Poisonous or not?

Is it true that this unknown plant is poisonous to livestock? Also, what is the name, please.

 

I think it's Ragwort and it's a killer..Landownwers these days haven't a clue and allow it to grow and seed everywhere! Even the verges are full of the stuff.
If it gets into hay bales the livestock are in big do-do:eek:

 

http://www.ragwortfacts.com/

 

Thanks Paladin and Ivory.

We saw no end of it on our day trip over to Holland yesterday and my cousin said it was poisonous and that a friends horse had eaten some and died, but couldn't remember the name.

 

I have a friend at college who spends hours in summer helping her mum remove the stuff from the horses paddocks....

 

Usually home of cinnabar moth caterpillars Kedi very attractive but the plant is deadly to livestock.
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/invertebrates_terrestrial_and_freshwater/Tyria_jacobaeae/

 

What a deadly beauty!!!

Kalmia - we saw it everywhere yesterday. If there is anywhere near as much in your friends paddock, then it is a full-time job to get rid of it.

Thanks for the link Walnut, very interesting and I've saved it to my Favourites. The caterpillar matches the flowers, but the moth has a completely different colour. Nature is amazing.

 

One leaf of Ragwort can kill a horse - it's that bad. I spent a summer growing blisters and callouses removing it from a field once. Bit of a never-ending job as the councils let it grow horrendously so of course it re-seeds itself everywhere.

 

I live in the New Forest area and each year hundreds of volunteers go round pulling it up so the Ponies don't eat it.

 

Nasty stuff, Pull it up.

Reminds me of spending a solid month pulling the dmned stuff up from FC rides, only good thing was I was mostly driving the transit tipper rather than pulling it!!

 

This is not the case. It takes a great deal of ragwort to poison a horse and research also shows that ragwort poisoning is rare. The problem is that a campaign has been generated using bad data that does not agree with the scientific literature. Another scare tactic has been to tell people that ragwort is dangerous for people to handle. This isn't true either.
It is also not true that it seeds very easily.
For more details see the site above and in particular this section.

http://www.ragwortfacts.com/ragwort-myths.html

or alternatively

http://www.ragwort.jakobskruiskruid.com

 

Botanist, Your website is at best miss leading and at worst entirly wrong and biased.

It does seed prolificly, I can assure you of this.

living in a rural area having worked on farms, working for several vets and knowing many horse owners I can confirm that poisoning isnt that rare and ive heard of quite a few cases. the death from ragwort poisoning is agonising and prolonged.

As for folk handling it, it poisons by acumulation in the blood stream, Therfore those handaling it should wear gloves.

If Ragwort was a harmless plant that you infer, the councils, farmers, forestry commision etc wouldnt spend £££s clearing it each year.

 

I seem to remember that there was a purge a few years back to eradicate it from the countyside, we now have complete fields of the stuff around here.

I know nothing about livestock, but I seem to remember hearing somewhere that in its green state animals will avoid it, its when it gets into hay and winter feed that the problems start.

This could be total rubbish, if so let me know.
But I think we are stuck with it now.

It would be nice to know where this plant comes from and how it is dealt with in that country.

 

Your corect pete, its in a dry form it becomes an issue, although if pasture is over grazed with minimal grass then stock will eat it.

 

Ragwort is not the most poisonous wild plant to grace our fair isle, but it is sufficiently nasty to get it's own act of parliament, along with a few accomplices, in the Dangerous Weeds act 1959.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/wildlife/weeds/weedscontrol.htm

Contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to have it on your land, and in fact it's eradication is discouraged because it is part of the native eco-system. However if you have grazing livestock, you have to get rid of it, and if your neighbours have grazing livestock, and you have Ragwort, you have to clear it from something like 12 metres (can't remember the exact distance) from the neighbours boundary, and keep it under control so the seeds don't go next door.

As a general rule, I was told that if you see ragwort on your land, pull it out immediately.

Incidentally, its toxicity is such that a cow would have to eat it's own body weight in ragwort before it reached a fatal dose. That sounds a lot, but of course it could easily do so over a few days.