ragwort I have had it with the myths

EstherHegt said:
Don't think people got the message about pasture management and their responsibililty for a safe pasture. See BHS website http://www.bhs.org.uk/Horse_Care/BHS_Welfare/Reporting_a_concern.aspx
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And your point is ? :rolleyes:
Your link goes to a page that has always been there. It's called information :rolleyes:.
Not EVERYONE is born a "know it all ".
Don't you have anything better to do than continually b*tch about how we do things in our own country ?
I notice that you don't join in on any other part of the forum, you know, to talk about horses.
For your information, organisations like the BHS are there for the benefit of horse owners. At certain times of the year, EVERY year, they run AWARENESS campaigns. This is for the benefit of people who are new to horses, first time owners for example. Not everyone knows what strangles is. Not everyone knows that you shouldn't breed from any old mare, JUST because it has a womb. Not everyone knows about the dangers of riding on the roads. Not everyone knows about poisonous plants. These INFORMATION pages exist to help NEW horse owners to LEARN about these things. There is NOTHING hysterical about this, it is called EDUCATION. :rolleyes:

And YES, lots of people are pulling ragwort as part of REGULAR PASTURE MANAGEMENT !
 
pootleperkin said:
I think some things *might* be lost in translation as the above doesn't make any sense to me, either at present, or in the context of the enormous, previous ramblings......
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Unless she's trying to say that no animal is ever abused or neglected in her country? :confused: Funny that they have their own animal charities to report such cases to then.

http://www.dierenbescherming.nl/contact-meld-dierenmishandeling

In fact, here on their horse site they state that there are, in fact, thousands of reported welfare cases in equines annually.

http://paarden.dierenbescherming.nl/misverstanden


And while we're posting spurious links, here is one I deem suitable

Really important ragworty type information

;) :D
 
rhino said:
And while we're posting spurious links, here is one I deem suitable

Really important ragworty type information

;) :D
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:D

TFF toddles off to put that onto the boss's PC as his screen saver :D

I thank you Rhino :D your input into this thread, with THAT link is much more informative that the young lady from overseas who tries to put other places in order before her own ..................
 
Brilliant Rhino. so very helpful. Perhaps you could do introductions for Msss Ragwort and Msss Greenwich.
They have so much in common, they could post each other random links endlessly.
 
rhino said:
Unless she's trying to say that no animal is ever abused or neglected in her country? :confused: Funny that they have their own animal charities to report such cases to then.
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Ha Ruth ;-)
What we did was find experts in the fields of biology, biochemistry and veterinary to learn more about the subject and form a well-founded opinion. Not brainwashing, and we are polite ;-)
We never say we have no ragwort, or abuse, I also never sayed that at Horse and Hound, what I tried toe do was stop the myths and find realistic options, pulling can make it worse, the nice thing is google find this.
 
To be honest Esther, you do see that kind of pasture over here, if by your last comment you think we do not. I live in the north and only have to drive for 20 mins to find lots of fields that look like that in the north east of England, with lots of horses in them.

I would guess the majority of people who use this site know about ragwort, and these are the people that get upset about words like 'hysteria', because we know about it and can manage it appropriately. However, there are something like a million horses in the UK and some of them (quite a few) live in fields like that one in the picture - horses are owned by all sorts of people here, from the very educated, very rich, to people who keep a pony on an allotment or small garden and those who think that ponies can live on daisies and rainbows (!) - I think that is where the UK differs from your country, in terms of the sheer spectrum of owners and places they are kept - though I may be incorrect?

I have direct experience of one such owner - an 'aquaintance' had hers in a field like that in the picture - no grass, lots of ragwort, a situation where the horse will eat the plant - and did. In the end, despite a couple of people telling her the risk her horse was in, she couldn't be bothered to get rid of the ragwort and there is no question that her horse died due to liver failure from ragwort poisoning. She 'loved' the horse, but was just a bit, can I say, of an idiot, as she didn't think it would happen to her horse. It wouldn't matter how you told her to 'manage' her pasture - she was too lazy to do so.

The reason the BHS and other charities do make a bit of a fuss each year is to reach people like that. Some folk can't even be bothered to go and see their horse every day (I know this one didn't always), let alone even contemplate pasture management like you suggest. For these people, getting them to pull up ragwort is a breakthrough and probably the best line of defence, rather than thinking about more sophisticated measures as you suggest. In some areas, ragwort in pasture is the norm, so you really do have to shout about it to get people to remove it - they don't realise the risk.

As we said, you are preaching mostly to the converted here on HHO - whether we pull the ragwort by the roots with a specialist fork, manage the grass sward or whatever, we DO manage it effectively. It is the 'other' types of owners that need to be reached, but most likely, they don't want to be reached, nor would they or could afford to put into practice measures other than pulling.

Does this help you understand?
 
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@ cptrayes, You are right, it is a waste of time. I only wrote about myths, example ragwort isn't a good winddispenser, there aren't 6500 dead horses in a year, horses don't eat fresh ragwort, and skin absorption is a myth. The silly thing is people are angry or afraid that they let fooled themselfe and don t think in solutions. Also maybe a lack of reading because people do think I am owner of different websites. ( good websites about ragwort with solutions) So let it be. But after this discussion I got a lot of mails and could help people with their ragwort problem, and that was not a waste of time!!!
 
What have we done wrong in a previous life for this thread to be brought back to life repeating the same old stuff again?

It must have been bad whatever it was :D
 
cptrayes said:
What have we done wrong in a previous life for this thread to be brought back to life repeating the same old stuff again?

It must have been bad whatever it was :D
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How the hell she managed to find the thread again is quite amazing considering the thousands of interesting threads that have been posted since this hysterical (and I don't mean the funny type of hysterical) waffle was originally posted.

WE do actually know how to deal with ragwort and without myths there would be no churches!
 
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