Ragwort in Hay now paranoid

[joy]

I found a whole plant in a bale of otherwise clean hay. I get my hay from a good dealer and she sources good suppliers. I have a suspicion that this bale was taken from the edge of a field where the dam poison thing could have gone unnoticed under the hedgeline.
I have already had 20 bales from this batch but have not noticed anything in the others I took this bale back and the dealer said she would tell the supplier but they had had 2500 bales and I was the only one to find anything.
I have another 10 bales to go and I am behaving like a mad woman, every blade is scrutinised but so far all I have found is clover, legumes (with infuriating yellow flowers), ryegrass, ordinary grass, some dock leaves and some dandelions.
Am I going over the top?

 

[sanda]

It must be meadow hay with all that in it,
Ive been there but now I just get Timothy or a reseed mix because like you say you will get paranoid, and its more likely found in meadow hay
It happened to me like I said and I just didnt feed any more because there was only about 20 bales. I gave it to old cows that werent going into the food chain anyway as they were too old, and they lived ok !

 

[Murphs_Mum]

I would check carefully but would guess you are right and it was just a bad bale from the edge of a field, make sure you tell your supplier and keep a check but remember ragwort poisoning is a cumulative problem, one plant is not the end of the world.

 

[Tia]

Just because you are the only one to complain does not mean that you are the only one to have ragwort in there hay. Your hay supplier should know that ragwort never ever grows alone.....there will be other ragwort plants around it....and therefore WILL for certain be in other bales of hay. The only difference may be that you are the only one to notice it or to tell her.

To be honest, the hay sounds like rubbish to me. Dock leaves, dandelions and buttercups should not be in good quality hay.

We produce the finest quality hay and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there are no weeds whatsoever in our hay. We have never had a bale returned and we produce thousands of small squares. Our hay fields are tended daily - we check them for any undesirable plants and we don't even have these weeds growing at the edges of our fields.

We are organic so we have to do this as we prefer not to use any chemicals during any stage of our hay production.

The difference between meadow hay and seed hay is purely the different time of cutting; either the hay is cut before the plant goes to seed or not. It doesn't have anything to do with where it is grown or what type of grasses are in it. Your hay could be either of these - you will know by looking at the grasses to see whether there are seed heads or whether the seeds have dispersed. We only make seed-hay which means we cut before the plants go to seed. Seed hay is a higher quality hay.

Anyway that is by the by - my advice? Look for another hay supplier who takes care over his product.