Stealing horses

[Dave Martin]

Has anyone ever come across a horse having a plait put into its mane prior to being stolen? It happened to a friends daughters horse at the weekend.

[Johny Walker]

its to id the horse ,so they know wich 1, to take ,

[Dave Martin]

Whilst I expected the edit to the title I think you are wrong in this instance. If you google it you will find that it is this particular group of people who do this.

[Steve Bullman]

Whilst I expected the edit to the title

 

Thanks for knowingly creating work for the moderators

[Dave Martin]

Thanks for knowingly creating work for the moderators

 

Its not what I intended Steve. I thought the title that I originally put would attract the people in the know about these traditions, and as far as I know it is only done by that particular group of people.

[dent]

i know of it happening i don't know what the tittle was but the correct name for this is a pickey plait sorry if that has to be changed but it is the name

it is done not only so that they can identify the horse but it is done in a loop to make it easy to grab the horse in the dark with out a leadrope and the horse won't pull

they are also usually smeered in mud to make them difficult to remove

if horse is found like this remove the plait straight away and put lots of which ever oil is used in the equine idustry into the tail as it makes the plaits very hard to do. most the time if there is no plait wen they return apperently they won't steal the horse

[Rupe]

Similar idea to the piles of stones or crossed sticks outside soemones house to mark which one to break into for whatever item it is that corresponds to the marker.

[Tom2020]

Yh its happend down here thankfully not to my 3 horses We check them everyday to see if anything like that has happend and if so they will be in my back garden for a week.Best thing is we keep are horses slap bang in the middle of the village so every one in the village knows the horses and reports anyting strange.

[Daniël Bos]

Our old pony had suddenly aquired a plait in her mane many moons ago (I'm not old, it just happened when I was very young) and the next day..... It was stolen.

 

The whole mane, and the tail were gone! The useless pony was still there though. There had been an article about horse-hair in an "alternative oriental health" magazine the week before, or so we were told later.

[brassmonkey001]

I've heard of scarves being draped or tied to gates as if they had been dropped by a walker and another walker had kindly picked it up and hung it so it would be easily found by the owner, but in actual fact it's a signal that there is livestock worth stealing in this field.