The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: mojocafa on March 12, 2014, 12:27:32 pm
-
As a goat owner, I am pretty switched on about what plants are poisonous to goats.
However, I am interested to find out are these plants poisonous to horses as well.
Does anyone know if there is a plant that is not poisonous to a horse but would be to a goat.
Thanks in advance
Mojo
-
You have to play it safe , poisonous is poisonous, some are slow to show , like milkweed , and have a cumulative effect, don't trust any poisonous plant not to have some effect .
-
Hmmm...you'd think there might be a chart on google listing all poisonous plants and a column with what / who they would be poisonous to.
Like you mojo, I'm quite up on my plants too after having a NR ewe die of plant poisoning so I'm a bit paranoid.
Goats are like wee horses I always think so it would be interesting to know. I look at everything in the field with a mean face these days (except the livestock of course). Everything green is guilty until proven innocent.
-
Ok this is why I'm asking, my neighbour has planted some sort of shrub on her side of our perimeter fence. at the moment my goats can't reach it however as it grows , they probably will be able to have a munch. Surely someone that owns all singing , all dancing :innocent: Arab horses with 75% red wine in their blood isn't going to plant shrubs next to her sand school if they were poisonous.
-
Can you ID the shrubs for us to narrow things down a bit
Or keep spreading lots of salt over your fence ....or diesel
-
Well, you would think they would be careful but people sometimes can be a bit daft. Can you ask her?
I do see someone up the road from me I think may be a smallholder and they have sheep in a field with a perimeter of laurel bushes planted intermittently around. She has a post and wire fence and although I don't think they can reach it, any leaves on the ground could easily blow in. It often crosses my mind to tell her but I don't want people thinking I'm a busy body.
Nowt queer as folk though, I'd ask if you're worried.
-
Unfortunately can't ask neighbour, they have had a communication breakdown with us and police have advised us to avoid any communication with them.
-
Only on my phone so can't see the picture that well. But to me it looks a bit like laurel . If it is it's toxic to goats and horses
-
Yup, resembles Portugesse laurel. Very fast growing. I believe you can legally trim anything crossing your fence line. Can you perhaps line the fence with chicken wire at this point? On the other hand, as has been mentioned, any shrub would find it hard to cope with a bucket of very salty water delivered to the roots in the dead of night .....
-
Laurel is deadly poison to goats , looks like it was deliberately planted to annoy, lots of salt water should do the trick and not as traceable as herbicides.
-
Oh dear, as I said, watch those leaves which fall off and are blown in. :-\
-
Thanks folks, I just don't get it, why would she put her horses at risk as well!
-
Cos she is a daft :cow: .
I have just seen a local farmer hedge a field with the wretched stuff - and he grazes sheep in the field. I have spent the last five years chopping down 15' hedges of laurel and still my sheep can pick out a leaf at 20 paces ::) . Luckily none have been poisoned :fc: .
-
Our sheep nibble the overhanging yew branches at the Roman fort (the trees are in the walled gardens next to where the sheep graze), but as far as I know none have ever died of it. I do suspect there may have been the odd upset tummy in imported sheep, who have then learned ;) (the homebreds presumeably being taught by mum how much is enough ;) )
I was bemused when I was, long ago, looking to buy a smallholding in Wales, to find that a lot of fields were hedged with laburnum :o. Highly toxic to livestock, surely!? But also very very good firewood ;). I assumed that the hedges were kept trimmed and maybe therefore didn't seed? But never followed it up as my path then took me north instead of into Wales.
It seems to me that a lot of plants are toxic in sufficient quantity, and do good in the right quantity and situation. But how many animals have to have a toxic reaction, or worse, before they learn, I don't know.
Maybe your horrid neighbour has laurel elsewhere on their property, so the Arabs are used to it? Otherwise yes their owners are either stupid or stupid.
Edited to make it clear that it is the neighbours who are stupid, not the Arab ponies. :)
-
She is far from stupid, if I'm questioning anything it's her mental health and integrity.
-
I'd give her the benefit all the same, it's likely she just doesn't know. Lots of people are brought up with animals and have had them all their lives, esp horses, and they don't even think of looking at a leaflet on pasture management, let alone googling it.