Stray horses appeared at front gate this morning!

[Fransurrey]

Annoying as it is, if you find loose horses, I would treat them how you would like your horses to be treated if they were lose.

No one can ever guarantee their horses wont get out. I have know fences smashed by tresspassers and gates lifted off hinges etc.

We should all assume it could be our horses and be kind.

Slightly different if horses are known escape artists with irresponsible owners, and there is a risk of them getting stuck in your field.

Agree. I had a well-meaning person try to drive a bowser into my field to help with the water, but of course the ponies ran out onto the lane. Another time a pony climbed the fence to get to a sweet chestnut branch and fell onto the fence, which eventually gave way under 300 Kg. I've also had local drunks cut the fence repeatedly, because they couldn't be bothered to walk the extra ten steps on the lane, preferring to cut through. Another field I had was breached because dog walkers wanted to walk in next door's hay crop, so cut my fence to get through (and of course ponies thought Christmas was early). Same field had the fence cut next to the stile, because the walkers couldn't be bothered to use the stile.You just don't know (I don't miss having a footpath, that's for sure...).

 

[pip6]

As I've said on several occasions, our property is surrounded by a devon bank (high soil / stone wall with vegetation on top plus another fence on the horse side. There is no way anyone can put a hole in this fence unless they bring along a JCB digger. There are 3 seperate gates the horses have to go through to get from field to lane, at least the outermost gates are padlocked, with the gates padlocked onto the hinges as well. The only reeason these horses got in, was because we brought them in as they were straying in the lane. There are no PROW on the land, & to be frank any trespassers would have to get past a very good guard dog first. We put a lot of time, effort (maintaining) & money into the fencing & gate system to ensure there will not be any escapes.

They come from a place that is known to have very bad fencing, with very long stretches running alongside the lane. It has been like that a long time, & this is not the first escapees from this place, yet still they do nothing. they have shown themselves to be highly irresponsible by taking a very badly mannered, big mare out to a public place last weekend & ended up injuring another horse as a result of not being able to control it. When we caught it it was rearing up & striking out, so I am not surprised at this news. I fail to see why we should risk injury to ourselves (shettie was trying to kick me as it ran past), our horses (which include a mare & foal) & our property because another owner who is getting paid to care for these animals refuses to fence adequately.

 

[Booboos]

Sometimes doing the right thing is it's own reward!!!

I've always stopped and helped out with loose horses, it's what you do if you are an animal lover, but I can see how you would get fed up if it happened all the time. I have returned my neighbour's ponies 5 times to him, all through my pregnancy which was not an easy time to be rounding up the ponies which were driving my lot mad. The last time was the middle of the night and the police were involved so I thought he had sorted out the problem fencing....not quite, it turns out my other neighbour has caught them 3 times since!

 

[pip6]

On my hack saturday, I went past a field the lady who runs this livery yard rents. In it was a large horse & that *****land. They had taken down part of the fence to make a gateway, & across the large space had a single piece of thin rope, about waist height so not much to keep a horse in & more than high enough for the other one to go under. Not even electrified. Absolutely unreal, especially given her very recent near miss with those horses nearly making it to the end of the lane & the A-road it goes onto!

I hear the foal that got kicked last weekend by their ill-disciplined mare has internal injuries, don't know if it survived. Hope it can be understood why we don't want these animals in our fields, especially as we have a mare with a 2month old foal at foot. See no reason why we should risk the safety of our horses & ourselves when their keeper can't make the effort to fence them adequately.