Probably controversial : Travellers/Gypsy

Some travellers keep their horses in better condition than some DIY liveries, there are good and bad in all walks of life. There is a true gypsy guy down the road from us who is fascinating to talk to and has a wealth of knowledge and his horses are in fantastic condition and a pleasure to be around. Just because some people do things differently doesn't make it wrong.
 
jampacked with gypsies/travellers and romanies (not exactly sure of the difference!) round here. I've never seen what I would describe as abject cruelty to the horses - e.g: starving animals etc. Scruffy yes, but not hard done by. One family who stay very closeby on the road verges sometimes seem very poor, they have the old style horse drawn wagons, but they are in very poor nick and shabby, it's sad to see. But I have to say, their horses seem better kept than they are! I'd happily buy one from the guy. Wish I could help the family really at least in a small way but I get the feeling that wouldn't go down well because of pride perhaps?

One yard I know the horses are treated like royalty - the place is thoroughly modern and spick and span and their tackroom with all the harnesses and bits and bobs made me drool!
 
I haven't seen the traditional travellers so can't comment but around us we have the modern day ones. The horses are generally poor condition without being starved, they are not tethered but loads of them on poor grazing.

We live next a bridleway and twice this winter they have dumped two poor carcasses on it, not nice. I agree with most on here that the traditional travellers keep their horses well but around here we have the worst kind and sadly their horses are not kept well but there seems to be very little anyone can do. Except ring the council when you find the bodies:(
 
I live down the road from travellers and our yard backs onto a field of them.

I can't say I could complain about them? the ones where I live are tethered up on decent grazing, fresh water and there always placed near natural shelter (trees) and even hay them in the winter. There moved about quite often but they all look in good nick I find the finer ones are rugged in winter too.

The ones that back onto my yard are also well cared for, there loose in a big field with good acreage, constant water and hayed all year. Only thing I will say is the field could do with a good poo pick/ harrow!

Iv seen a few that don't have a good standard of care and the time I saw a horse tethered on a busy round about made my stomach turn at the thought of it getting lose! Never had water either times I saw it..

But like all horse owners you get good and bad.
 
At one time we kept our horses at a private house on a gypsy site. I knew quite a few of the children from school from the original gypsy families in our town so we never had any problems with them. Their horses were in fab condition, they had beautiful stables etc.. Then another 'type' of gypsies moved in (I won't say as wi be controversial) & oh my goodness what a difference.. Skinny horses that miraculously died & 'went missing' kids throwing stones at our horses & their own dogs, rugs being taken off our ponies backs, even in town they would let their kids urinate in the street on the pavement infront of shops! They were shocking & even the original families didn't want them here & it turned into a nightmare!! I dont necessarily have an issue with tethering if done safely & the majority of their horses round here are well fed. i cant stand youngsters pulling carts at 100 miles an hour with 10 fat kids on the back - this disgusts me!! One side of my family are Romany gypsy, my nan was born in a traditional gypsy caravan so I have nothing against the way of life but I find that their old school horsemanship/horse domination ways are just passed down through the generations & because they think they know it all, they never learn anything new! They are trapped in their ways with feeding, training, breaking, shoeing.. Everything! They have little knowledge of anything like ulcers or horses having their tack checked because it wouldn't even enter into their minds.. And it's about if a mans world, It's a big thing to them to dominate & train a hyper youngster.. That's my all round view on it..
 
Ginger Bear said:
At one time we kept our horses at a private house on a gypsy site. I knew quite a few of the children from school from the original gypsy families in our town so we never had any problems with them. Their horses were in fab condition, they had beautiful stables etc.. Then another 'type' of gypsies moved in (I won't say as wi be controversial) & oh my goodness what a difference.. Skinny horses that miraculously died & 'went missing' kids throwing stones at our horses & their own dogs, rugs being taken off our ponies backs, even in town they would let their kids urinate in the street on the pavement infront of shops! They were shocking & even the original families didn't want them here & it turned into a nightmare!! I dont necessarily have an issue with tethering if done safely & the majority of their horses round here are well fed. i cant stand youngsters pulling carts at 100 miles an hour with 10 fat kids on the back - this disgusts me!! One side of my family are Romany gypsy, my nan was born in a traditional gypsy caravan so I have nothing against the way of life but I find that their old school horsemanship/horse domination ways are just passed down through the generations & because they think they know it all, they never learn anything new! They are trapped in their ways with feeding, training, breaking, shoeing.. Everything! They have little knowledge of anything like ulcers or horses having their tack checked because it wouldn't even enter into their minds.. And it's about if a mans world, It's a big thing to them to dominate & train a hyper youngster.. That's my all round view on it..
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this is the difference between romanies and travellers.

one of our local police officers is very proactive with moving travellers on and will spend time educating people to the difference between travellers and romanies, as his mum is romany and its how he was bought up, in fact his mum encouraged him into the police force
 
Theocat said:
TBH I've never seen one skinny (or obese!) and never one without water. They always seem tethered in an reasonable way - I've never seen headcollars digging in or anything like that
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You're lucky.

We had some tie up just down the road from us a couple of months ago, just as we had the last dumping of snow. I counted 14 horses, tethered on a grass verge next to a busy road. No water, no food (it took a week of deep snow for them to finally cave and supply hay), rarely moved, and some were tethered so close to the road that if facing the wrong way, their hindquarters were in the road. Cars regularly do 60mph down there, and there are no streetlights.

That's not to mention the load that pretty much ramsacked a pub I was working in part time last year. They were true "travellers" though, rather than Romanies.

As others have said, there's good and bad in all, though.
 
maisie06 said:
I've seen welsh yearlings shod for the show ring too......
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This is an important point imo. Why is it worse because of who is doing it?
Very immature horses are shod, worked hard in many disciplines where do we draw a line and can we even draw a line in our current culture? What age limit would/could we set?

I believe any rules/laws should be set according to horses needs not our cultural beliefs and drivers.
 
Am very pleased that I've never seen gypsy horses up here - we don't seem to have many travellers passing through and of the odd times we do there's never any horses. Cant say they've ever pleased me - they (illegally) took up most the park & ride car park when I used to park there for work, I hated leaving my car there as the kids would be hoofing footballs around. I also heard that a lot of them smashed through a gate and parked on my local golf clubs land last year - cost the poor owner thousands to put their damage right (after he FINALLY managed to get them to move).
 
In a nearby field, there were two traveller horses. One foaled, foal is now a yearling, seems fine. There are now about ten horses there on the worst scrubby grazing with a deep river for water, major bits of the ancient fence missing and a blue and white mare looking ready to drop her foal. Maybe we go OTT with the care we give our horses, cos this lot look fine. :confused:

I've had to stop to help herd the escapees back into the field as it's on my way to and from work and the police are regularly called to do the same. Round here, they should be issued with headcollars and lead ropes as well as cuffs and batons, the amount of times they have to herd escaped traveller horses back in to fields!
 
we have some thats taken refuge next to a nice restaurant.... i refuse to go now and park my car thre.... as i know what they are like...

the true romany ones with horse parked up a few months back, grazed their horses for a few days and tidied up after themselves before they went (ok they grazed their horses in an old pub grounds but left it exactly as they found it..... those i have no issue with.


ive nothing positive to say about travellers.........at all.
 
Agree totally noodle I would feel exactly the same, around here they took the metal gates of a field with 2 horses in it, they escaped but luckily were found unharmed.
 
My experience of travellers has been very poor, that said I have never come across traditional gypsy's so maybe they care for their animals differently.

The traveller horses around here are in general in very poor condition. Often extremely skinny, one mare was so skinny it looked like her hip bones would go through her skin. Over 20 left to starve to death on wasteland waiting to be developed (10+ found dead) and beaten within inches of their lives.

I volunteer with small animal rescue, kittens being fed to traveller fighting dogs by their children, cats used for baiting etc. Dogs uncared for and beaten. These aren't the exception's here and I understand within every community there is the good and the bad but in my experience I have yet to see any good when it comes to animals within the traveller community. Police/RSPCA etc are reluctant to deal with travellers and so help for these animals is very limited.

It has got to the point where I am considering moving away to another area less inhabited by travellers.
 
Travellers are becoming a real problem in Sussex. Since they moved in about a mile away there has been a lot of trouble. One youth in particular insists on racing a very young underfed and troubled pony up and down the road leading to the A29 with his dog loose by the side. He uses the middle of the road and deliberately holds up the traffic for miles with the poor pony struggling to keep going. It makes my blood boil. I have stopped and told him he is being cruel to the poor thing but all I got was abuse. They are really taking over some areas and I dread to think of how bad it will get. These are not gypsys but low life travellers. My grandfather was a Romany gypsy and he would turn in his grave if he saw the likes calling themselves gypsys today. The only reason they hang on to that tag is so that they can work the system and cry racism when they get challenged. Nasty lot.
 
amandap said:
This is an important point imo. Why is it worse because of who is doing it?
Very immature horses are shod, worked hard in many disciplines where do we draw a line and can we even draw a line in our current culture? What age limit would/could we set?

I believe any rules/laws should be set according to horses needs not our cultural beliefs and drivers.
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I agree totally, at the end of the day would we have this conversation about a racing TB running it's first race as a 2 year old, having been broken, shod and got racing fit before this age? probably not ....
 
Having seen a 3 month old foal brought in to the farm where daughter's loan pony is-literally being strangled,dragged & kicked,then take weeks before someone could enter the stable without the poor thing throwing himself against the wall & having diarrhoea to boot-my opinion of travellers is unprintable.
Old Romany folk a different matter but travellers despicable breed.
 
Some brilliant by us, give the guy his due really knows what he is doing but he does still have 8 of my headcollars after we rescued his horses off the main road... Grrr
 
FrostyFeet said:
Having seen a 3 month old foal brought in to the farm where daughter's loan pony is-literally being strangled,dragged & kicked,then take weeks before someone could enter the stable without the poor thing throwing himself against the wall & having diarrhoea to boot-my opinion of travellers is unprintable.
Old Romany folk a different matter but travellers despicable breed.
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Having had to endure a local train journey where I was surrounded by hooligans who were chanting sectarian songs, shouting and swearing, my opinion of football fans is unprintable. They are a despicable breed.

Having seen footage of police brutality at the G-20 London summit protests, including where a bystander died after being pushed to the ground, my opinion of the police is unprintable. They are a despicable breed.

Having seen drunken youths smash bottles in the city centre on Saturday night, my opinion of young people is unprintable. They are a despicable breed.

Having heard of some truly awful cruelty to animals in China, my opinion of the Chinese is unprintable. They are a despicable breed.

You see the pattern? Is it justified?
 
Gypsies and travellers are very different species. Proper gypsies keep their money in horses and as a result look after them they are not sentimental about them but they do keep them well. Some can be a bit rough and ready and as someone else said dont progress with the times as they keep themselves to themselves
Tinkers and travellers are often just copies enjoying the lifestyle without the same traditional restraint they seem to have taken on the commodity value of the horses without the care and ancient knowledge they require. Shame really and yes there are good and bad in everything and bad are very bad the good are never exposed to the media so dont have the defense in place. After all"good new is no news and no news is good news" so the good is never brought to the public eye. The few who behave badly tar everyone with the same brush.
The bit I dont get is the way they behave the girls dress and behave like tarts but they have a very strict moral code the homes are squeaky clean and well cared for and think non travellers are dirty foul creatures so the prejudice works both ways
Yes they have a reputation for being light fingered but that is a tradition too most work extremely hard and earn a lot of money. The are usually an altruistic society and share everything they have amongst themselves each giving the other a hand up. They are a very private community
 
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