,’ inside a barn off the main path.

I guess until you have had to try and comfort a horse writhing in agony, and then felt the heartbreak and relief as you watch both the pain and life leave their eyes you will never truly understand.......my vet, who is in his 60s had to put one of his down due to colic last week, he said despite his many years as a vet, the pain horses suffer from colic still gets to him😟

@Vieve1325 @BillyCongo I agree not if they trespassed onto your yard or your horse is in tack etc but if our in a field (with no real identifying features other than it being a field) I personally didn't see the harm.

To all the people who feed ponies because they think it’s nice for their dc to do, this is what owners find the following morning.

Absolute bastards.

The poor thing was only 2 yrs old. The gate runs along a path that has been busy this week now people can travel to exercise.

I once went to check my horse and found a man clutching a carrier bag (which was previously filled with treats) literally cornered and halfway in the hedgerow by my 17hh WB and his equally well sized mates.

He's lucky I turned up when I did, he had the cheek to be grumpy about how they'd intimidated him. They weren't doing anything wrong, but think he quickly realised that large animals can quickly become scary. Never saw him again

People don’t go on walks armed with bags of treats for dogs so why do people do it for horses?!
My 700kg Irish draught can act quite intimidating and will mug you for food given the chance

During my work at an equine veterinary hospital, colic surgeries are one of the main things we do l, it's usually touch and go for the horse and very expensive and heartbreaking for the owner. It's frequently the result of horses being fed by memebers of the public Also to those that 'harmlessly' feed a carrot, do you know horses need their carrots cut a specific way or they are a huge choke hazard. Chokes are far more common that you imagine and can cause aspiration. Loads of horse owners don't bother of course but most know which horse is likely to chew and which is likely to rush and inhale their carrot, that method isn't fail safe and they could be fine for years until they are not which is why we see so many cases many a recused by public feeding. Finally laminitis season is upon us, it is crippling and life limiting, often life ending. Once they've had it once they are forever prone and will need a very controlled and restricted low sugar diet forever. No one is being dramatic by saying a carrot or apple could kill a horse especially if several families are looking for their light in dark times each day.

@grumpyorange I’m going to be honest- I still don’t think I’d be too chuffed if random pictures of my horse in its field (identifying location) ended up on someone’s Facebook. You wouldn’t take pictures of folks kids or dogs in their gardens / a park and post them, just because it’s an animal in a field doesn’t always make it fair game. Especially if the location is captioned.

Some horrible stories on this thread. Obviously there are people out there who just don’t care. But surely most of the problem is ignorance? It’s not at all obvious to most people that a handful of grass could be dangerous to a pony. As a child I got the message ‘shut gates, don’t litter’ over and over from books, school, Brownies etc but feeding horses wasn’t mentioned (or encouraged in e.g. Enid Blyton!). I assume it’s the same nowadays? If the message was pushed out through the media and schools to raise awareness that would surely help. Though maybe not for the twats that ignore signs.

I get you! i almost lost my old boy because somebody fed him tons of green (hard) apples....the result was a severe colic that almost killed him (sheer luck it didn’t)

kizzy it may be ignorance to begin with but I have heard of people still feeding even when there are signs asking them not to