The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Pets & Working Animals => Horses, ponies, donkeys & mules => Topic started by: waterhouse on October 04, 2011, 12:09:53 am

Title: Bringing-in at night
Post by: waterhouse on October 04, 2011, 12:09:53 am

We've just started to bring in at night. No, not the weather or the fading light but there are horse thieves about and the boys are too visible from the road.

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: faith0504 on October 04, 2011, 06:12:03 pm

better to be safe than sorry eh, but its a sad state of affairs when it comes to this

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: sabrina on October 07, 2011, 04:41:05 pm

I find this a constant worry keep all the gates chained and electric fence on but I know if someone wanted to steal the ponies then they would find a way.

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: lachlanandmarcus on October 07, 2011, 08:05:34 pm

The most vulnerable horses to being stolen are

coloureds
mares
up to about 15,2
minatures/shetlands

Coloureds because they are fashionable so worth more £££ and will mix in easily with the rest of the coloured herd the thieves have. Mares for breeding with. Smallish so that they can be hidden more easily. Shetlands/minatures because they are the easiest to hide even in the back of the transit.

This comes straight from the mouths of our former nearish neighbours at the local travellers site at our old place. Who didnt steal our horses, cos our yard owner had 4 Rotties and cos according to us when they got nosy  all our horses were geldings or mares with terrible gynaecological problems meaning they were no good for breeding :-)))). But they did steal electric fencing, rugs (even postcoded ones, happily displaying the postcodes on their own horses a few days later....:-O), the CCTV camera the council put up to try and stop the flytipping etc etc.....

Please make sure all mares coloureds and littluns are freezemarked and microchipped. If you have a small coloured mare I would let it live in your garage!

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: faith0504 on October 07, 2011, 08:10:00 pm

Every horse owners worse nightmare, its so scary, the measures you have to take to try to keep them safe and sound,  :o

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: waterhouse on October 07, 2011, 11:07:18 pm

We've given the boys microchips and freezemarks and a shotgun each.

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: sabrina on October 09, 2011, 06:01:49 pm

I have all my ponies chipped but this would not stop them being stolen, I have heard that the thieve just digs the chip out  :o

Title: Re: Bringing-in at night
Post by: lachlanandmarcus on October 09, 2011, 07:12:06 pm

That might be true although I would suspect that a horse with a wound/scar where the chip would go, and which matched the description would at least lead to further investigations. It's all we can do, microchipping and freezemarking. The latter claims a 100% recovery rate to date, so that's something.