The idea of potentially doing a workshop around herbs for you and your horse, got another boost this winter.
For those who have been following me awhile, you’ll know that near the tail end of 2020, we downsized into a fifth wheel to tiny home not only our lives, but our expenses too. The skirting I would later put up the following spring, has held up rather well in the years since, but needed repair in the fall of 2024. Craft fair season had gone nuts on us, we were offering introductory foraging workshops and trail tours, and didn’t get around to doing the repairs until early December. Weather here in the Central Okanagan was windy, but otherwise quite mild for this time of year, so we didn’t have to be bundled up to do the job.
Concurrent to all the craft fairs and foraging, my kids had both lost their jobs within a week of each other, and my daughter was now building a house-cleaning gig, taking on more clients slowly but surely. In our house, we have this thing with members of the demonic world, where if we are doing things in line with God’s will, we get attacked, or our belongings get attacked, or our critters get attacked. This had happened back in mid-summer 2024, because we had the opportunity to share God’s love with a lady who correctly identified the logo on Ashley’s Ashtree Wildcrafting sign. The herbal answer God gave us to deal with the results of that attack, was nothing short of miraculous!
Several months later, we are now repairing our skirting and Ashley was making plans with a prospective client to meet them that week. She grabbed my twine needle, the bailing twine, and gorilla exterior tape, and out we went. We got all but one seam sewn together, almost all loosened tape replaced, when suddenly she cried out and was holding her eye!
I rushed over, she pulled her hand away, no blood! Whew! I ran inside to prepare a salt wash and she followed, washed her eye, and we went back to finish the job. Strangely, the remaining stitches went far easier than they had for the previous seams despite being just as thick as they were. We wrapped up the task, and she applied some of my eye soreness/irritation oil, a herbal blend you can find in my household trail kit. This was all taking place on December 9th. We thought at first, that this oil might be helping, but all it did was calm the swelling and inflammation on the front of the eye, the swelling wasn’t going away, and was increasing on the backside of the eye, putting pressure on the optical nerve.
The 8th was a Monday. Wednesday I told her she needed stronger medication. We had already been researching various herbs both wild and domestic, known to address various eye conditions, so we pulled up that list in my database, she pulled out her old books, and put together a medicinal eye drop that she promptly began applying. Her appointment with her clients was on Thursday, and by that time the outer swelling was mostly gone and she was able to drive again, indicating that rear swelling was also starting to calm down. Sensitivity to bright light bouncing off windshields was also becoming more manageable.
By the following Monday, her eye was completely healed. Only then did we discover a very tiny nick on her eyelid where the needle had grazed her eyeball as it bounced up into the eye socket, somehow without puncturing her skin between the eye and the socket! Needless to say, we were praising God for His protection over her eye, and for the knowledge He’d brought across our path to aid in this situation!
That knowledge came from modern research papers, modern herbal optometrists willing to write blog posts about the herbs that can aid in eye health, books written in the 1500’s, and even books written back during the time of ancient Rome.
Ashley has been toying with the concept of macerated aromatic infused oils (not essential oils, these are generally 16% weaker than essential oils) and had a number of jars of aromatic oils in trays either in her room, or down in the household foraging rack (those in the foraging rack were only two rounds, not 5 to 9 rounds of infusion).
Her list of ingredients included chokecherry bark, rosemary, douglas fir, and cut with sunflower oil. This ointment was applied 3 to 5 times on the eyelids and socket per day, while an eyedrop made from the gel of chia seeds, salt and water, was also applied 3 to 5 times per day.
My article on herbs that assist the eyes include all of these herbs and research out there continues to confirm what many herbalists and history nuts have known for a long time. Rosemary is a big one in this list, as is chokecherry due to having all the functions for your eye that Saffron does, minus the saffronol.
Chia seed, not listed in my previous article, is known to be soothing to the eyes, with a write-up by a chief down in Southern California saying:
The Botanical Lore of the Southern California Indians
“Care of the eyes.
Salvia Columbriae. . .
As they swelled, they would move about with every movement of the eyeball and emit a gelationus substance which gathered up every particle of sand or any other substance present and, when removed, left the eye clear and free of any possible inflammation.”
Now while I would not recommend doing as this tribe did in putting a seed in the corner of the eye on their way to bed, the gel the seed creates still has compounds that help the eye, such as Vitamin E and Vitamin A, along with being anti-inflammatory, and anti-oxidant. Anti-oxidants are incredibly important for the eye!
While Ashley was treating herself with her stronger oil and her eye drops, we prayed protection over her and her income, and she did land the new client. Her ability to drive has not been threatened since, and her eye has not regressed. Permanent damage was not done, praise the Lord!
But all was not right in her horse’s visual abilities, we’d realize in January 2025.
We had already begun observing as the light dimmed with the changing of the seasons in 2022, that Bella lost circular track on a lunge-line, often losing her path. Noting that muscle unevenness was to blame, we drilled her for both comfort and muscle building and by spring, the problem seemed to have gone away. Days are lengthening again in spring however.
In the Fall of 2023, Bella started having the same problems again. Ashley attempted to fix the issue as before, but Bella’s visual acuity at dusk and at night on the right side was now worse than the left side. She’d often stop the right rein circle so that she could see with her left eye. Bella also began weaving at her gate that November. For those not familiar with horses, weaving is when they stand in one place leaning side to side repeatedly, often with a bob of the head on each side. Some pick this up as a loneliness coping mechanism, others pick it up out of stress, so we naturally assumed it was a stress reaction because she had equine neighbours she regularly visited with.
But as her behaviour at dusk seemed to intensify, suspicions of eye issues began to grow, even as issues with lunging went away again. Another new behaviour was increasing nervousness for the winter and dimmer light.
In 2024, Bella would start weaving whenever interpersonal issues cropped up around the property. Two families that live on the property don’t always see eye to eye, and their differences were starting to spill into the driveways between their houses, a behaviour that has always had Bella stressed in the past.
That Fall, her issues on the lunge line cropped up again with more aggressive behaviour, akin to Bella’s PTSD driven behaviour of her 6-8 year old time span. Bella would also be nervous of the coyotes, and weaving at the gate continued.
One evening as Ashley was calming Bella down from another inadvertent scare brought on by bringing a hand up near an eye enroute to giving her an ear scratch, a question popped into my head. It was dusk when this incident happened, Bella has nearly nipped Ashley in self-defence. Knowing that horse eyesight is always worse at dusk as they transition from daylight to moonlight, and knowing this behaviour can worsen with age, I tossed out the question, “Could it be that her eyes are worsening with age? After all, she’ll be 17 in February.” Ashley considered that as a possibility and immediately, Bella’s behaviour calmed down as we discussed how the problem might be with her eyes. Bella’s aggressive behaviour was tamed, though we now had to offer warnings ahead of any movements near her head.
Enter Winter 2025, when Ashley noticed a blueish cloudiness in Bella’s right eye. She pulled out a flashlight and noticed how the right eye greatly contracted when exposed to bright light and was slow to relax in comparison to her left eye. Darn! Cataracts, early stages!
For those who don’t know us, Ashley has worked in the show horse world since she was 10yrs old, and has seen horses go blind. Unlike us humans, mainstream veterinary feels that for most horses, cataracts are untreatable.
Consider this quote from Horseman’s Veterinary Encyclopedia, published in 2005.
Another equine veterinary book we have on the shelf: The Complete Equine Veterinary Manual, Third Edition, copyright 2009, shows us this view of cataracts in the eye of a foal.
As you can see here, the cataract has a far more defined blue colour, far more opaque, and therefore much more mature than the cataract Bella had in her right eye.
Photos of Bella’s eye will be shared further down in this article.
More recently, Madbarn shares reasons as to why horses may not be recommended for laser surgery including having large eyes, which Bella has, and thus disqualifies her.
Madbarn says:
“Surgery is typically reserved for horses with severe cataracts resulting in complete blindness”
“When symptoms are present, the most common signs of cataracts are blindness and cloudiness of the eye.”
“Other symptoms that can indicate deteriorating vision in horses include: [7]
- Headshaking
- Spooking or shying
- Behavioural changes, particularly in herd situations
- Hesitancy in unfamiliar situations
- Bumping into objects or obstacles
- Difficulty with transitioning from light to dark areas or vice versa
- Decreased vision in dim lighting conditions”
“In adult horses, surgical removal of cataracts is usually only recommended in severe cases where there is visual impairment impacting quality of life or ability to work. [1] There are several reasons adult horses are poor candidates for cataract surgery, including: [1][8]
- Large eye size which most surgical equipment is not designed for
- Association between cataracts and uveitis, which can prevent healing
- Requirement for extensive topical eye medication use after surgery, which many horses do not tolerate
- Risk of injury to riders or handlers after surgery due to reduced vision
- Increased risk of general anesthesia in adult horses”
Note how Bella was demonstrating various symptomatic behaviours listed above. I had Ashley write down her observations, some of which I have already shared, but I’ll let her make the next statement in her own words:
“Also, in her defensive state, Bella is prone to lashing out to stave off any harm, this is a legacy of her abuse and PTSD from the racetrack. Leaving her cataracts to get worse would result in her becoming dangerous and thus her eventual end.
Therefore, instead of wringing my hands in hopelessness and sitting on them for lack of anything that could be done, I checked out old books, such as The Complete Herbal and De Materia Medica.
After making a list from these books, consulted the Madbarn website for guidance on what horses could eat safely.”
Remember how I said Bella had nearly nipped Ashley the evening I wondered about the potential for aging eyesight. This had been the latest of a few incidences leading up to that question. So Ashley’s concerns for Bella’s mental state in combination with her eyesight was warranted.
The Complete Herbal by Dr Nicholas Culpeper, yielded the following list of herbs that were known to heal or mitigate cataracts in his day:
- cabbage – juice (kale was often called cabbage at the time his book was written)
- celadine – juice
- small centaury – juice
- clary – seed put into the eye
- cuckow-point – root boiled in water, dropped in eyes
- dragons – distilled water
- eyebright – juice or distilled water
- germander – oil anointed upon the eyelids
- rattle grass, yellow/ cock’s comb – herb boiled ingested or dropped into eyes
- mellilot, sweet clover – juice dropped into eyes
Of this herb, Culpeper writes:
“The juice dropped into the eyes is a singularly good medicine to take away the film or skin that clouds or dims the eye-sight.”
- pimpernel – decoction mixed with juice dropped into eyes
- garden valerian – tincture dropped into eye
- vervain – distilled water
- willow bark – bark water, spring sap dropped into eyes
De Materia Medica, written by Dioscoridis, shared the following:
- wild lettuce – juice (Wild lettuce is one of the names given to Prickly Lettuce or The Compass Plant)
Of the lettuce, he writes:
“It also wears off the albugo (eye disease), and mistiness and dimness of the eyes . . .”
- basil – juice
- onion – juice with honey
- cock’s head – leaves as poultice
- sea/horned poppy – rubbed on
Comparing this list to Madbarn’s list of safe herbs for horses, Ashley compiled the following list:
- rosemary,
- cherry,
- mellilot
- willow bark,
- basil,
- lettuce
Based on what we knew in my database and the old books, as well as how Ashley’s own eye had healed from it’s inflammatory condition a month earlier, Ashley set about making medication. No way were we going to sit around and do nothing just because mainstream veterinary was more prone NOT to do anything and just let the horse go blind.
Ashley made an eye drop water infusion of sweet clover, rosemary, cherry bark, prickly lettuce, chia seeds, and salt. Her priority was to keep the recipe simple due to not knowing the specific cause of the cataracts and wishing to have it therefore be broad spectrum (macular/retinal/lense damage, bacteria or viral infection, trauma, inflammation, long term UV radiation damage, optic nerve stimulation etc.).
All the herbs in her list have a use in one or more of those conditions.
As this was a water infusion, not vinegar or oil or glycerine or alcohol, the shortened lifespan of the product meant only keeping out what would be used and freezing the rest, thawing as needed.
Ashley began applying the eye drops to both eyes, so that anything the left might have would not reach the stage it had on the right. As it turns out, there were cataracts developing in the left eye too, just far less cloudy.
The eyedrops began on the 13th, and our first progress photo would be taken on the 14th. Bella overheard us talking about the benefits of eye ointment, and gave us a quizical, hopeful querying expression. We came home, and Ashley made up a batch of eye ointment for Bella, containing rosemary,chokecherry bark, burdock root, dandelion root, chickweed leaf and plantain leaf, lavender essential oil, and sunflower seed oil. None of these were made from aromatic oils, only from the double-infused oils that we have on hand.
At this point, I should show you what her right eye looked like as a 7-8yr old, for comparison against what you’ll see in the next few photos.
Additionally, here is a photo of Bella’s former paddock mate who was much younger than her, but with healthy eyes.
Every single day for the first week, we saw dramatic improvement.
The second week, we didn’t think we or the camera were picking up much improvement, till we compared photos from the start and end of that week.
By the 24th, her left eye suddenly looked clear again, and we thought we were just being proactive and preventive with that eye. We hadn’t seen any blue hue or haziness in that eye, we thought. Not knowing the exact cause of the cateracts, we decided to keep giving the left eye its drops for another two weeks, ending February 7th.
The third week saw more dramatic healing for Bella’s right eye and then the day came that initially left us baffled. We didn’t get a progress photo of her eye this particular day, I’d forgotten my camera at home. But using Ashley’s lesser camera, we took a photo or two of a goop that she pulled out of the right eye’s tear duct. 
After removing the gellatenous substance and then looking at her right eye again from as many angles as she could, neither of us could see any blue hue anywhere!
A boarding neighbour is a nurse in the ophthalmology world, and I thought to ask her if she’d ever seen cataracts after their removal from human eyes, and while she was never in the operating room, she sometimes saw what was thrown in the trash. We brought Bella over to her, and she couldn’t see that bluish hue either, and she’d seen it a few days earlier.
Ashley came home and began researching how cataracts look, and found various expressions of how they can appear in both colour and shape. The ancient and old books talk about “pin and web” or “haze” or “cloudy”. We knew we were attacking her condition early, the earlier you can catch any condition, the better your chances of dealing with it. But we didn’t expect anything like the gel-like lump in the photo.
This is the point where I remind the reader that we are not trained veterinarians. I am a trained natural health practitioner with focuses in wholefood as medicine, herbalism, and Biblical wellness. My daughter is saving up to get her herbalist certificate. We have been foraging and researching wild foods and herbs for 9 years.
My database lists 44 entries specifically dealing with cataracts. 70 foods that deal with cataract risk, and many in both lists are there because they either contain eye-helpful anti-oxidants, eye-helpful carotenoids, vitamin E, or vitamin A.
Looking through the old books reveals that conditions affecting the eye such as glaucoma and cataracts, weren’t the threat back then that they are today. The advent of “modern medicine” ie: allopathic medicine, tossed the herbal knowledge aside that many had relied on over the centuries, and now, unless you know about these herbs, you either go blind, or go under the laser knife.
Modern research however, continues to back up what our ancestors knew.
Published June 13, 2019, the following paper made some interesting statements.
Medicinal Plants and Natural Products Used in Cataract Management
“Oxidative stress is among the main mechanisms involved in the development of age-related cataract. Surgery through phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation is the most effective method for cataract treatment, however, there are chances of serious complications and irreversible loss of vision associated with the surgery. Natural compounds consisting of antioxidant or anti-inflammatory secondary metabolites can serve as potential leads for anticataract agents.”
As noted in the above paper, oxidative stress is damaging to the eye, and the best way to combat it, is to be eating your anxi-oxidant foods. Dr Mercola has written extensively on the dangers of oxidative stress and how to deal with it. I’ve downloaded so many articles in this category alone, that between his writings and those of other doctors, scientists and researchers out there, I have over 60 articles mentioning oxidative stress in some fashion. Just going down the titles, we come to foods that help such as horseradish, boron-containing foods, spices, ginseng, avoiding aspertame and other artificial sweeteners, black seed oil, rhodopsin, flavinoids and flavanols, ginkgo biloba, glycine-containing foods, grapes, quercetin, taurine, mitochondria health, dangers of glyphosate, Vitamin E, vitamin C, carotenoids, selenium deficiency and zinc deficiency. Oxidative stress affects many areas of the body, not just the eyes as these various article terms point to. But it is a big one for why eyes develop many of the problems they do.
The above-linked paper contains several tables, with plant names in latin, so if you don’t have those memorized as to which plant they refer to, you’ll have to run them through a search for “(latin name) also known as or common name”. The various ways the plants aid in preventing or dealing with cataracts is interesting! I don’t like the paper’s attitude toward ethnobotany, but the tables are useful.
The paper does note an issue that I try to avoid via my client intake form, where the client is requested to tell me if they are on any medications, have any allergies, taking supplements, etc. Just because plants are natural, doesn’t mean they always play nice with each other, or with manmade medicines. It is important to have that information out in the open before recommendations are made. Secondly, the idea that all medicines, herbal or otherwise for the eye are given as eye drops is rather short-sighted, pardon the pun. Some medicines most definitely should NOT be dropped directly into the eye! Eat them as a food, drink them as a tea or tincture, apply them in an ointment over the eyelids. Some foods that contain compounds necessary for the eye, also contain compounds that could burn the eye or damage it in other ways if coming into direct contact with the eye!
In 2016, the following paper was published:
Nutraceuticals in prevention of cataract – An evidence based approach
This paper contains several helpful tables listing off various foods, often in plain English, that can help in preventing cataracts via one’s diet. Of course, this is human information as opposed to strictly animal information, however, they use animals to test various behaviours of nutrients on mammal-style physiologies and from there, extrapolate to how those nutrients behave in the human body, as we have mammalian physiology ourselves. Therefore, it stands to reason that if a food is safe for an animal to eat, and it contains the compounds necessary to achieve protection or assistance with a given condition, that having them eat it, or using it in a topical or direct application manner, will benefit them the same way it did for other test animals.
This is the logic we used when addressing Bella’s cataract issue.
Now it should be stressed that we caught her cataracts early. We have not tested our solution on a critter with more advanced or mature cataracts. Old texts don’t differentiate between early or late stage, only between “born with” or “contracted” cataract conditions instead. These texts regularly state that if you were born with a given condition such as blindness, herbs will not restore what you weren’t born with.
Perhaps the most encouraging study in relation to Bella’s solution, is this study regarding rats, and how rosmarinic acid dealt with their cataracts:
Rosmarinic Acid Restores Complete Transparency of Sonicated Human Cataract Ex Vivo and Delays Cataract Formation In Vivo Published: 19 June 2018
You might remember earlier in this article, mentioning Rosemary as a common remedy for cataracts in centuries past. Rosemary contains the compound Rosmarinic acid. This study has an amazing photo compilation showing the effectiveness of this compound on cataracts.
Rosemary featuring in Ashley’s eye drop blend was no accident. But eye drops weren’t the only way we addressed Bella’s condition. As noted in some of the comments written in the above studies, ingestion of the same phyto-chemicals also benefit the eyes. To this end, Bella’s hay cubes also had rosemary and sweet clover added. She really likes the flavour of this new addition to her cubes and has been almost wolfing down her daily ration!
Between giving her herbs in her cubes, in her eye ointment, and in her eye drops, her condition has been repaired in just 3 weeks!! As of the date stamp of this article, her left eye is no longer on eye drops and her right eye will no longer need them by the second week of February.
If you want to use these herbs for your own horse, please understand that your mileage may vary. Many variables play into this, from age of the horse, maturity of the cataract, how the cataract may have been caused, environmental stresses your horse may be regularly subjected to, what you feed your horse normally, etc. Information we have shared here is for educational purposes only, and not to be taken as veterinary advice according to the laws of the province of British Columbia Canada.
History continues to show us what modern scientific research is confirming. God gave us the plants and herbs for our food and medicine.
