ragwort I have had it with the myths

E

EstherHegt

Well-Known Member
Joined
14 July 2009
Messages
120
Location
Netherlands
www.ragwort.jakobskruiskruid.com
As a horse owner I know you have to do good pasture management. Good management can prevent ragwort and that it is the key. Digging and pulling can make it worse. If horses are starving you force them to eat. That is not the plants problem, that is a management problem.
I love horses and ragwort and did a lot of investigation about the plant. Today I was looking in my archives and I found it remarkable that all the fear in UK came from one source. Everebody did repeat that source, that source is prof Knottenbelt, he is the one who make people afraid! One source!!! But there are much more sources who completely say different things, there is a lot of scientific info about ragwort, we don t 'need need fear and Chinese whispers.
All the fear is copied to other countries. All the money spent at ragwort act etc would better spent at education about how to prevent you have ragwort in the pasture. Fear is not a good thing to listen at.
At my Dutch website we get a lot of mails for determination off the plant, most are different yellow plants! Go ask please, go search please to the sources of the myths. Ask the figures, in the Netherlands that worked good. We had a ragwort symposium with a lot of experts, do the same we did and stop this fear. Good hay is important and good pasture management. Look in the archives of the papers in England and you will see , there is only one source for the panic.

Maybe a poll is also a good option, with good questions, like did they a post mortem, was it in the food, wich lab did it etc. We did it, and only a few responses. And yes I also lost a horse with kliverfailure, she was only 6 years old, but it was NOT ragwort.
 
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??:confused:

Maybe it's your english but I haven't really got a clue what you're on about? What 'myth'?

Ragwort is posionous to ALL animals, inc sheep and cattle as well as humans and dogs and cats.

I've known a couple of animals die of ragwort posioning. I've also dissected plenty of sheep, couple cattle and one horse with severe liver damage caused by ragwort (the scarring you get is quite distinctive).
 
Kallibear said:
??:confused:

Maybe it's your english but I haven't really got a clue what you're on about? What 'myth'?

Ragwort is posionous to ALL animals, inc sheep and cattle as well as humans and dogs and cats.

I've known a couple of animals die of ragwort posioning. I've also dissected plenty of sheep, couple cattle and one horse with severe liver damage caused by ragwort (the scarring you get is quite distinctive).
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Ragwort is poisonous yes, but not for all animals, dogs and cats and humanns don't eat hay, sheep have a different metabolism then horses, and are much more tolerant. A horse don't eat fresh ragwort, n hay they don't taste it. Ask at the labs, ask by DEFRA how many animals died at ragwort. Ask them also how many at grass sickness or other poisonous plants. Try to look in perspective of the problem, are ther not bigger health problems, like neglect?
 
Having just investigated and realised the OP is weirdo with a love for ragwort, I retract my orginal post!

It IS posionous to horses and any owner who deliberatly lets their horse have access to it is negligent and cruel. End of.
 
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Stinkbomb said:
Im with kallibear, ive no idea what your talking about???

ETA... Well thats a new one on me.... a ragwort lover?????
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I think the correct term is ragwort 'enthusiast' ;)

EstherHegt said:
Try to look in perspective of the problem, are ther not bigger health problems, like neglect?
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:confused: :confused: I think we owe our own horses the best of care, which involves removing all poisonous and toxic plants from their pasture. Common sense, no? And yes, I have dealt with numerous ragwort toxicity cases on a professional level. I have also read up a fair bit of research, both pre-dating Professor Knottenbelt's work and entirely unconnected with it :cool:
 
Kallibear said:
Having just investigated and realised the OP is weirdo with a love for ragwort, I retract my orginal post!

It IS posionous to horses and any owner who deliberatly lets their horse have access to it is negligent and cruel. End of.
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Some people cannot help having it nomatter how much money, time and effort they put into removing it.

I spent an average of 12 to 14 hours a week last year helping a friend spray and rip out ragwort, we went to the tip 4/5 times with full horse trailer loads of the yellow stuff (brown after spraying of course) to get rid of it.

However fields surrounding it are FULL and I mean FULL of it. Complained to the council, yep that did alot of good, complained to DEFRA that did even less.

So again this year currently going round spraying AGAIN by hand as fields are too steep for a tractor and all the spraying does is kill the ragwort AND the grass and leave us with more and more docken plants as the grass dies off.

What can you do in that scenario?? The horses WONT eat it unless starving and I dont think our guys will starve considering they are brought in everynight and 2 horses on 3 acres (split into 3 fields), so I thinkthat your sweeping statement on negligent owners KB (and not because we dont really get on but Id challenge that from anyone) isnt really fair when you cant stop the surrounding people from not eradicating it.
 
Black Beastie said:
Some people cannot help having it nomatter how much money, time and effort they put into removing it.

I spent an average of 12 to 14 hours a week last year helping a friend spray and rip out ragwort, we went to the tip 4/5 times with full horse trailer loads of the yellow stuff (brown after spraying of course) to get rid of it.

However fields surrounding it are FULL and I mean FULL of it. Complained to the council, yep that did alot of good, complained to DEFRA that did even less.

So again this year currently going round spraying AGAIN by hand as fields are too steep for a tractor and all the spraying does is kill the ragwort AND the grass and leave us with more and more docken plants as the grass dies off.

What can you do in that scenario?? The horses WONT eat it unless starving and I dont think our guys will starve considering they are brought in everynight and 2 horses on 3 acres (split into 3 fields), so I thinkthat your sweeping statement on negligent owners KB (and not because we dont really get on but Id challenge that from anyone) isnt really fair when you cant stop the surrounding people from not eradicating it.
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You live in Lanark, yes? One of the worse affected areas in Britain and I really don't envy you. I've driven through many times and seen fields where they appear to be growing ragwort as a crop :eek: AND have cattle/sheep/horses on it :(

You are not deliberatly allowing your horses access: by the sound of it your put a huge amount of effort in to controlling it! Maybe my common should have read 'deliberate access with no effort being made to control it'. Not the same as the OP who seems to be suggesting cultivating the damn stuff!
 
Kallibear said:
You live in Lanark, yes? One of the worse affected areas in Britain and I really don't envy you. I've driven through many times and seen fields where they appear to be growing ragwort as a crop :eek: AND have cattle/sheep/horses on it :(

You are not deliberatly allowing your horses access: by the sound of it your put a huge amount of effort in to controlling it! Maybe my common should have read 'deliberate access with no effort being made to control it'. Not the same as the OP who seems to be suggesting cultivating the damn stuff!
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Yup farmers dont care as they take the cows etc out before there is too little grass to have the beasts NEED to eat it so they dont are that it spreads everywhere. Its horrid stuff and I end up minging after pullin it and my hands stink for days even with repeated scrubbings and gloves :(

Government just doesnt impse heavy enough fines OR any help for those who just CANNOT get rid of the blurry stuff :mad:

Yeah we try but there is always some there but the nags dont eat it as they ahve enough to eat. I actually like winter in these fields as there is NONE!! :(
 
Listen up EH and listen good. Horses DO eat ragwort if their shite owners leave them in shite "pasture" where the only green thing is ragwort. They can even develop a taste for the bitterness of it. It has a cumulative effect so stunned owners often see the effects of ragwort damage even if they have owned their horse or pony for years and have religiously pulled or poisoned every ragwort plant for miles around. For your information, Professor Derek Knottenbelt is a WORLD expert on liver damage in horses not just some back street twonk. I took on a rescued gipsy cob a few years ago. She was suffering from acute ragwort poisoning. With the Professor's help, I pulled her back from the brink of death and she enjoyed 4 more years of happy and active life. She was being kept in a foul "field" where the broken farm machinery littering the land had already claimed the life of her tiny foal because the owners had put a webbing headcollar on the 8 week old foal and she had caught it on the derelict machinery and had been hanged. Her dam had been forced to eat ragwort in a last ditch, desperate attempt to have enough milk for her foal. This next bit is for YOU to read EH: when she came to me she was almost too weak to stand. She was skin and bone, maybe a condition score .5. Her entire head looked as though she'd pushed it into a bonfire, so bad was the acute photosensitivity that ragwort causes. She had lost all interest in life and living. She was almost at the end stage where the horse will press its head against a wall in a corner. There was blood in her urine. Her liver function results were ghastly. Her blood didn't clot properly. Ragwort damaged livers cannot regenerate so this little mare always walked a knife edge re her liver health and when the end started, she went downhill with terrifying rapidity. End stage liver failure includes collapse, bloat, blindness, neurological damage, self harm and awful vocalisations and gaits as the horse tries to flee from its own body. It is one of the most awful and distressing things you would ever see and the only humane thing to do, long before the horse reaches that point, is euthanasia.

Until you have seen what ragwort can do EH, I suggest you drop Professor Knottenbelt an e-mail and ask him for the evidence that has led him to be the world expert that he is. Better yet, why not ask him if you could drop in when he has his next ragwort case in so you can take the role of interested bystander and watch what happens. Or you could try eating it yourself for a few months, in the interests of science, and then maybe report back to this Forum?

Please, until you know what you're talking about, keep your character slurs and ignorance to yourself.
 
I take it the OP has never seen a horse dying of ragwort poisoning.
Also sheep & cattle are affected by ragwort if they eat it but are usually slaughtered for other reasons before the effects are noticeable.
 
I have to say one thing about Ragwort. When I moved to France I was told by quite a few people Ragwort doesn't grow in France, so when I found it growing in my fields I thought I'd take some to our Vets (the biggest in the area) for confirmation. At the vet we consulted the official French guide to toxic plants and confirmed it was Senecio jacobaea; which states 'a horse will have to eat between 5 and 25% of body weight to cause damage or death'. Ragwort is only designated as medium risk; with many more plants higher up the scale. I can't believe there's so much difference in the the stance between two countries.

I still pull it when I see though and as I cut my own hay, I make sure there's none in my bales. Old habits die hard.
 
Finally, a bit of sense from Box_Of_Frogs. 'Horses DO eat ragwort if their shite owners leave them in shite "pasture" where the only green thing is ragwort. They can even develop a taste for the bitterness of it.'

Exactly. It's the owners not the plant.

Horse owners love to blame the plant or the landowner or anybody else except themselves for the problems ragwort can cause.

There is an almost complete logic blackout when it comes to this plant. Take Prof Knottenbelt's famous picture of an emaciated horse in a pasture with ragwort. How do we know there is ragwort in the pasture? That would be because we can see the plants and they are all uneaten.

I made an FOI request last year to the Philip Leverhulme Equine Hospital and their figures for horses with liver failure were a fraction of the claims made by Knottenbelt. I questioned him about his published claim that there are at least 1,000 deaths a year and he replied that he ALWAYS said there were 500.

Esther's point (and well done to all those who have mocked her English - perhaps you'd like to reply in Dutch next time) is that targeting this one plant and perpetuating the myths about it risks damaging horses because the real risks to health are ignored.

I'm sure everybody here genuinely takes good care of their animals and wants to ensure they are not exposed to harm (and, of course, removing ragwort from pasture and developing a good sward to keep it out is a sensible part of that) so why do you defend those who persist in exposing animals to risk by buying cheap hay or, even, renting cheap pasture?
 
ragwortsense said:
Finally, a bit of sense from Box_Of_Frogs. 'Horses DO eat ragwort if their shite owners leave them in shite "pasture" where the only green thing is ragwort. They can even develop a taste for the bitterness of it.'

Exactly. It's the owners not the plant.

Horse owners love to blame the plant or the landowner or anybody else except themselves for the problems ragwort can cause.

There is an almost complete logic blackout when it comes to this plant. Take Prof Knottenbelt's famous picture of an emaciated horse in a pasture with ragwort. How do we know there is ragwort in the pasture? That would be because we can see the plants and they are all uneaten.

I made an FOI request last year to the Philip Leverhulme Equine Hospital and their figures for horses with liver failure were a fraction of the claims made by Knottenbelt. I questioned him about his published claim that there are at least 1,000 deaths a year and he replied that he ALWAYS said there were 500.

Esther's point (and well done to all those who have mocked her English - perhaps you'd like to reply in Dutch next time) is that targeting this one plant and perpetuating the myths about it risks damaging horses because the real risks to health are ignored.

I'm sure everybody here genuinely takes good care of their animals and wants to ensure they are not exposed to harm (and, of course, removing ragwort from pasture and developing a good sward to keep it out is a sensible part of that) so why do you defend those who persist in exposing animals to risk by buying cheap hay or, even, renting cheap pasture?
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I don't understand your logic. How does controlling ragwort stop owners from taking other preventative measures to prevent harm to their horses ?

Don't you think its the owners who control ragwort, who are more likely to be poo picking, cleaning water troughs, removing dangerous objects from the field and ensuring the paddocks don't become overrun with weeds ?

Irresponsible owners who leave horses in ragwort paddocks are by definition, less likely to practice good land management.

I remember you too, you tend to pop up when Ragwort Lover woman appears. You're either a friend of hers or you google constantly for any mention of the weed. You'd do much more for the environment if you put your energy into preserving hedgerows.
 
I think I agree with everyone here - a deadly plant to horses in some circumstances, which are not predictable (ie not all horses need to be starving to eat it), but also just one of the hazards our horses face. I can't see how pulling it before flowering helps propogate it is carefully removed? Is it as problematic as say, ground elder, where any tiny little bit of root left will grow a new plant? I don't know.

I do also know that it is the only food of one particular caterpillar, and it would be great if we could leave pockets of it but only away from where horses are grazing. I have seen it in Battle Great Woods in East Sussex, covered in these caterpillars, but it is in the middle of the woods and the seeds would struggle to reach pasture.
 
horserider

It is perfectly simple. There would be less harm caused by ragwort if the focus was on ensuring it doesn't get into conserved forage.

Have you read this*? http://www.susan-white.co.uk/index....ase-studies-2/maizey-horse-ragwort-poisoning/

'With still no confirmation of it being Ragwort all the horses were still being fed the contaminated hay'

It is, of course, impossible to be certain but some of these animals might have survived if the owner and the vet had been more aware of the danger of ragwort in feed.

*Ignore the nonsense about the 'magic potions'.
 
Thanks sbloom, you've reminded me of their hidden agenda. Personally, I'd rather prevent horses from suffering an agonising death.

Their campaign of twisted truths and untruths on horse forums is pretty distasteful.

Fortunately, most horse people are not stupid enough to fall for it.
 
EstherHegt said:
Ragwort is poisonous yes, but not for all animals, dogs and cats and humanns don't eat hay, sheep have a different metabolism then horses, and are much more tolerant. A horse don't eat fresh ragwort, n hay they don't taste it. Ask at the labs, ask by DEFRA how many animals died at ragwort. Ask them also how many at grass sickness or other poisonous plants. Try to look in perspective of the problem, are ther not bigger health problems, like neglect?
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If sheep are much more tolerant than horses to ragwort, then is surely makes it even more important to get rid of the stuff?

A horse WILL eat fresh ragwort, there are cases where horses appear to have developed a taste for it, and a horse can also accidentally nibble at leaves while grazing. If they don't taste it in hay then that makes it even more dangerous.
Neglect is a huge problem, but liver poisoning is not pleasant for any horse to suffer and I can't see why anyone would consider it a non-issue. :confused:

There are fields full of the weed near me, I certainly won't be ignoring it, it spreads like wildfire and removal is good pasture managemnt.
 
What fear are we talking about OP? I am not afraid of ragwort, it is a beautiful plant, but I don't allow it to grow in our fields. We control it because it is harmful to our animals, we also make hay and need to ensure it is ragwort free so that we can feed it to our animals. Professor Knottenbelt hasn't caused fear, he is a scientist (and quite a good one at that! :)) and has simply published the results of his research. I understand, that in this country at least, owners can be prosecuted for allowing horses to graze in ragwort infested fields, another incentive for removing it perhaps! I don't particularly worry about my horses eating it in the field, they have plenty of grass, but I wouldn't want them ingesting or inhaling the seeds which also cause damage nor would I want them seeding and allowing new growth.
 
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