What is this in my hay

[JackHorseRocks]

We’ve been having issues with some of the horses on my yard having liver damage.
Haylage was suspected the problem.. but there are several others on haylage with no issues. If not, maybe the grass.

Have just found this plant and several black bits in the hay, any ideas? TIA



Below are the black bits, some large bits others smaller.

 

[Barton Bounty]

Could it be docs?

 

[PurBee]

Looks like the top pics are dried dock plant seed heads. The bottom black curly things look like sweet pea pods dried-up - they tend to dry curly like that.

 

[ponynutz]

We have that all the time and has never caused any problems for us - ours tend to eat around it or we take it out when we spot it.

 

[JackHorseRocks]

Looks like the top pics are dried dock plant seed heads. The bottom black curly things look like sweet pea pods dried-up - they tend to dry curly like that.

My app says curly doc, which is toxic to horses? ?

 

[Barton Bounty]

mine too

 

[Birker2020]

My last hay was full of this and long stalks of some thick fibrous material, probably from this weed. Doesn't affect the horse just inconvenient to keep pulling out of hay nets and gets left in a pile in the paddock when the hay is eaten and this is left behind.

 

[JackHorseRocks]

Ok ty. Doesn’t sound like a problem. I guess seems grass is most likely the issue for the liver problems.

 

[PurBee]

Have you found any small round seeds from the curled pea pods?

Pods of seeds when really dry do curl-up, so can be hard to identify, finding the seeds can help confirm i.d.
Also you’ll find some light green stalky lengths with small leaves sticking out every 6 inches or so with sweet pea plants. It takes a good eye rummaging through hay to find sweet pea stalks as the stalks are as stalky as grass seed stalks, just a tiny bit thicker.

Sweetpea is toxic to horses if they have enough of it, the toxin build-up in the system and can cause organ damage.
Dont panic yet, as like i said, many pods of seeds curl when very dry, so identification is tricky.

The other plant that looks like sweetpea legume pods when dried in hay is birdsfoot trefoil. Thats not toxic to horses like sweetpea legume. Its stalky like sweet pea but you should find some flowers aswell as pods— unless the hay was cut late and the flowers became all pods.

Both sweetpea and birdsfoot trefoil are legumes and likely to grow in british isles fields. A common field plant of mixed meadows.

Horses dont usually eat the seed heads of docks - have yours been eating them? Are there lots of them in your hay?

 

[PurBee]

My last hay was full of this and long stalks of some thick fibrous material, probably from this weed. Doesn't affect the horse just inconvenient to keep pulling out of hay nets and gets left in a pile in the paddock when the hay is eaten and this is left behind.

Docks are high in oxalic acid and can cause a severe calcium deficiency if horses eat plenty of docks and the seed heads. We need to know how much the horses are eating as volume matters. A little bit here and there wont harm but having it every day in haynets or fresh from fields would cause an accumulate issue:

http://www.horsedvm.com/poisonous/curly-dock/

http://www.horsedvm.com/featured-infographic/oxalate-poisoning-horses/

 

[Aleka81]

Have a Google of liver fluke. Horses can get this from sheep. I had a horse affected by it. Treatment is fairly straightforward

 

[Burnttoast]

A dock and a member of the pea family. Not possible to ID to species from the pics, but sweet pea is not likely - I've never seen it in a meadow/paddock situation and its pods are broad and flat. Round black pods in pairs are probably common vetch. At a push it might be meadow vetchling. The dock is probably broad-leaved dock. Curly is not all that common and generally a bit smaller. I would pull the dock out carefully to avoid scattering the seeds and dispose of it only because I don't want any more than I already have in my fields. Otherwise none of that would worry me overly

 

[Nasicus]

Could the black seed pods be a species of Vetch?