Purple puddles of pee.... Perhaps?

Beausmate

Beausmate

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This was seen in my field today. Definitely urine, but a weird purple/blue/pinkish colour. I'm thinking it has reacted with something in the ground, or maybe one of the girls has been at the Ribena 🤣
 

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It's the first time we've seen it such a vibrant colour. It is under trees, but any leaves have long since been hoovered up. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the birds that roost in said trees 'unloading'.
 
Beausmate said:
It's the first time we've seen it such a vibrant colour. It is under trees, but any leaves have long since been hoovered up. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the birds that roost in said trees 'unloading'.
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doubt it's the birds.. We used to get this on a concrete yard and also on the gravel yard years ago. Never did find an answer. Tested the water and nothing. Lab couldn't find any link to the water. They were all getting a supplement but not that much. Absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Then it just stopped. Same water, same supplement, same climate, same horses. That was several years ago and it has never come back since.
Vet had no answer, water testing lab basically put it down to atmospheric or something like that. Horses were all very healthy. Didn't feed pink mash.
 
It's gone a more normal brown now. I have been thinking that there was something in the rain, as all of mine have had rainscald. Never known my hairy, unclipped Connie x have it before, and that includes last winter.
 
You may laugh but, years ago I had an operation on my waterworks, I had a urinary catheter in for a few weeks afterwards. Despite going out with a nursing sister at the time who was constantly telling me to DRINK plenty of water, I didn't. The result was purple output! It was down the pipes and the same colour as in your photo, no idea why then and none now.
 
Beausmate said:
Nearest place for blueberries would probably be Tesco. Bit far for the birds, and they'd need a smartphone to collect anyway
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To be fair we have two blueberry bushes in the garden and I know several other places around here that also have them, I can't think they are unique to Ireland? They have been grown here for many years so not a new thing. Commercially they are often under glass but still very popular in private gardens and smaller commercial set ups in the open.

Edited to say pine martens, hedgehogs and other small mammals would also be eating random berries and pooing and peeing all over the place. Our tame pine martens are fed blueberries nearly every night and they can leave very colourful deposits all over the show too.
 
Beausmate said:
And did what? :oops: It's definitely horse wee, so there's a fair bit of it on the ground. Nearest place for blueberries would probably be Tesco. Bit far for the birds, and they'd need a smartphone to collect anyway.
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def horse wee for us but why did we have several at the same time? our conclusion was reacting with something on the ground but it was on several surfaces mud, concrete, gravel and there was lots of it. Some mornings the yard was like "purple rain"

I would love someone to come up with a scientific explanation.
 
First thing that jumped to mind was cobalt.
From 2 perspectives its the name given to the classical oil paint ‘cobalt blue’ and also agriculturally is known to be colours from magenta hues to blue.
Soils in the uk and ireland can be prone to have high manganese and iron, which also makes cobalt high too.

What’s interesting is that the horse urine has evidently had a chemical reaction with the soil, and showing the blue/purple colour that might be cobalt in your soil. How that chemistry combination is working is out of my league, but i just found out that cobalt increases oxidation of uric acid. Cobalt is used to test for uric acid in liquids…so it seems like its a chemical pairing where one shows up the other maybe?
 
paddy555 said:
def horse wee for us but why did we have several at the same time? our conclusion was reacting with something on the ground but it was on several surfaces mud, concrete, gravel and there was lots of it. Some mornings the yard was like "purple rain"

I would love someone to come up with a scientific explanation.
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Only seen the one patch so far, but as they're out, it could be happening more often and we wouldn't know. All indoor wee is normal, so it must be something reacting with it in the field. I'm still pondering on the weird, metallic-tasting, eye-stinging rain we had a few weeks ago and the subsequent rainscald. Would be interesting to test the soil.

I used to have pet rats that were allowed some free-roaming. If they pee'd on the sheepskin rug, the leather side turned purple from it.
 
paddy555 said:
this link doesn't answer the question but it does apply to several horses at the same time.

we are very low in cobalt and it was on concrete as well.


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Thats an interesting link, thanks for posting. As the vet said the highest potential cause for coloured urine excretion in that example would be the ‘insect growth regulator’ - whatever that ingredient is!?!
There’s a few insecticides that are blue, even some chemical fertilisers that are blue. I guess with newly sprayed/treated land, and grazing soon after could theoretically cause the grazers to have an acute dose and excrete coloured urine.
 
I can be 100% certain that there has been no spraying of anything in my field for many years. If something got in there, it must have been carried in on the wind from a couple of miles away at least. I wish I knew which of the three left the puddle. The ginger twit is on mineral supplement that contains copper.
 
mine hadn't been sprayed (for many years before) no fertiliser or anything else only lime


If it happened now I would be tempted to get a urine sample and get it analysed.
 
Beausmate said:
Only seen the one patch so far, but as they're out, it could be happening more often and we wouldn't know. All indoor wee is normal, so it must be something reacting with it in the field. I'm still pondering on the weird, metallic-tasting, eye-stinging rain we had a few weeks ago and the subsequent rainscald. Would be interesting to test the soil.

I used to have pet rats that were allowed some free-roaming. If they pee'd on the sheepskin rug, the leather side turned purple from it.
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My weather-forecasting now air quality consultant husband says he doesn't know of any weather reasons for acid rain recently but you may have had a local pollution event eg a factory that normally burns cleanly briefly burning poorly so pollutants were released
 
We see the same in our field fairly regularly (when the ground is wet - which in Wales is A LOT). I suspected pollution at first but couldn't find anything, horses (2) both healthy and no symptoms and then realised that it was only where they were weeing. So balance of probability (and as much sniffing as I was willing to do) that it was horse pee.... the cobalt theory makes the most sense to me - and from the map we're in a medium to high area! Interesting!
 
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