The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: gravelly on February 13, 2011, 05:57:06 pm
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I have a new area of grazing which has a ragwort issue. There are very few mature rosettes, what was there i have pulled with my new Lazy Dog fork(brilliant). there are lots of dead stems which i am pulling systematically but about 1 in ten have very small live shoots coming away from the root. I have dexters on there at the moment and will be taking them off this week. They are not touching these old dead stem now but i cant run the risk. I was thinking of putting on my young heb whethers on the field. I cant see that if they eat it there would be enough quantity to harm them. ideally i want them to eat hard around the little plants to expose the plant for me to pull. Anybody got any experience of hebs in this situation. I tried them on himalayn balsam seedlings last year and they didn't touch them.
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We have a problem with ragwort which we control by pulling but this year we are going to have to spray. If you have ragwort in the amount I think you are saying you will never get rid by pulling. Each plant can produce ten thousand seeds and each seed can lay dormant for ten years, as said by my agri advice office. Sheep eat the young growth and have no problems but it is at its most poisonous when it is dried such as in hay, its sugars concentate then and make it sweet rather than bitter when green and left by animals. Each section of root left can grow into another plant. If sheep are continually in a field they keep the ragwort down but as soon as they are off it will take over again. Lambs can succumb to ragwort but older sheep are OK. Best spray to get shut if you have cattle as well.
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As said adult sheep keep ragwort in check at the rossete stage but if it gets a stem they leave it,i spot spray with round up at the rossete stage on forage ground ,rough ground outside the fences is the biggest problem and for this its round-up and hand pulling (with gloves )
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well i will come into this and blow some of you out of the water we used to have a ragwort problem it never bothered us until we lost a suckled calf and another with acute liver problems we then embarked on eradicating this weed by pulling and disposing at landfill this was carried out over a number of years we are now lucky to get 12 to 24 per year
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I should have mentioned that i have no spraying option. I also should have mentioned that i have cleared many sites by pulling alone. It does work if methodic and persistant.
The lazy dog website gives loads of info on this.
The bit i am most interested in is these small sucker type plants. having established that sheep will eat the rosettes, has anybody any experience of whether eating off these very early stages will kill the plant. If they will it will save me hours and hours.
Thanks for responses so far.
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The problem is the reservoir of plants on rough ground /wodland /verges seeds can be carried a long way.Not sure wether sheep will prefer to grass all i know is that the grass fields have no ragwort but the woodland beyond dose.
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They will keep it clean if you keep them grazing it allmost permanently and grazed to almost bowling green grass as I said the ground will be a time bomb of seeds for up to 10 years and all neighbouring seeds blown in on the wind. Dont forget humans can get ragwort poisoning as well through the skin , wear good rubber gardening gloves when pulling. My old milkman ended up in hospital with ragwort poisoning.
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This is just an idea out of my own head but it might be worth a try.
What about a couple or three teaspoons of salt on each one. You could use organic salt if you wanted
You could try on a few and mark with a cane and flag and see if it worked or not
all the best
Sue
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That seems a sound idea, darkbrowneggs.We had a big ragwort problem in our fields when we bought them but three years of pulling seems to have fixed it.(an army of granchildren at the rate of 10p per plant helped!)
I will still keep an eye out for it though. Our neighbours who sprayed their fields had as many as ever last year so will offer to pull theirs this year for my own benefit.
Gravelly, do you think the lazydog fork would deal with thistles? I've looked for a "thistle spudder" for ages with no results.
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my understanding is that it is only dried ragwort that is a problem, not if eaten whilst green
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dried ragwort is ingested quicker
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dried ragwort is ingested quicker
...and tastes better than fresh ragwort so is more likely to be ingested. In my fields given a choice neither the horses nor the sheep would eat ragwort, thistles or nettles. But when the grass was dying back the ragwort was still coming and the sheep were less fussy.