Is this safe?

I've seen a horse in a 12x12 stall get its halter hung up on a nail and almost hang itself so I doubt that you have nothing for your horses to get hung up on. Your horse can also get its foot through the halter and injur itself like a previous poster mentioned. Rather than leave the halters on as a safety precaution maybe you should teach them to be caught and/or put them inside a fence they can't get out of.

They could get hung up on the fence they are escaping out of or a tree limb.

They could very well be playing; we have a 5-year-old Gelding who does that with the older Appaloosa gelding that's his "brother figure." If the ears are pinned it could be a sign that they're establishing the pecking order.

I also agree that halters in the pasture are dangerous. But, then again, they're dangerous even when the horse is tied. My mare spooked because of a drain hose someone was carrying and pulled back, breaking her halter. When she did so, the clasp under her chin (that rests on her cheek) skinned part of her face. The result was over 30 stitches, two weeks off of working, and a lot of treatment for proud flesh.

Horses should always be monitored with a halter on, and not left to free-pasturing. At the livery we rotate the horses into a pen to eat; they're in here for about 10 minutes and someone is always in the back watching the stalls and pens to make sure that the horses don't get into some sort of mischief.

If you've noticed, when horses play they don't "connect." Our playful geldings will buck up, kick out, and "bite" (just scraping each other with their teeth or lipping at one another), but it's never aggressive -- they don't hurt each other. And when it does hurt, the "victim" is often quite content in telling the "assailant" that it did hurt. Just today I watched my "elderly" gelding, Ben, playing with a younger gelding, Oreo. They "bit" at each other's faces, Oreo would rear up a little bit, and then they'd prance around and kick up a little bit. Then it was like "whatever," and they moved on.

If they're turned out overnight I would make sure to especially take the halters off; as many people have said, they pose a danger to the animal's well-being, which is further founded by Creampuff's story.

Personally, I would say that the most dangerous thing is the halter, not the behavior.

No halters in the pasture. It is much too dangerous. Horses should be trained so they are easy to catch.

There are three mares and two geldings where I keep my horses and they all nip and buck a little at eachother. It's just establishing the pecking order as someone else has said. But it's definitely not just a gelding thing.

I used to leave a halter on one of mares but one day she got it caught on a piece of wood. She didn't get hurt but she ran around all night with a two foot piece of wood strapped to her face until we finally found her the next morning.

Since I can ever remember we have never taken halters off while out to graze. Our horses have never had an accident or got caught due to their halters in 27 years. Each to their own way of doing things.

But wouldn't one freak accident change your mind? I imagine most people who have horses who suffered a serious accident from wearing a halter also thought the same thing. And wouldn't you feel pretty bad if something did happen? I wouldn't willingly put my horses at risk like that just because it has never happened before.

The mare I mentioned that broke her neck, she was stuck like that over night before morning feeder found her. And she was in a stall. God knows how long she was suffering. =\

If you're going to put them out to pasture with halters, make sure they have a breakable leather crownpiece that will break off if a hoof gets caught in it.

Huge Ditto... Even then I don't like putting halters on horses but at shows we have to have them on 24/7. I had a couple that I LOVED because the crownpiece wasn't super thick and was fairly easy to break....

sorry guys should have added my halters have a crownpiece!