Turn to Donkey Care/ Proficiency Tests and read what happened at Pootings when our Society Secretary held a Training Day at her home back in March, look at the photographs in the gallery and then give serious consideration to having a go yourself !

When? The next one is to be held in Leicestershire in September

have been tracked down and can be found in the Showing pages and photographs of the Champions from shows all around the country are in their relevant 'Gallery'

Your Show Not There?

Then email the results and photographs to: webmissdbs@btinternet.com and they soon will be!

We are still receiving telephone calls from people who have responded to advertisements in on-line publications hoping to buy donkeys in the UK, only to find their calls transferred to an English person or persons living in France.

There may or may not be a circus closing down and looking to sell its various animals, which is the common tale, but it is far more likely that your enquiry will elicit the sourcing of a donkey or donkeys from Eastern Europe.

If you are hoping to buy a miniature donkey, a relatively new sales pitch, it is unlikely to meet the criteria for size or pedigree for it to be recognised as a miniature donkey in the UK.

It has further come to light, following a coversation with a member of the public who parted with several thousands of pounds for a potential event horse, and which three month later is yet to materialise, that there may be a link to a person or persons investigated in the early 1990s by TV journalist Roger Cooke and to another instigated by Horse & Hound, following complaints from people who had paid to purchase horses and ponies advertised in their For Sale columns and which were subsequently found either not to exist at all or the same animal sold several times over.

Keep your cash in your wallet and read the News Item - Caveat Emptor

The Poisonous Bouquet

• What is recognised by some equine owners as a ‘major danger’ to their animals?
• What is ‘ignored’ by many owners of equines and presumably seen as no danger whatsoever?
• What has been the of parliamentary questions but was dismissed without debate and the MP who had dared to raise the question told to go away?
• What should we all be concerned about whether an animal owner or not?
• What is the yellow flower that so many see as pretty asset to our verges and footpaths?

Could it be Ragwort? almost certainly!

Some years ago at the Equine Event held in November at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire I took time out from the jollifications surrounding participation at the event, to attend a lecture on ‘Ragwort’ and learned a great deal.

It is a great pity that a few more horse owners who had sat through the preceding presentation on recognizing the feed values in manufactured feeds didn’t feel the need to stay on!!

For me it opened up a whole new field of thought; one that each and every one of us needs to involve ourselves with, not just as animal owners but as humans too.

Ragwort, that pretty yellow flower we know only too well is gradually colonizing most of the UK’s highways and byways and is the most deadly of companion plantings, often seen alongside the perennial favourites of Ragged Robin and Cow Parsley.

It is a proven fact that an equine eating this plant suffers irreparable and accumulative liver damage as a result, and that death when it comes is both unavoidable and distressing. Whilst we are probably all aware that we can and do survive with reduced liver function ourselves it is probably hard to accept that for an equine 25[ERROR - UNABLE TO LOAD CONTROL : '' The file '/Views/UserControls/.ascx' does not exist.] a day later means death, and make no mistake - THE MOST DISTRESSING DEATH.

Farm animals are no less susceptible to the effects of this yellow peril, it is just that they are destined for the most part for our tables and so their life span is artificially, rather than toxically reduced. But think on -:

The human too is susceptible to the effects; coming into direct contact, whether intentionally through pulling the weed without protective gloves, or accidentally through indirect contact via a food source could mean reduced liver function for ourselves – what price that roast beef or lamb dinner, so recently grazing ragwort infested pastures?

Hard to believe that despite the constant lobbying by the equine welfare organizations that little notice is taken of this invasive plant outside the knowledgeable core of equine owners.

Four years ago my one of my donkey mares suddenly became ill and had to be humanely destroyed all in the space of 24 hours, it was subsequently diagnosed that she had suffered liver failure and almost certainly due to the presence of Ragwort toxins; and I a responsible and aware owner, who had always taken steps to eradicate the plant from my land and had fed only home grown fodder, similarly screened.

So one has to ask – why did it happen to my donkey and could it happen to yours?

I have the misfortune to live adjacent to one of those eco friendly warriors who knows it all and who is reluctant to accept the fact that Ragwort can be a killer and prefers to see it as the friendly host to much revered insect life. However the same land that is host to an ever burgeoning crop of this paragon plant provider is walked regularly by locals and their dogs, who in turn walk through the plants and break any stems in their path, where they lay wilting and ready for buzzards and woodland mammals to transfer to open farmland and my paddocks. But with 1000’s of acres of forestry land in private ownership and the ragwort population reaching monumental proportions within, and Professional Forestry Management consultants reluctant to accept responsibility, in fact preferring the self denial approach, nothing is going to change.

Undoubtedly deadly for both the human and animal population, yet widely dismissed as being of no relevance in the general scheme of things.

But the big question is WHY?

• The problem is so great that eradication is undeniably costly and so largely ineffective.
• Urban dwellers see it as a pretty flower.
• Worse still Horticulturalists have been known to refer to it favourably and even documented its arrival at Kew Gardens and resurgence at Oxford Botanical Gardens!!
• The powers that be, prefer to think of motorway verges and central reservations as havens for wildlife, thus excusing their reluctance to act responsibly.
• The average modern day equine owner, reliant on leased grazing is at the mercy of the ‘cowboy’ landowner, uninterested in anything more than the monthly rent, and appears largely unaware of the time bomb effect that ingesting the weed can have.
• For local councils to clear grass verges of this scourge would be a costly and time ineffective proposition; one that can only take place making use of an unskilled labour force, when the plant can easily be recognized in the flowering stage. However unless the plant is dug up and disposed of in the rosette stage it is set to become a perennial plant, and by the time the yellow flower is apparent it is far too late; the pollen has already spread its toxicity on the wind to surrounding grassland and is being ingested by an innocent grazing animal.

There will always be cavalier ‘it cannot happen to me or you’ attitude; sadly it can and will, the number of horses and donkey dying from the effects of ragwort toxins is increasing year on year.

Although farm stock is just as susceptible, where death does occur it is not in a manner likely to have financial impact act on the farmer and so there is unlikely to be any significant change in the attitudes towards the weed being present on grazing land.

So what can the ordinary owner do?

Having only owned my mare for a small part of her life I cannot know her preceding grazing history or sources of forage, but both or either of these were implicated in her ultimate fate, as the chance ingestion of that next stem bought her life to an untimely end.

• No more bought in forage for me…..you could inspect as many bales as you like from a consignment but unless every bale is opened and carefully screened there can be no certainty that it is ragwort free. The only sure way is to check the field of standing grass before cutting and baling takes place.
• Similarly straw, particularly if purchased from an organic source will not have been sprayed for weeds and may well contain ragwort.
• Remove all ragwort plants from grazing land by digging up at the rosette stage and BURN.
• Be vigilant, be a bully, make sure that ragwort is cleared from neighbouring land, it may not make you their favourite neighbour but better that than another dead equine, but above all be safe.
• Lobby your local council for removal of the plant from verges and parkland; children playing in local parks and picking a bunch of the flower as gift for mother, and doing so with bare hands can suffer a reduction in their liver function - 'Undeniably a Poisonous Boquet'

The Donkey Breed Society is very saddened by the news that the President Trevor Mathews died peacefully at his home in Devon at 12.30 am today 7th June 2006.