Warning about dangers to livestock of dumping cuttings

Sadie, a four-year-old cob, was found dead in a paddock, near Hallgarth Manor Hotel, near Pittington, Durham, on Monday (February 24) morning.

Owners Davey Cummings, 63, and Lynn Lee, 48, of Kidd Avenue, Sherburn, believe it is because she had eaten clippings from a yew tree.

Mr Cummings said: “I got a phone call on Monday to say there was a horse laid flat out in the field. She was dead. It was out of the blue.

“I was bit upset, but after I got in touch with a man to come and collect her I had a walk around and saw some pruned yew branches against the fence I knew it was that.

“They are really lethal. They are highly poisonous. Animals cannot eat it. They are alive one minute and dead the next. People don’t realise this.”

Sadie was around seven months pregnant with her first foal, which would have been due in June.

Mr Cummings, a fruiterer, and Ms Lee, who works for the Co-op, have around 18 horses between them.

In November, Sadie’s grandmother, a 16-year-old cob called Peggy, was found dead in the same field, from a similar probable cause.

Ms Lee said: “Yew trees are called the death tree because animals cannot eat it.

“With the yew tree, they just drop dead, it stops their heart.”

The couple do not think it is being done deliberately, but want to warn people of the dangers carelessly discarded cuttings can pose.

Ms Lee said: “People don’t understand. They cut their lawn with the weeds and they go and they put it in fields with livestock.

“They think they are doing a favour because horses eat grass but you cannot give a horse cut grass.

“All it does is ferments in their stomach and causes a blockage. They get colic. “There are so many things that are poisonous.

They said oak, acorns, ivy, buttercups, ivy, rhododendrons and grass cuttings are particularly hazardous for horses.

Ms Lee said: “We just want people to be aware and get rid get of their waste properly. These horses are like members of the family.”