Princess Anne makes ‘devastating’ admission during rare podcast appearance

The Princess Royal has opened up about the sudden death of the Queen’s beloved horses, after they were struck down with a deadly disease.

• Princess Anne made an appearance on the OnFARM podcast as part of her work into researching Equine Grass Sickness
• The illness caused the death of five of the Queen’s Highland ponies between June 2017 and May 2018
• In other royal news, is this the reason Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are doing a tell-all interview with Oprah?

More from Woman&Home:

• best fitness tracker 
• best yoga mats 
• best women's walking shoes 

Princess Anne has revealed the “devastating impact” a deadly equine illness had on her family, after Equine Grass Sickness killed five of her mother’s horses in just one year.

The Princess Royal has launched a new fellowship for research into Equine Grass Sickness – a fatal illness that has affected her own family’s horses in recent years.

During a conversation about Equine Grass Sickness – a disease of horses, ponies and donkeys in which there is damage to parts of the nervous system which control involuntary functions, producing the main symptom of gut paralysis – Princess Anne revealed her own experience with the illness. 

“Yes,” she said. “More so recently at Balmoral where they've had quite a lot of losses sadly. And that’s – you know, particularly when you’re breeding Highland Ponies and you lose two really nice colts in one go. That’s a pretty devastating impact, as well as the fact that they are working ponies. It’s important to keep those gene pools relevant.”

Sylvia Ormiston, who is in charge of the monarch’s Balmoral Highland Pony Stud, previously revealed that the illness had killed five of the Queen’s horses: Hercules, Friendly, Clunie, Lord and Omar. 

Revealing more about the devastating impact the disease can have on a horse’s body, Sylvia said on the podcast, “They are doomed, there is no return, they are dead on the inside... and it’s so devastating because you are standing there wishing you could do something for what looks like a perfectly healthy animal.”

She also said the Queen had wished to say goodbye to Hercules, before his death in 2018.

“He started to show signs of being sick on the Friday evening. The Queen came to see him on the Saturday... It was enough time that the Queen could come to see him, to actually say goodbye – because there was nothing we could do,” Sylvia confessed. 

“It just shows you that no matter who you are, no matter who the animal belongs to, you still can’t save them.”

It’s no secret that the Queen adores her horses and we know Her Majesty was “making the most of the time” in lockdown by “riding out every day”.