They’re everywhere here. One in my paddock, several along the horse track. Biggest problem is stepping on the fallen nuts or having falling nuts drop on you. My sheep and horses don’t bother them at all. 10yrs and no issues.
Those nuts are a total pain. Used to take like 3 days to shell. You have to break off the green shell, then soak overnight and change out the water till clear. Then put them in a burlap sack and beat them with a hammer. Then roast them, and then you can eat them. I hated when my parents used to buy them and us kids got stuck helping shell them.
Driving over them just removes the outer shells. Then you’re down to the shiny brown inner shells that can be cracked open to get to the nut meat.
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I think the key is to watch the horses.
There are so many poisonous plants around our horses. They are ubiquitous. In general, horses seem to inherently know not to bother them.
But… there’s always exceptions. It seems like lack of forage is the #1 reason horses become tempted to mess with poisonous stuff. Boredom/novelty comes in a close second, especially when horses are confined to a small space without a lot of stimulation. And then you have the odd horses who have a suicidal death wishes and mess with them for seemingly no good reason.
If you have a large pasture with plenty of other things to eat and do, you’re less likely to have a problem. If you have a small dirt lot with a huge black walnut tree in the center, you may want to consider ways to keep the horses away. Regardless of your set up, it’s always a good idea to survey the pasture for downed limbs after a storm and pay close attention when anything is dropping off the tree (nuts, seeds, fruit, leaves).
As others have said, the sawdust seems to be the chief problem specifically with walnut trees, so be especially mindful if you choose to take them down or do any pruning.
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It’s extremely labor intensive to shell black walnuts, your hands will be stained black for days, and that funky smell seeps into everything. (But other than that, it’s great :lol: ) A friend of ours used a powerful workbench vise to crack them, said it was way better than using a hammer.
We have BW trees all over the property, no issues. If you have to cut one down: in addition to using tarps to capture the sawdust, consider dumping a load of topsoil over the area. BW trees tend to make the soil inhospitable for a lot of plants, so the topsoil would help reestablish healthy soil while also covering up any stray sawdust.
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