Seriously spooked horses!

Nancykitt

Nancykitt

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Before we went outside this morning there was a power outage. I was in the shower and heard a loud pop/bang, which I thought first came from somewhere in the house.

Looked out and noticed that the horses weren't in their usual place but on the fence, staring over towards the lane.

Ozzy was so frightened he wouldn't come for his feed. AJ was also unhappy.

Snoopy was not as bothered and took advantage of the fact that the other two were staying away...extra hay from the haybell!

I'm not sure, but apparently breakers on the poles/pylons can make a very loud noise when they open/close...could also be a surge/arcing, apparently.

Anyway, the outcome is that, four hours later, Ozzy is staying well away from that side of the field, constantly staring in the direction of the pole and refusing to eat. He's really very frightened. AJ is standing with him but doesn't look as anxious.

Anyone else had something similar?
 
Not pylons but new years day they were all in a similar high alert not eating mood and I assumed they'd been upset and not slept with the fireworks.
 
Kind of. No idea of this could be relevant at all! One morning last winter I was doing my horses in the dark when a massive bang went off. All horses terrified and I nearly had a heart attack myself.
I honestly expected to find something on the farm had blown up.
It turned out to be a wheelbarrow tyre. It had exploded and sent the barrow a good distance across a tractor shed into the side of my lorry.
I’m still a bit gobsmacked it made such a bang but the distance the barrow travelled showed how much force it must have gone with.
 
Awk Ozzy 😭

We had similar a few years ago when a neighbour had a huge bonfire immediately adjacent to the field boundary where the gate was without telling anyone and we came up to five traumatised mares. Couldn't get one of them out of the field for almost a week.

Hope Oz and AJ recover enough to come back to the haybell soon. Poor boys!
 
Tiddlypom said:
Are there any power lines down in or very close to the field?
Click to expand...

The power lines are on the lane, so there's another croft between us and the power lines. But it was a heck of a bang - I could hear it in the shower and I'm about 100m away from the pole with the breakers on it.
Ozzy has been upset all day, poor thing. We went out this afternoon and when we got back he and AJ looked as if they had hardly moved.
It was hard work getting Ozzy to go to his feeding station (which is in the direction of the pole, but not really close to it.) He would only eat if OH stayed in his line of sight.
When OH moved away, Ozzy got anxious again and stopped eating. :(
So this time last week he attacked me for being too close to him when he was eating and this week he's refusing to eat unless he gets reassurance from his human.

I used to think horses were pretty uncomplicated and straightforward. Then came Ozzy... 🙂
 
I had a similar experience about 3 years ago, I was at the yard and thankfully stood in the school with my TB whilst waiting for him to come out of sedation following a dental when at the yard entrance an electricity transformer blew. It was one at ground level and the noise was like an explosion also throwing up masses of debris and mud. All the other horses in the fields went absolutely crazy and ran to the bottom of the fields staring to where the explosion happened snorting etc. They stayed in the same pose for about an hour and none of them would venture back to the field gates even when their owners turned up. Took about 3 or 4 days before they risked grazing any where apart from the bottom of the fields.
 
vetsbestfriend said:
I had a similar experience about 3 years ago, I was at the yard and thankfully stood in the school with my TB whilst waiting for him to come out of sedation following a dental when at the yard entrance an electricity transformer blew. It was one at ground level and the noise was like an explosion also throwing up masses of debris and mud. All the other horses in the fields went absolutely crazy and ran to the bottom of the fields staring to where the explosion happened snorting etc. They stayed in the same pose for about an hour and none of them would venture back to the field gates even when their owners turned up. Took about 3 or 4 days before they risked grazing any where apart from the bottom of the fields.
Click to expand...
Horses are particularly wary of electricity, and seem more vulnerable to it - even to quite a small shock. And they can definitely smell it if a fuse or appliance blows, not happy!
Our vet advised keep horses well away from vicinity of any arc welding, get very stressed and freaky and he’s known them succumb to fits like epilepsy (altho I suppose that could be the flashing), farrier mentioned the same.
We’ve one field where a lightening bolt landed, like a terrific bomb which sizzled the grass in a huge plume of steam, where, several years later, none of the livestock or horses will spend any time near that spot. (Interestingly, also a three storey stone building and two tall beech trees within twenty feet - completely unaffected)
 
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