Preventing Horse Theft (tips from the experts)

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World Horse Welfare has information on how to keep horses safe. This includes microchipping and keeping passports locked away (it’s illegal to sell or export a horse including for slaughter without a passport).

This will also include markings, so police can identify missing horses, so take good photos beforehand from all sides, with distinctive markings and whorls, at different times of the year.

Ensure gates are secure (and can’t be lifted off their hinges), and install motion-activated sensor lights and create a Horse Watch Group with CCTV and possible alarms.

Ask your vet for recommendations about two other methods that are used to deter theft:

• Freezemarking is done under local anaesthetic, a permanent marker where a copper iron cooled in liquid nitrogen is held against the skin for a few seconds (this destroys hair pigments to leave either a white legible mark or bald mark on white horses). It obviously must be done by trained professionals.
• Hoof-branding (not the same as hot iron branding) is a painless way to burn ID (like postcodes or phone numbers) into the insensitive part of the hoof, though of course it needs repeating as hooves grow out.

Both of these make horses harder to sell. And are also good for identifying horses during natural disasters.

Also read about keeping horses safe from ragwort and toxic trees, and more on horse welfare.