Hay full of ragwort - wwyd?

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JillA

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New people next door to me are new to owning land and they have a 2 acre paddock they really have no use for or idea how to manage (it used to be rented to a local shire horse stud before it was sold). It is full of ragwort, shire horse owner used to pull once a year but there is a fair amount of it. New owners keep themselves to themselves, pleasant enough when I encounter them but don't go out of their way to socialise.
Thanks, I think, to advice from the Knowitallbutknowsnothing man across the road (done by the contractors who did his 1/2 acre) it has been mown, dried and baled for hay :( Now it is being offered for sale, and I am concerned about who is going to buy it. As above it really isn't any of my business but I can't help being anxious with the amount of ragwort. My tenants who are livestock dealers say it isn't safe for any stock to eat.
So, do I sit back and do nothing? WWYD?
 
Where is it offered for sale? If fb I’d be inclined to comment on the ad (or get someone else to).

I had a couple of Heston bales from a supplier with dried ragwort in. A friend asked if she could have it instead of me burning it and happily fed it 😱 she said she found the uneaten ragwort at the bottom of the haynets and as her horses are still here many years later I can only assume she was right. It’s not a chance I’d take obviously and I was angry that it was sold to me. The farmer was very apologetic and said it was a one off but I couldn’t have bought hay off him again.
 
meleeka said:
Where is it offered for sale? If fb I’d be inclined to comment on the ad (or get someone else to).

I had a couple of Heston bales from a supplier with dried ragwort in. A friend asked if she could have it instead of me burning it and happily fed it 😱 she said she found the uneaten ragwort at the bottom of the haynets and as her horses are still here many years later I can only assume she was right. It’s not a chance I’d take obviously and I was angry that it was sold to me. The farmer was very apologetic and said it was a one off but I couldn’t have bought hay off him again.
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Yes. Mrs Knowitallbutknowsnothing has advertised it in the local FB group, and I have pointed it out and also my tenant has put her two pennyworth in. I feel sorry for the new people that Mr Knowitallbutknowsnothing has been giving out bad advice and yes, I know it was up to them to take it but they are townies. Just hope they have learned a valuable lesson - 80 bales of useless hay in the field, nowhere to get it undercover and rain forecast. I would buy the paddock off them but not with all that to get rid of
 
I saw a local DIY livery yard bale masses of ragwort in hay a few years back and had the same dilemma. I told everyone I knew not to buy it for their horses. I would tell as many people as I can who buy hay, if I was you.
 
deicinmerlyn said:
Ragwort kills cattle too!
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That's what my tenant (very experienced livestock dealers) said - she said she wouldn't even like to use it as bedding in case they picked at it.

Paddock owner has just been round, declining my invitation to come in, stood on the doorstep demanding to know why I didn't just check with him (well, er, you let Mrs Knowitall try to sell it on FB for you) and telling me the contractor said he had pulled it all. Two acre paddock in the short time it takes to get the mower in and going? I doubt it somehow.

He was, shall we say, assertive, asking why I thought it was a neighbourly thing to do. In the end I asked him to leave. No idea why Mrs Knowitall didn't respond to my comment on her thread to that effect, would have been the commonsense thing to do but he seemed to want to bully me. He now knows I won't be bullied lol.
I no longer feel sorry for the new people rofl
 
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The field next to me has been baled lovely hay in the main but also has patches of ragwort in the field they did spray earlier in the year but there was still a lot in patches so wouldnt feed to mine. Mind you he has made Heston so I presume it is for his cattle who normally graze this field
 
My old neighbour who used to be a farm worker back in the day never knew anything about ragwort - he used to call it "the yellow flower that Jill doesn't like" lol. I guess beef cattle have such a relatively short life that a cumulative poison like ragwort won't kill them before the abbatoir does? You'd think dairy herd owners would be aware - my tenant who did know came to farming via a horse management course hence her awareness
 
JillA said:
My old neighbour who used to be a farm worker back in the day never knew anything about ragwort - he used to call it "the yellow flower that Jill doesn't like" lol. I guess beef cattle have such a relatively short life that a cumulative poison like ragwort won't kill them before the abbatoir does? You'd think dairy herd owners would be aware - my tenant who did know came to farming via a horse management course hence her awareness
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Then it goes into the meat?
 
sheep are used as ragwort control round these parts-sheep go onto the pasture to clear it of ragwort florets and docklings before the cattle go back out. I don't know how ruminants process ragwort-it is toxic to pretty much everything-but they are far less susceptible to toxins than horses and yes, have a shorter life expectancy generally.
 
Sheep used to clear it around here too. Never actually looked into how or why they can process it.

Ragwart is definitely not acceptable for beef cattle if it's a good and conscientious farmer. I can remember being sent out to pull ragwart from the beef cattle fields by my grandparents from when I was under ten with a hessian feed sack hanging from Baler twine across my body to put all the pulled stuff in to be burned.

As I got older I figured that my grandparents weren't huge fans of mine, or of my sister, and that my cousins never got sent out to a field of bullocks to pull toxic ragwart with their bare hands 😂 they might have been evil but they were good farmers and made amazing hay too
 
Most dairy farmers feed silage to their dairy cattle including beef cattle, they don’t live as long as horses, sheep are fed hay, usually culled at about 8 years of age, that’s why some farmers won’t be worried about ragwort in hay..whereas our horses usually live into their 20s, and it has a detrimental effect on their organs if eaten long term.
 
Fransurrey said:
Actually alkakoids are more likely to kill cancer cells. Some chemotherapies are based in this drug class.
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I remember reading that the first chemo treatment was designed as a chemical weapon. It was a modified form of mustard gas😮
 
Chinchilla said:
Wh the liver is damaged badly enough the toxins affect the entire body.
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IF they have eater vast quantities of the stuff. Many farmers these days don't rely on old pasture but reseed on a regular basis and those that have hill pasture generally rotate with sheep. Sheep eat the ragwort rosettes before they develop stalks and they would be most at risk. But do the leaves contain the toxins?
 
JillA said:
IF they have eater vast quantities of the stuff. Many farmers these days don't rely on old pasture but reseed on a regular basis and those that have hill pasture generally rotate with sheep. Sheep eat the ragwort rosettes before they develop stalks and they would be most at risk. But do the leaves contain the toxins?
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The toxins are present in the whole plant to an extent but PA concentrations vary according to season and are higher in the flowers than the leaves (there's more chlorophyll in leaves generally but especially in older plants.) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031942213004810

PA Concentration is less in dehydrated plants too, hence why fresh ragwort is bitter but dried is more palatable, but this is generally true of all toxins in plants - I guess as they're in aqueous solution but don't quote me on that?!

(the only other examples I can think of right now is conium maculatum and atropa belladona with toxins significantly reduced in dry plants, but there'll be others, I just haven't drunk enough coffee to remember them yet :P )
 
Years ago I worked for a dairy farmer who had grass banks to graze that belonged to the quarry. Because they were big banks of disturbed soil ragwort was a problem even when the banks had been sown with grass seed, so one of my jobs was to remove the ragwort.
 
I've gone on a ragwort murdering spree today and I've just realised there are loads of Cinabar moths in caterpillar form on them😮 I feel quite bad now...
However I did look it up and apparently the moth is quite common. As much as I like wildlife I'll have to continue my killing spree. Sorry Cinabar moths/ cattarpillars :(
 
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