How worried should I be?

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wiglet

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I have an oak tree in my field and this morning I caught my horse eating the leaves off the branches. I know they're poisonous in large qtys but they're supposed to taste bitter so horses generally leave them alone... my horse has obviously not read the memo. There are acorns too but I rake these up at weekends and she's never really bothered with the acorns.

There is plenty of grass in the field and I do put hay out for her (which is often left untouched).
I could fence the oak tree off but, it provides the only shelter in the field so I am reluctant to do this.

Would you fence off?
Should I be worried?
 
Get a branch lopper and lop off the dangling lower branches that the horses can reach. I stand on a mounting block to do this 🙂.

If necessary get a tree surgeon in. We get our oak tree checked and fettled every 5 years or so, there’s often something that needs doing. He estimated ours to be about 250 years old, we are the tree’s temporary custodians and want it to last as long as possible.

ETA I do normally fence off during the acorn season, though. I wouldn’t rely on being able to rake enough acorns up. Bizarrely it’s had very few acorns this year, last year was a mast year and there were masses.
 
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I have built my fencing so I can keep ponies away from the oaks this time of year. If your horse has a taste for them they will gorge on them.

My old cob had a taste for them and would do anything to get them. I've lost a sheep to acorn poisoning - it's really not nice.

I'd fence away until the acorns are rotted down enough not to be unedible.
 
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I don't find them a problem as they tend to just have a snack and move on. One of mine got a real taste for acorns though and would literally stand waiting for them to drop! After that I made sure they were fenced off and any lower branches removed.
 
My yard's fields are lined with oak. If it's a mast year we try to fence them off as we had 1 horse in Liphook last year from gorging and another 3 in our area were very ill. Most of the horses just have an occasional munch.

We also have oak processionary moth, which also makes fencing off the trees a good idea. The horses come up in hives after rolling in the leaves and I worry about the filaments getting near eyes.
 
Tiddlypom said:
ETA I do normally fence off during the acorn season, though. I wouldn’t rely on being able to rake enough acorns up. Bizarrely it’s had very few acorns this year, last year was a mast year and there were masses.
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Yeah, I usually fence off as well but, we too have had very few acorns this year hence I've just raked up... although she's never been interested in the acorns tbh.

Will see how she goes, I'm hoping the leaves were just a one off snack but if necessary, I will lop a few branches off!

Thanks for everyone's input :)
 
Skib said:
There are lots of oaks in Richmond Park and I assume the deer eat the lower branches. Parkland like ours is sculpted by the deer kept in it.
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It amazes me what deer eat that kills most livestock species! Here the deer even eat laurel (winter mostly) and thrive. Holly, ivy etc they gorge on if they can. They eat every indigenous species growing here, but the 1 plant they dont ever ever nibble on is rhododendron, which suggests to me it’s toxic as hell.

They are useful for keeping every tree trimmed to a 5foot height, but they’re seldom tall enough to reach branches horses can reach.

We have 1 large oak in a grazing field and we had to lop off the lower branches as the young gelding took a keen taste for it.
 
The branches of our oak tree are beautifully pruned to largest horse full stretch height. I don't think a professional topiarist could do a better job so I suspect it's trimmed regularly and hasn't yet caused an issue. The grass underneath is longer than the rest of the field and has a few poos from them sleeping under it so I don't think they're interested in the acorns.
 
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