[Yeoman]

I had the beginning of a ragwort problem on my grassland/copse when I moved in.  I spent a quiet few hours pulling lots of it out two summers ago followed by a few hours pulling it out in the summer last year.  I had none to do this summer!  Bearing in mind I must have started with over 100 distinct plants I was quite pleased with how effective this approach was.

Summer is obviously the best time to do this job for two reasons:  1. You can enjoy the sunshine 2. You can clearly see your quarry!

Regarding disposal:  I know ragwort can be a prolific re-seeder so I carefully stacked all the plants I'd pulled in one sheltered place and made sure the flowers were well covered while it all rotted down.

One thing I would say though is remember your gloves and use long sleeves and trousers.

I must admit I was quite surprised at the effectiveness of this, no chemical, approach which is why I thought it would be worth sharing with you.  I may have had a particularly lazy form of ragwort that gave me the upper hand but you might be lucky too.  Its worth a try.  If you don't notice a significant decrease in the ragwort population in the second summer then you might need to resort to chemicals but why not give yourself a bit of time to try the manual approach first of all?

Good hunting!

[RagwortExpert]

I wouldn't have much faith in the Scottish authorities on this matter. A few years ago they published a draft document on ragwort with a really bad howler of an error in it. They could not have made this error if they had even the simplest grasp of its toxicology.

Enlighten us on this error, please.

They issued a document saying "Chronic ragwort poisoning is most common as PAs [pyrrolizidine Alkaloids] build up in the liver over time."

It is clearly false. If you say this you clearly don't have a proper understanding of how the rare cases of poisoning occur. It is as a result of breakdown products of the PAs not the chemicals themselves. It also displays a poor knowledge of the toxicology of alkaloids generally. It is very obvious that they are not the kind of compounds that stay in the body.

[RagwortExpert]

If people are being forced to move cattle because of the presence of ragwort then they should be forced never to let the cattle out in the fresh air. Why? because they probably have a greater risk of being struck by lightning. It is a daft idea to keep cattle away from rain but it is as daft as some of the claims about ragwort.

You can eradicate a ragwort risk easily even if you do consider it to be a low risk problem - you cant do that with rain, thats a risk we all have to take without question.  Its a stupid analogy.

Anything that makes your animals environment safer is a good routine - no-matter how small the risk is.

Ta

Baz

I am afraid you don't understand risk properly. There are risks in everything. Crossing the road is a risk. Let's look at a risk that is also rare, about as rare as ragwort poisoning. Equine Grass Sickness which, to over simplyfy a bit, is related to feeding horses on grass not hay. It is difficult to know how common rare things are because one or two cases badly affect the statistics but there is, it seems,  from the scant statistics reasonable to compare the two things.

This says that grass is a danger, by your definition of risk you wouldn't allow a horse to eat grass. This would be daft.

Then there is the risk of Laminitis from grass that is too rich which is a much greater risk, or the problems of obesity in horses.All the panic about ragwort is harming horses because it is distracting people from greater and more significant problems.


Here is another website for you  www.ragwort.org

And here is another debunking the nonsense and showing the environmental damage that panicking over ragwort is causing.

http://www.buglife.org.uk/conservation/currentprojects/Habitats+Action/Ragwort

[faith0504]

please can i add that there many causes of laminitis not just grass, and grass sickness and also be caused by many reasons its not just as simple as eating grass, as it sounds.

ragwort poisoning is caused soley by eating ragwort,

please correct me if im wrong,

[waterhouse]

Let me make a less emotional point.  I'm far too old to stand between people throwing facts at each other, or indeed the absence of facts.

Ragwort may or may not be poisonous in the quantities that sheep or horses eat.  But it is certainly not the plant of choice for either animal, along with dock and thistles.  When there's good grazing the other stuff gets left uneaten.  On my definition that makes it a weed because it grows in the place of something else that I want to grow there.  Not only that but it is a prolific producer of seed and is well adapted to compete against the stuff I want.

So it makes perfect sense for me to spray, dig out or otherwise kill this weed.  Married to an botanist I'm fully aware of the bugs that like it but the plant is very common on the five acres of unmanaged land next to me while my grazing is finite.  Round here in the urban fringe its ecology is so not threatened.

[sabrina]

Grass sickness is not down to eating grass, racehorses that are never on the stuff have died from it, laminites, causes, hard ground, foaling, clover, line breeding can be a factor. frost and a few more. Ragwort whatever you say is something not to be taken lightly and I for one prefer to be removing this plant from my fields that risk my animals. Farmers can have their payments taken off them until they deal with what is growing on their land. Fact. I asked the farmer who I buy my straw from .

[waterhouse]

The Weeds Act, 1959 covers it, dock and some thistles.