Why don't people freezemark???

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Theresa_F

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I seem to notice that with all the horses being stolen missing, when giving descriptions none seem to be freezemarked, a few are chipped. Whilst I can understand for youngsters, though they can be chipped as foals, I don't understand it for older horses.

Why don't people do it? It is not that much money compared to the financial and emotional loss and is the only way of easily identifying your horse. A friend of mine who deals in gypsy cobs and knows a lot of those who go to the markets/sales told me is is about the only thing that makes horse thieves think twice.

All of mine have been both chipped and marked and I have registered with Freezemark for assistance. I have successfully shown my horses and have never been marked down for it.

Personally I feel that until everything is chipped and marked and tied to the passport, passports are made more difficult to obtain, ie more proof of ownership the whole passport system is a joke and cannot be relied to prevent theft.

What do others feel?
 
I would rather brand than freezemark as I think it's more effective and less painful on the animal. My mare is not freezemarked but is identifiable by all her scars
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plus she diesn't load so I think stealing her would be a challenge!

I think in the age of micro chipping and passports people think if their horse is stolen it will surely not be able to be passed on as it won't have a passport or that a scan of the microchip will raise the alarm that it's a stolen horse. I don't believe it works though
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I can't even begin to imagine the heart break of having a horse stolen.
 
I had mine freezemarked just after I bought him. I prefer a freezemark as its easily visable. Hopefully scanning for microchips will become more the norm, but it often isn't done as routine.
I don't care if it is ugly (although actually I don't think it is particularly), if it's a way of increasing my chances of getting my horse back.
 
I definitely prefer freezemarking as its a visible deterent.

However, I did one horse I bought 8 yrs ago but have been too lazy to do my other one. I need a kick up the butt !
 
Ive have Jed for 7 years and only had him done 3 weeks ago.
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It never crossed my to have him done as i never thought it could happen to me (being stolen i mean) but then i thought well yes it could very easily.
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I will now freeze mark everytime.
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When all those horse thefts were in the news I decided to be on the safe side and had my gypsy cob chipped and micromarked. The micro mark is just big enough to be noticable but not unsightly.
 
Surely it is better to be "ugly" and easily identified? I have mine done under the saddle, I do agree not as good as on the neck, but for me it is a compromise for the show ring as it is discrete.

There are so many chips out there which require different scanners which means that chips so far are not reliable enough to guarantee your horse being found.

Again, personally I feel there should be one chip that can be shown up by one scanner, avoiding the present situation of chips not showing up as they are not compatible with the scanner used.
 
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I would rather brand than freezemark as I think it's more effective and less painful on the animal. My mare is not freezemarked but is identifiable by all her scars
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This is the misconception, because owners believe that THEY could identify their horse if stolen and later recovered, there is no need to make the horse easily identifiable. Those marks and scars will not help if your horse is at an auction at the other end of the country with a new passport, or being sold for meat or even in a subsequent court case.

A while ago now I dealt with a stolen horse that had been found some years after it had 'disappeared' while on loan. It was still recognisable form the original Stolen poster, the original owner recognised the horse, an internationally acclaimed equine vet examined the horse and compared it to known veterinary history and old photographs and declared it to be the same animal.

Would the CPS prosecute? No.

Their view was that without something to positively identify that equine, ie, DNA samples, freezemark or microchip, it could never be said absolutely that this was the same horse.

So mark your horses please. Every horse should be microchipped and ideally freezemarked too, for their own protection
 
My skewbald yearling is microchipped and has been freezemarked this morning. I can't understand it when people say they won't get them marked because they like to do a bit of showing. How can a freezemark be considered when showing, surely its the actual conformation, movement etc being judged. All my horses are marked, with only her being microchipped. As for the marking process, she was s good as gold, so can't be painful at all.
 
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I would rather brand than freezemark as I think it's more effective and less painful on the animal. My mare is not freezemarked but is identifiable by all her scars
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plus she diesn't load so I think stealing her would be a challenge!

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I dont think a brand is less painful then a freeze mark, 5 of my lot stood like lambs to be freezemarked on thier saddle patch, so it certainly didnt hurt at all, if you watch cattle being branded it certainly isnt painless and i know that burning my finger hurts like hell.

Also dont be fooled that a difficult loader will stop thieves, all they need to do is put a chain round her neck and use an electric winch to haul her in. they dont care if she breaks her neck. And i do know of a few bad loaders who have been stolen.

lastly as for identifying her using scars, as has already been said it will not stand up in court and joe bloggs your average non horsey person who happens to see a horse in a field, is going to be able to recognise a number on a back far easier then having to go up to a horse and think right the poster said its got a white zig zaggy scar on her off foreleg (if he even knows what the off fore leg is).

Ive got all my show ponies freezemarked, wouldnt bother with chipping as again joe bloggs has got a pair of eyes and one would hope he would take them everywhere with him, he is unlikely to have a microchip scanner and if he does he certainly isnt going to carry it round with him.
 
We invited alot of people up to our yard, i had my 5 done and anouther 5 turned up, as we had a large group it was around £40 per horse i think. I thik it is around £50 if they come out to do a single horse
 
I have a horse on loan and I am waiting his owner to get back to me whether she wants him freezemarked - I'd always freeze mark. Reasonably priced and very visible.

We had some sus people around our horses a few days ago - all been reported to the police!
 
i know of a pony..now deceased...that was freezemarked back in the late 80's..nice 10 yr old pony, jump anything..anyhow, it went missing.....

never found......until 15 yrs later.

it was noticed by a slaughterman at an abbatoir..he recognised the pony..not by any paperwork that accompanied said pony, he just recognised it....the freezemark had been tampered with..2 of the numbers had gone from a 3 to an 8, and a 4 to an A.......

None of the original paperwork from the freezemarking company was with the pony..the "owners" had bought said pony 8 yrs beforehand....from people who had bought pony 4 yrs before that!!!!

pony was still PTS as it was suffering from chronic lami/cushings.....

this is pre passports..not sure IF that would have helped TBH...

i'm pretty sure the agency were notified before pony was PTS...
 
I have a white horse with pink skin..a freezemark wouldn't be visible... Thought of getting the Postcode irons that the farrier would burn into her feet, but with full feathers that's not so noticeable and they only last 12 weeks with hoof growth... Micro chips, you have to check their registered range, little point in having them if theres only a 50mile radius range to them...plus, its not unknown for a chip to be rejected as happened with my friends gelding. It became infected and popped out, luckily she saw it otherwise she'd never have known...... Any other suggestions???
 
Catdragon, one of mine was a grey, he had it done on his shoulder and dispite the pinbk skin under it it is still visable, in summer we have to put sundream on it and in winter we clip the patch to make sure it is visable.
 
Thank you Connie Girl. Hmmm, will think on that...Problem is I don't clip as high as her shoulders (blanket clip only-shes scared of clippers so the quickest clip whilst the sedolin lasts!)and she's a hairy girlie.... I take other precasutions, fields are padlocked, stable yard has 3 locked gates to negotiate.. Have LOTS of photos including 5 star vets report idetifying all her whorls.. Thinking I might get vet to take a blood sample to keep details of for DNA purposes..then I would have proof my girlie is indeed mine if the dreaded happenend
 
It's about £55 for just one horse but if your a member of NFU insurance or BHS then you get £5 off and theres discound for less horses
Had comet and Amber done on tuesday and they were £43 because we had more than one done and were members of NFU
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catdragon, we dont normaly clip at all as ponys have the winter off whilst i'm at uni.
We just clip the square around the freezebrand. takes at most 30 seconds to do so if you do her normal clip and just the little square then you should be all sorted.
 
Lady is chipped and freezemarked, Fudge is just chipped as the freezemark women said there was little point having him freezemarked as you wouldn't be able to see it for most of the year due the colour of his coat. All my pets are microchipped.
 
I have had my mare and gelding freezemarked but i would never do it again as it hurt my gelding and it wasn't nice to watch. I would rather microchip and have dna done. I'm not keenon branding either.
 
I heard a story once about a field of horses (4 of them) that were stolen. The two that were freezemarked.....were found dumped in a field by the road about 8 miles away and reunited with owners within a couple of days. The two that weren't ..... well, who knows?
Maybe an urban legend but I'd never have an un-freezemarked horse again. If a horse turns up at an auction house with no passport and a freezemark, its pretty simple to check on its background.....no freezeark, well, could be any horse really couldn't it? Like others have said, microchips just aren't reliable due to the different types of scanners.
Freezemarks are a VISIBLE deterant to theft in the first plce, whereas things like microchips and dna records are only useful if the stolen horse has been located and identified as stolen.....
 
I have had my mare for 5 years, and recently with the spate of horse thefts, have been jolted into organising getting her freezemarked. I feel totally stupid that I have not had it done before, but I guess that now that I have left the country (she is still in England) it makes me feel a bit safer.

Just wish that they would hurry up and come out - I just missed freezemark's last visit to the the Kent area...and now am worried she is going to disappear in the next couple of weeks!

To tell you the truth, it is a visible deterrent - it may not work, but it is a damn sight better than nothing at all.
 
I've always looked at the practical side, as in what's far better from someone who's not horsey in the slightest who say finds a wandering horse and reports it on a footpath/road, "I've found a brown horse" or "I've found a brown horse with weird letters on it" the first thing police ask is are there any identifying marks if you report a wandering animal, a freezemark is just that. there's many who have no idea about microchip's/dna testing BUT the visibility of a freezemark they can't miss
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I've had all mine freezemarked, and as extra security they're microchipped as well, the chip was an afterthought when foalie was getting done as was too young for a mark but thought for £15 each might as well have 'em done
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firstly though I always go for freezemarking, to me so what if it doesn't look the prettiest to some, it's visual and a deterrent, it won't stop thieves, spesh if they want that particular ned, but if they're 'chancer thieves' they're less likely to go for a marked one, another thing is write the freezemark on your rugs too and get the 'freezemarked' labels you can get to sew onto them, a few minutes is worth it definately
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so they know they're marked under there then, a lot of thefts of marked horses apparentely happen when the rug covers the mark, plus a freezemarked rug in that way is less likely to be stolen from horses back (sadly it happens).....:(

Pandora's done on her shoulder, Scout being piebald it was case of find the black part so he was done on his butt as was decided was the best place, I don't mind, least it's noticed more from the comments he's had! LOL
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Surely it is better to be "ugly" and easily identified? I have mine done under the saddle, I do agree not as good as on the neck, but for me it is a compromise for the show ring as it is discrete.

There are so many chips out there which require different scanners which means that chips so far are not reliable enough to guarantee your horse being found.

Again, personally I feel there should be one chip that can be shown up by one scanner, avoiding the present situation of chips not showing up as they are not compatible with the scanner used.

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You are obviously entitled to do whatever you like as am I. And if I feel happy to not freezemark my horse thats my choice and my money....
 
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I have had my mare and gelding freezemarked but i would never do it again as it hurt my gelding and it wasn't nice to watch. I would rather microchip and have dna done. I'm not keenon branding either.

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A few minutes of discomfort against protection for a lifetime? Please don't let your personal squeamishness put your horse at risk
 
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