Ragwort Poisoning - anyone had a horse with this

[caths]

Wondered if anyone could give us some advice. My mare doesn't do well in winter and this year we were offered another paddock for her for the winter which would give her plenty of extra grazing and which had had a pony on it for three years previosly with no problems

The owner didn't really do much about the huge amounts of ragwort growing in the paddock and his pony just grazed around the plants but prior to us taking it over he did spray it and after that we spent three weeks digging it all out. We left it for another 6 weeks after that and could find no more ragwort in the field and were advised it would be safe to graze our mare on over the winter.

She has done really well but for the last week or so has been a bit quiet and tending to follow me around a lot more. She is also very stiff despite her supplements and once she's finisher her hay nets she will go and stand at the top of the field making no attempt to graze which is quite unusual for her as she is such a lawnmower...lol Dentist could find nothing wrong. She is eating well otherwise and is happy to go out but is there anything specific we should look out for and is there ablood test that could put our minds at rest

 

[Crazy_Caz]

Having lost a horse to ragwort poisening - if you are in any doubt whatsoever please please call your vet who will carry out a simple blood test.....

If and only If it is caught in time - the horse can survive but once they start showing symptoms - the outlook is very bleak..

Although I own my own place - we rented a local field and it was in this field that our horse must have eated the damn stuff.... despite us pulling it every year - the field owner would not allow us to spray it.... His method was to top the field!!!! needless to say after losing our horse, we gave up the field and have now purchased our own land which is 99% ragwort free.....

Hope its all ok...

 

[Box_Of_Frogs]

Hi catherinanne. Sadly, I have a rescue mare who had been subjected to appalling negligence by her previous owners and who had been left in a so-called field where the only green stuff was ragwort and St Johns wort. She came to me close to death BUT we have pulled her back from the brink. You need to be super-vigilant about ragwort as some horses can develop a taste for the bitterness of it. It's effect is cumulative so some poor people buy an apparently sound horse and months or years later it succumbs to something that turns out to be ragwort poisoning contracted years ago but some other stress factor has tipped a close-to-the-edge horse over the brink. Professor Knottenbelt of Liverpool University is a world expert on ragwort poisoning in horses and he advises that sypmtoms only begin to show when the horse has about 70% of its liver irretrievably destroyed and at 76% ALL horses will die. So you can see that the line I walk with my fat, happy rescued girl is very, very thin indeed. And I can't trust her an inch with even a sniff of a ragwort plant because she may be one of those horses that now finds the taste addictive and one mouthful could kill her. The first symptom of ragwort poisoning is usually extreme photo-sensitivity, ie the horse's face/skin will burn horrifically in ordinary sunshine. But you may not see this so readily in the winter months. Other sypmtoms include loss of appetite, depression, lack of alertness to surroundings, pressing the head against walls, standing in dark corners for hours and self harm and harm to owners. Don't be too quick to panic though coz some of these symptoms can also be related to other simple things. If she was my mare, I'd immediately get a blood test done. Your vet will send it off to Newmarket where they test for bile salts and all sorts of other things that indicate the liver is struggling to function. The results should be back in about 3 or 4 days. In the meantime, be VERY suspicious of your pasture. If you want to PM me I'd be pleased to talk this over with you but I don't think I'd necessarily be panicking until the blood tests come back but PLEASE PLEASE get them done. Got everything crossed for you and girlie and so pleased she has such an alert and aware owner xxx