Red Maple poison to horses?

[irwin]

One of our horses developed a temperature (102.7) and is slightly jaundice. The Vet mentioned that Red Maple (one of the most numerous trees on our property) is poisonous to Equines. We're not sure what's wrong with him yet, but if it is from the Maple trees I'd like to do something besides waiting for his appetite to kill him.

What should I do about it? How serious is this? Any horse folk dealt with this?

 

[ToadHill]

I never heard anything about red maple poison, but Black Cherry leaves produce cyanide as they begin to decompose.

 

[shvl73]

Tim,
It can be serious. Check out the article in this NH weekly market bulliten.
If for some reason it doesn't load correctly, I'll mail it to you.
Torin

 

[Mike120]

YES! Red Maple is poison to horses. Here is a site that discusses it: Equine Health

Horses are actually quite picky eaters, but as they are born looking for ways to hurt themselves, they will manage to eat things that are bad for them.

Good luck!

 

[Cottonhawk]

We removed all red maple and cherry trees from our horse pastures to avoid such problems.

 

[irwin]

Tim,
It can be serious. Check out the article in this NH weekly market bulliten.
If for some reason it doesn't load correctly, I'll mail it to you.
Torin

Thanks Torin,
Silly me I was thinking I had enough work to do before winter! The Vet says he's not deathly ill at this time, so whatever it is we can keep him inside his small paddock til I remove the trees (sounds pretty easy in type ) and we can get the results of the blood work back. Thanks for the article, the wife says she heard about it but hasn't experienced a problem with Red Maple ingestion before. I'm just the muscle around here anyway..

YES! Red Maple is poison to horses. Here is a site that discusses it: Equine Health

Horses are actually quite picky eaters, but as they are born looking for ways to hurt themselves, they will manage to eat things that are bad for them.

Good luck!

Yikes Mike, When I saw the list from your article I thought :Acorns! This is an Oak Tree cathedral, the towering oaks, forest littered with thousands and thousands of acorns. Then I calmed down (Only took a second. ) If they want to eat acorns ain't nuttin I can really do..besides they aren't done eating all the maple yet ..Seriously , thanks for the article, will show it to my wife, sounds like we've got some work ahead for us.

Thanks for the reply Cotton, and Paul.........................

 

[WTA]

Black walnut, red Maple and black cherry trees are the ones I had to remove here. Most of my horses love eating them. I left some English walnut and one cherry tree but they are ok. The Cherry supposedly will only hurt them if they eat the wilted leaves. I have more than enough noxious weeds in the pasture to deal with though. Silver nightshade is the big one. It's easy to control with 2-4-D but it takes a while to eradicate completely. For some reason my favorite and most expensive horse is the dumbest one that will eat weeds when he's got acres and acres of green grass to eat.

 

[drssg]

If you make sure the horses always have access to hay, it will reduce the likelihood that they'll eat bad stuff. But the long-term solution has to be removing the poisonous trees from the pastures.

 

[Cottonhawk]

I read an article sometimes ago saying that horses will eat those bad stuff only when they're very hungry. Not to take any chances, in addition to try to remove the bad stuff as much as we can, we always make sure that they have water, good grass, and feed available all the time.

 

[irwin]

The horse in question is a picky eater....., apples, carrots hold no excitement for this horse. If the hay isn't just right he'll pick at it. (just to note: we don't feed apples to our horses, once a blue moon they'll get an apple treat)

We'll put em out to pasture, and this one would go as close as he can get to a debris pile. Last night the wife and I moved that pile out of reach. Had to do it by hand, too many trees, and rocks for the tractor. Think area the size of two car garage 12 foot high made of Red Maple branches. With some of the worst forest floors to navigate. I figured I could hold off tackling that area til next year, maybe the year after.

I really appreciate all the experience and good advice. We're keeping them in their paddocks til I can clear up the dangerous plants..

Hey Dan,(WTA) Silver Nightshade? what does that do to them, anything I should be watching for?

I thought that if I leave some trees up in the pasture, the big guys will have cool areas in the heat of summer. I hope some shade trees can stay up?

Anything else, plant-wise we should be addressing?