Nettles

siennamum

siennamum

Well-Known Member
Joined
18 February 2004
Messages
5,576
Location
Bristol
Visit site
Anyone else's horse on a nettle eating orgy. Sienna and Shadow are stripping the large patches of nettles in the field down to the roots, they are eating absolutely tons of them. Unfortunately the nettles are mixed in with burr plants resulting in hairy, fat happy ponies absolutely matted with burrs.
 
<font color="peru">No nettles, but do have fields full of burrs-on-legs
grin.gif
God knows what we'd do if one of them was a traditional!

Good luck when you get to de-burring...before and after pics are needed I think!

TNN
</font>
 
Nettles are a fantastic anti-toxin for horses. I used to cut and dry them for my pony when she had laminitis.
 
Yes great for the blood! When I worked with some pointers, nettles where boiled regularly and the cooled 'juice' used to moisten horses' feeds! I expect yours are stripping them now as due to the recent frost they have lost their sting!
 
Nettles are very nutritious but need to be dead or wilted to release the good stuff so that's why they are woofing them down at the moment, they must be dying off.
 
Well the flipping nettles in flipping S Wales haven't lost their flipping stings yet! (1) Groping for water container in long grass (2) groping for gate latch close to hedge (3) rinsing feed bucket out in rainwater trough surrounded by nettles. Nettles 3, me 0.
mad.gif
mad.gif
mad.gif
 
Phew - glad to hear they are okay for laminitics. My pony is kept in a bare 'playpen' and is clearing away all the nettles in the hedgerow - I was beginning to think she was turning into a goat! we certainly don't need to top the fields with Maisie around!
 
If I find a large patch ofnetttles I always pull them up by the root and leave them to wilt so the neds can eat them up. I too heard that the 'old boys' and gypsies used to boil up nettles as a tonic for horses.
 
B went through a stage a couple of months ago of hoovering up all the nettles - I couldn't understand why she left some of them behind but it must have been because they were still green and healthy!
Don't the nettles sting their mouths?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top