We just bought 20 acres and the pasture has a few black walnuts. I know some are cautious about them but I haven’t seen a horse eat them. I know it is the green shell that is the problem.
Most people I know with them find it is easier to leave them than to remove them and risk leaving behind some sawdust. They do not have to eat it, just stand in it.
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What I have read is that it is the heart wood that is the problem, so as trubandloki says, if you go to cut the tree down you are spewing extremely toxic sawdust all over the place.
Unfun fact: Some english walnuts are grafted onto black walnut rootstock. So the trunks of those trees are black walnut wood.
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I have a couple in my field (10 acres)- the horses don’t bother them at all
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I had an ancient black walnut at a farm I rented. My land lady caught my mare raking her teeth down the trunk of the tree. I called the vet in a panic. Apparently the tree itself isn’t poisonous. The horses otherwise left the tree alone.
Oh yeah good! These are giant trees and I’m not in the mood to remove them.
The tree standing is fine, the tree sawn up, not so much! Although, I probably wouldn’t let my horses eat the walnuts! Oddly, they aren’t sure that juglone (the allelopathic chemical in black walnuts) is the problem, they haven’t actually identified the chemical in the sawdust that is the issue.
One of my horses had a mild laminitis from a black walnut tree. It was in his pasture, very much still upright. We think an accumulation of branches underneath caused there to be enough buildup to trigger it. He luckily got over it just fine, but make sure any branches that fall from it are disposed of outside of the pasture.
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A few of my fields have them in them and I have had no issues. We did have to drop 2 that had died, I was extremely diligent about getting every last bit of sawdust cleaned up.
No. We’ve been here 17 years and those ancient black walnuts have not posed a health problem to the horses.
They also have 20+ acres of quality pasture, eating trees might look inviting if their pasture was minimal and/or poor:)
Please don’t remove large trees unless absolutely necessary. And poisoning by Black Walnuts or Wild Cherry is not in the necessary category.
No ~ the removal creates danger.
Same. Our property is covered in them, very valuable trees to have around Our pasture is mostly dying ash trees but we have a couple black walnut, and the horses are too busy sticking their face in the grass to notice them.
I have a bunch of large black walnut trees in my pasture and while I hate them, I think it’s better to leave them there. The horses never bothered with the trees or the nuts in over 20 years, even during those years when I had one or two that started eating bark from different species of tree. I have one that fell over in a storm, and it’s still sitting there because I’m afraid to cut it up and make sawdust.
Thank you all. This has been an education. I had no idea about the sawdust.
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Saw this just today - got on ChronForums as a relief from doomscrolling the current horrid news about air quality (right now we are off the meter on airnow.gov). My farm has the last few black walnut trees from the original 200 acres. They are huge, huge, huge. Only lost one in 20 years. So here’s the skinny. Don’t cut down unless the tree is next to an important structure and already rotting from the inside out. As pointed out by others it is the sawdust that is the worst.
If you allow the nuts and leaves to acumulate in the horse turnout areas that’s a problem too. We have squirrels who take care of the former. The nuts when clothed in their “little green bomb” husks (which smell like cheap laundry soap), when they first drop, can be toxic for dogs. If you have a retriever that likes to pick up anything and everything round because it “might” be a ball, the green husk has some toxins that doesn’t react at all well with canine digestions.
We had to cut back one of the black walnuts as a huge branch was looking rather sick and would have come down on the tack room end of the barn. I put down really good tarps with an extra layer underneath of heavy mil visqueen all over the area to catch bark and, worst of all, sawdust. This was all very carefully disposed of. Even after the job was complete and tarps pulled up, we led the horses around a different route to turnout and soaked the ground thoroughly with water for about two weeks. Truly you cannot be careful enough about black walnut sawdust.
The tree guy arrogantly informed me that “horses know what to eat and what not to eat - all animals know this.” I let him rattle on in his “expertise” then when he finally ran out of steam informed him that black walnut isn’t an ingestion problem, the sawdust releases toxins absorbed through hooves, and invited him to ask Mister Google.
On another note, has anyone harvested the nuts? Our property is covered in black walnut trees and they are all beginning to drop their green husks, I’m tempted to try them! We also have a few mulberry trees and those berries fell all spring/early summer and were delicious
OMG they are impossible to shell! Extremely labor intensive.
When I lived in black walnut country, people would put them in their driveways (dirt) and run over them with their cars.:yes:
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:lol::lol: I don’t know how I’d feel about eating those after that!!!
