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Post by lilaclomax on Jun 13, 2009 20:22:58 GMT 1
I think it is the same all over the country, you get horse owners who pull up ragwort every year without fail and then you have the owners who share the same field/land but who's horses 'would never eat it!'
**bangs head against wall time again!**
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Post by gem on Jun 15, 2009 13:23:17 GMT 1
I spent almost 3 hours pulling ragwort from my new field yesterday and you cant even tell I was there still another go tonight me thinks!
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Post by gordo on Jun 15, 2009 18:37:42 GMT 1
I cannot believe how it springs up in places that were cleared a few days earlier - must grow on steroids!!
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Post by LuckyRed on Jun 16, 2009 16:36:23 GMT 1
it is evil magic - you pick and area, there is no ragwort, you turn your back to put the rag fork in the wheelbarrow with the satisfaction of a job well done and when you turn back again, there, with an evil laugh is another bunch of the stuff!
In the links at the beginning of this thread there was an interesting little bit about the phases of growth, seedlings, rosette and adult plant - at the seedling stage the horses don't even taste it so don't realise they are eating it but it is still poison. At the 2 larger stages they will often grab a mouthful, spit it out cos of the bitter taste and then eat it when it gets caught up with other grazing 2-3 days later after it has wilted and no longer tastes bitter!
Our grazing is run by a YO who boasts on his web site about his '40 yrs of experience in grass land management' but who still leaves us with a poor sward of grass in the fields cos he wont harrow and over-sow so although the fields look good from a distance, when you get close there is lots of bare soil between the grass plants and consequently lots of opportunity to take root for the billions of ragwort seeds that each plant can release!
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Post by mandal on Jul 2, 2009 8:33:33 GMT 1
It's also poisonous to sheep and cattle!!
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Post by tt on Jul 2, 2009 19:20:38 GMT 1
www.equinescienceupdate.co.uk/ragwort1a.htm And just in case we can persuade non horsey people the risks!People could be poisoned by ragwort, claims professor Mar 28 2006 Rhodri Clark, Western Mail HUMANS may face a growing threat of liver cancer and other ailments unless the rapid spread of a flowering plant is checked, an expert warned yesterday. Ragwort is well known to horse owners because it can poison and kill healthy horses and ponies. But the risks to human health have largely been dismissed because of the remote chances of the toxin contained in ragwort entering our food chain. Now a professor who specialises in horses' health is warning the risks to humans could increase as ragwort colonises fields, verges and even supermarket car parks. "The risks are minimal to humans, but whether a minimal risk is acceptable is another matter," said Prof Derek Knottenbelt, professor of equine internal medicine at the University of Liverpool. "There's a risk. However infinitesimal, that's unacceptable to me. The only way to have no risk is to remove the plant." He said the poisonous pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) contained in ragwort could spread to humans through several routes including honey and milk. In South Africa they had been found in bread, possibly through ragwort growing unseen among crops and being included in the flour. "If you saw cattle or sheep grazing a field of ragwort, would you want to eat the cow or lamb? I'm not sure I would," said Prof Knottenbelt, who lives at Neston, two miles from the Welsh border. One of the most common ways for humans to become infected is through contact with the plant, usually from pulling it up with bare hands. Prof Knottenbelt has first-hand experience of ragwort poisoning, having twice eaten the plant to assess its effects on the human body. For the first test he ate a quarter of a teaspoonful of mashed leaves, which tasted "vile". For the second he ate leaves which had wilted and had no flavour. He found the ingestion affected his liver enzymes but only temporarily. "It was transient because I only tried a tiny bit. I'm not going to poison myself to death." Risks to humans who suffer exposure to the PAs in ragwort could include vascular occlusion - narrowing of the blood vessels and arteries - and liver diseases. Prof Knottenbelt said some humans could be more susceptible to ragwort's toxicity than others, as scientists have suggested with variant CJD. Children were "much more at risk" from ragwort poison but had a greater capacity than adults to repair damaged livers. He said ragwort had almost been eliminated in the 1970s, when roadside verges were sprayed with weedkiller that poisoned broadleaf plants. "Now there's ragwort on every street corner and coming out of the concrete in every car park." He did not advocate a return to spraying verges with weedkiller but said farmers and landowners should destroy ragwort as it began to grow and ensure it did not flower and produce seeds. He said some environmentalists opposed ragwort eradication because the plant supported insects such as the cinnabar moth. But he claimed those insects could survive on other plants. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales said ragwort should be removed from fields where horses grazed but not from wild areas. "Everything has got a place in the food cycle," said a spokesperson. "We wouldn't want ragwort to be blitzed with chemicals. It's all part of a sensible management plan."
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dptc
Olympic Poster
Posts: 557
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Post by dptc on Jul 5, 2009 22:51:49 GMT 1
It is evil stuff and it frustrates me nothing is done, every year I see it growing in fields, hedgerows and along the highways and every year I write to various authorities who then tell me I have to write someone else - I have them all saved ready to just re-print last years letter these days! But every year it is back and spreading. Someone put a huge sign over a gate full of ragwort in red stating "RAGWORT KILLS" the sign just stayed there for 2 months, the ragwort died off no doubt spreading it's seed and will continue to do so - nothing is done grrrrrr!!
I count myself lucky that my fields don't have it, I pulled up one piece 3 years ago and that's been it. Hay always worries me as how do you know it's not in there, glad I cut my own!!
Is there any way of knowing if a field has ragwort in the winter?
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gypsyroselee
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She who does not make mistakes, does not make discoveries.
Posts: 611
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Post by gypsyroselee on Jul 10, 2009 8:41:39 GMT 1
I found one plant in my garden last year, immediately dug it up and disposed of it. That was it for last year - but this year there are loads of the rosettes coming up! As soon as i dig up one I see another 5 plants. Tempted to set fire to the garden!
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micki
Elementary Poster
Posts: 96
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Post by micki on Jul 11, 2009 13:25:38 GMT 1
I cleared my field a few weeks ago. Put the horses in a different field, went to have a look at the field i had cleared and couldn't believe how much was growing again. It took me an hour to clear it off again. At least it is now safe to let the horses back on it.
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Post by tomrabbit on Jul 11, 2009 15:01:58 GMT 1
Last year I took on a field with a lot of ragwort - it was next to some waste land, and the seed had spread from there. I partitioned the field off, and searched every square metre on my knees, parting the long grass to see down to the earth, and pulling up each plant and burning it. It took literally tens of hours - not sure how many in total, but sometimes I just felt like giving up. Most plants were small rosettes, and this year I notice a huge difference - hardly any ragwort, except at the edges, where I suppose the greatest part of the seed had landed. But I know the battle is still on. At least now I can spot a ragwort seedling from yards away! What's really funny, is that despite spending hours in my field blitzing the ragwort, I noticed last week that in my front garden, nowhere near the field, there was a 2 ft high flowering ragwort plant. Whoops.
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Post by andyhall on Jul 21, 2009 17:47:16 GMT 1
In the spring, we 'treated' 12 acres of land affected by ragwort.
The treatment 'killed' about 15% of the plants (which we still had to remove by hand).
We then spent 1 week, no less then 4hours a day; digging up ragwort (obviously it's very important to remove the roots).
The Paddocka are now clear, but we have to be very carefull after rain (that's when it grows on steroids for 48hrs)!
After we had pulled the stuff out, we had the fields topped. Some of the hay was stockpiled in a far corner, away from the turnout paddocks and away from the walkways (no horse could get at it even if it broke out).
I should stress that this hay is no doub't 99% ragwort free, but in grass up to your knees before being topped you can be sure some little blighters slipped the net.
We told are liveries in a newsletter exactly what we had done. Only to find pne of our liveries had walked about 50metres out of her way, 8 times; to give each horse a lovely big pile of this recently cut fluffy hay!!!
They would not accept that there was still a danger, no matter how small, or the fact that despite being topped and smashed to pieces, the fragments of ragwort that may have still been present still presented a danger.
Despite being told not to do it, with explanation of the dangers; two days later there were another 8 fluffy piles in the paddocks!!
Instead of going to the sales at Ascot, I spent the day burning old hay in a small controlled way.
Apologies for going on, but I was mad. The land next to us is National Trust, and rife with ragwort. They are simply not interested in dealing with the problem, so next spring we'll have a ragwort problem again.
Perhaps I'll create and send them an invoice for the time it takes to remove it from our land.
Moan over.
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Post by sarahbing on Jul 22, 2009 21:24:19 GMT 1
You have my sympathy! Backbreaking work for your livery owners horses' benefit, followed by gross stupidity from the owners! Some people just don't want to listen, but at least their horses will benefit from your efforts. Have you contacted Defra re the National Trust land? It is the law that they clear it of ragwort if requested by neighbouring land owners. If nothing happens, ring your MP ( easy to do, just ring the house of commons and ask for his/her secretary) and he will raise it with them - tends to make things happen in my experience!! You can't keep doing this year after year with seeds blowing in from neighbouring fields. I have exactly this problem, although not National Trust land, just a prickly farmer., We are making progress slowly but surely.
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Post by Dragonmaster on Jul 30, 2009 10:13:09 GMT 1
With all this talk of getting rid of ragwort I have been wondering about the cinnabar moth. As a child in Birmingham I used to be fascinated by these yellow and black striped caterpillars that crawled all over the ragwort weeds and then turned into lovely red and black spotted moths. I remember my mum telling me not to pick the caterpillars up as they were toxic from eating the toxic plant and that gave them protection from being eaten by birds. However since becoming a horse owner and being more aware of ragwort - and it has got much more prevalent in recent years - I have never seen a cinnabar moth or caterpillar. In fact as an experiment I have kept one plant in my garden (I'm a long way from fields) just to see if any caterpillars arrived. None have, so the plant will be going before it seeds. So I have just done a bit of a web search on the cinnabar moth and found this www.bbc.co.uk/blackcountry/uncovered/walk_through_time/04.shtmlMaybe we need to find a way of reintroducing the moth as a control for ragwort. It seems strange that with so much ragwort around the moths & caterpillars are in decline as usually it is loss of habitat or food plant that causes the demise of the animal.
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Post by portiabuzz on Jul 31, 2009 10:33:00 GMT 1
I see it all around Leicestershire, and unfortunately see horses (and foals!!) grazing on it. I have reported these instances but nothing gets done. It is sad to think these foals will grow up with damaged livers, when all it takes is a bit of common sense and vigilance to remove any plants.
I have also heard the tale of 'they wont eat it' but that is no excuse. All it takes is a bit of time and effort to clear their fields, and it is very unfair to the horses living on the land.
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Post by portiabuzz on Jul 31, 2009 10:38:48 GMT 1
ps i have pygmy goats and beofe we had them our garden was full of ragwort. We fully cleared the garden a month before we got them, and i regularly check for any plants starting to grow (also since clearing it 2 years ago, i havent found even 1 plant). We also have to look out for other animals aswell as horses. Horrid plant!
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