Have people given up on controlling ragwort?

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joy

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Apart from myself on my own field and my YO and his immediate neighbour who provides the yards' haylage everyone round about, farmers included appears to have lost control of the stuff.
The local equine college is growing it as a root crop as is IBERS that centre of agricultural excellence.
Adjacent to my field is 10 acres of it because the owner is hoping to get planning for a housing estate, dream on love, no access and next to 56 acres of SSSI I don't think so.
From where I am up to Yorkshire all along the motorways and everywhere else the stuff is growing non-stop and in Yorkshire the other week I witnessed fields being taken for haylage with ragwort on them. Cows, sheep and horses wandering around amidst the ugly p*ss yellow 'flowers'.
Makes me ill quite frankly.
Is anyone actually being prosecuted over this?
 
I was going to report to the WWW a few weeks ago as I was continually passing a field of horses with ragworth and no grass! It was disgusting. Thankfully on my travels (as I was about to report) 3 strapping lads were in there pulling it out.
It is all over the place and it does seem that the council does nothing about it
 
We have massive issues. I am YO and I organise removal of the Ragwort from my land ... only to have environmental health from the council call me to tell me I'm disposing of it wrong and should transport it in black bags to the local composting site. Very funny. I have 50 acres ... with fields all surrounding me covered in the yellow stuff (tried with defra for years and oh, they send letters to the land owners, but no one responds or cares. Letters don't help!) so you can imagine the problems in my field. Every years I remove it all without fail, with the help of all liveries. I've tried spraying but the effects seems negligible, too expensive and too weather dependent. I've tried cutting the then resting the ground until it's all gone and this has helped stop the seeding, but with seeds that live in the soil for 22 years the impact again is not amazing. Pull, burn, pull, burn. I refuse to give up and have now started climbing into private gardens alongside my grazing and pull theirs out too. I don't acre about trespass any more. I swear my funeral pyre will be on top of a mountain of laughing Ragwort.

/rant over!
 
Its awful stuff. In the Isle of man we were innundated.
However they did a ragowort amnesty, so if you had ragwort on grazing land the council would come and remove it.
I am not sure what they law is over here but over there if you are reported for having ragwort on grazing land you can be shut down until it is removed :eek:

Thankfully now in North Cumbria, I have not seen any of it in my horses fields..
 
I was just having the same discussion with my OH! The amount of fields I pass that are full of ragwort and no grass. It disgusts me that people leav e there horses in fields full of it!
 
Yup we're innundated with the stuff; I keep my acreage clear of it but its allowed to grow freely beside the roads here, and particularly on the main bridlepath.

Idea: get the yobs/ABSO kids in London and elsewhere out into the country for some nice country air, give 'em each an alloted portion and tell them if they want to get fed and housed at the end of the day, then get pulling. That way it would do us all a favour and show Dave's Big Society at its best.

And also send the trendies, the social workers and the general doo-gooding population out here as well, coz by gad we'd sort 'em out. A bit of good straightforward country speaking is what's needed.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant!! :)
 
It's terrible in North Yorkshire too. There is a yard at the end of my road where the field is pretty bad. Do these people with horses not even realise?

I have thought about speaking to the Landowner myself but not sure what his reaction would be like?!?!

It is also all over the playing fields next door which i presume are Council owned but not sure. What is the best way of dealing with it other than going and pulling it up yourself?
 
PiebaldPeril said:
Yup we're innundated with the stuff; I keep my acreage clear of it but its allowed to grow freely beside the roads here, and particularly on the main bridlepath.

Idea: get the yobs/ABSO kids in London and elsewhere out into the country for some nice country air, give 'em each an alloted portion and tell them if they want to get fed and housed at the end of the day, then get pulling. That way it would do us all a favour and show Dave's Big Society at its best.

And also send the trendies, the social workers and the general doo-gooding population out here as well, coz by gad we'd sort 'em out. A bit of good straightforward country speaking is what's needed.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant!! :)
Click to expand...

WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!!!!!!!!
 
Its quite bad where I am as well, although on our yard we have only had a few plants and we are all meticulous about pulling it up and burning it.

On my previous yard the paddocks were full of the stuff. YO didn't worry about it as he said the horses won't eat it in the paddocks! The only time he bothered about it was when it came to hay making and then we all had to get out in the fields and pull the stuff up before the grass could be cut - and yes we used our bare hands (didn't know any better then)! I dread to think how much of the ragwort found its way into the hay bales. Luckily we weren't at that yard too long.

Our local council has recently had men out pulling the stuff up from the roadside and verges.
 
After spending 3 days being out for about 12 hours solid each day picking the damn stuff, I have so say I do feel disgusted when you then go by a paddock with only a handful of the yellow stuff in it that someone can't be bothered to pick.

I hate loathe and detest the stuff, but I'd rather pick it than witness another horse with Ragwrt poisoning.
 
PiebaldPeril said:
And also send the trendies, the social workers and the general doo-gooding population out here as well, coz by gad we'd sort 'em out. A bit of good straightforward country speaking is what's needed.
Click to expand...

Ahem...I'm a Social Worker, but dont really think I'm a dogooder though :-)
Last week I went by road to Scotland on holidays and was astounded by the amount of ragwort that was both beside the roads on verges and embankments. I also saw some lovely ponies in a field full of the yellow stuff! I cannot believe there are still owners out there ignorant to the dangers of ragwort.
I did see though, 2 workmen on a verge pulling up it by hand. I really didnt envy their job, as there was miles and miles of the stuff to pull!!
 
Every year I pull and burn all my ragwort, thinking that after nearly 5 years in my field it would be less and less every year. After 3 years I did see some improvement and there did seem less, but this year it has been horrendous (maybe weather was perfect for the dormant seeds to sprout) ?. My hubby found me sitting in the middle of the field with my head in my hands, one part of the field is yellow all over :eek:, in a way I hate to admit defeat but him finding me like this as inspired him and his 3 brothers to have a afternoon of pulling rag with me. Unfortunately this field was left feral for years, horses have been moved off like every year untill the bloody stuff as all been removed. I would leave the field but I have built my stables and feed/hay store there and it is only a 5 min walk from my house.
 
Drove from Notts to Chesterfield last week up the M1 was gobsmacked by the amount of the revolting stuff:(:mad:
Our yard is free of it at present, but you can see it 'moving in'. The council just seem to cut it down on the roadsides occasionally, but don't pull it:mad:
Helped pull it years ago on one yard we were on (moved very soon afterwards;)) and despite wearing gloves was ill for days afterwards. I nearly had a fit last year when the local primary school where my son goes started cultivating it in the wild flower garden, it was removed very quickly when I pointed out the dangers and that as my son has had a liver transplant was unsure what damage it could do him!
 
This year is particularly bad, I don't think I've ever seen quite so much even on wasteland. Some plaes look like rapeseed fields from a distance. I managed to get a whole barrowful out of our field, which wasn't even that bad, and still the little blighters are cropping up daily.
 
I took on the rent of a 2 acre ragwort field 7 years ago. I naiivly thought that once I had pulled it all out that would be that -ha ha ha

We divided the field into 4. Every spring 2 sections were spot sprayed whilst the other two were in use, then we would swop. over the summer we would do ragwort patrol every time we were about to move the horses onto a new section. We made absolutely certain that not a single plant was allowed to go to seed. Then in the autmn we would try to spot spray all 4 sections again (we would also spray the docks, nettles and buttercups). After 5 years we were on top of it, and generaly would only find half a dozen or so plants per section. I am sure I suffered from ragwort vison. I was unable to walk across any grass without scanning for rags. I would also pull any rags fromthe nearby verges just to make sure no seeds would blow into my field.

We moved 18 months ago and gave up that field. I passed it last week and saw that it now has 2 new equine inhabitants and was mortified to se a liberal spinkling of yellow. All that work gone to waste GRRRR

I think the offence is not 'to have ragwort', but to allow it to proliferate on, or to allow it to spread to animal grazing pasture. The minimum action to be taken is to prevent it seeding, hence why the county councils (in charge of roads) tend to cut the verges at this tiome of year. DEFRA are supposed to enforce the regs. I guess if you are having issues you need to badger them.

We have fortunately moved house and our land is bordered by crops so no rags, and I have yet to find a single one on our land - our new foe is docks!!!
 
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PiebaldPeril said:
Yup we're innundated with the stuff; I keep my acreage clear of it but its allowed to grow freely beside the roads here, and particularly on the main bridlepath.

Idea: get the yobs/ABSO kids in London and elsewhere out into the country for some nice country air, give 'em each an alloted portion and tell them if they want to get fed and housed at the end of the day, then get pulling. That way it would do us all a favour and show Dave's Big Society at its best.

And also send the trendies, the social workers and the general doo-gooding population out here as well, coz by gad we'd sort 'em out. A bit of good straightforward country speaking is what's needed.

Sorry, didn't mean to rant!! :)
Click to expand...

joy said:
WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

That was the first thing that crossed my mind too:p
I wage constant war with ragwort with one of my fields, the dry-wet-dry weather sequence has made it worse for me this time.
 
MissTyc said:
We have massive issues. I am YO and I organise removal of the Ragwort from my land ... only to have environmental health from the council call me to tell me I'm disposing of it wrong and should transport it in black bags to the local composting site.
Click to expand...

Dozy sods. The bl**dy stuff shouldn't be composted but burned or buried very deeply. The worst thing I ever did was buy compost for the garden from the council composting site. The weeds in my garden the next year were horrendous. Took years to get rid of them.
 
Oh yes have to agree it is particularly bad this year, my field is surrounded by it, I have even resorted to removing from the neighbouring highway myself early on a Sunday morning looking most probably like a complete NUT! Hate it and its so prolific it just keeps coming back.
 
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