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4.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable but alarmist, May 18 2004
This book is very valuable as a reference to a horse owner. The pictures are good, and each entry contains a description of possible symptoms and treatments (which I assume are correct). As a diagnostic, this book seems very useful and something you should have around.However, as a new pasture owner, I found it incredibly alarmist. So much so that I almost :-) wanted to take my horses back to the boarding stable so I could stop worrying my pretty head about plants. Ha! Practically every plant that has ever been known to harm a horse is listed, which means that the book is overwhelming. Some of the toxicities are mild and very uncommon, but the text is thick enough that it is difficult to determine whether the plant is likely to be dangerous without close reading. Clover is listed next to locoweed. In some cases, the plant listed is not itself toxic, but it tends to attract toxic fungi, as in the case of fescue. However, when reading the entries, they all have scary-sounding symptoms. It is difficult to ascertain under even a close reading whether the plant in question is really dangerous. There's a difference in my mind between "a nibble will be a life-or-death situation" and "symptoms will disappear if you remove the plant from the diet," and that difference is not readily apparent in the listings. This book would be much improved if plants that were especially dangerous - plants that are acutely toxic in minute quantities and plants that are especially likely to be eaten in toxic quantities - were more obviously called out. I would love to have a quick icon at the top that tells me "Deadly - remove from pasture using any means necessary" or "Potential Problem" or "Not Likely to cause serious problems." This triage would allow me as an owner to concentrate my first efforts on learning to identify and eradicate the most dangerous plants, rather than being distracted by fescue and clover. I'm glad that plants that can but usually don't cause problems, like fescue and clover, are listed. It's very useful when trying to diagnose a horse that's not quite right, and if they were omitted, the horse owner might incorrectly assume that the diet was not the issue. I would just like to see them flagged differently or perhaps included in an appendix rather than mixed in with the truly deadly plants that have no margin for error. As it stands it is better as a reference for answering specific questions than as a book you can just read through when contemplating several acres of plants or potential plants.
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