The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: Glencairn on August 15, 2021, 06:13:56 pm
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Is this year a bumper year for ragwort?
We usually dig up what's on our ground, bag it and bin it.
There were quite a few big plants yesterday some with many caterpillars which will turn into cinnabar moths.
Obviously none of these will end up in the general waste.
I was on holiday in the Highlands and I saw a field there and one in Perthshire near Blairgowrie where the place was covered in them. I seem to remember from a course I did that ragwort is one of the species of plants that a landowner has to arrange to remove, is this the case for smallholders too?
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Under the Weeds Act 1959, landowners/occupiers must control ragwort within risk areas for grazing or forage production
The Ragwort Control Act 2003 (c 40) bringing it up to date a bit
Will reveal all, well nearly
So yes
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I noticed there's lots on council verges on roads little and large, but apparently the rules are a bit more relaxed these days because ragwort is a host plant for many species of wildlife. We have just come back from our son's house in a town, and his wife is actively encouraging ragwort - there are loads of bees, hoverflies and so on enjoying the flowers, and no agricultural land nearby to infest, so no probs.
Like you, we pull out any ragwort which appears on our land and yes, this year there has been much more growing. I think it is probably to do with the very dry summer.
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I noticed there's lots on council verges on roads little and large, but apparently the rules are a bit more relaxed these days because ragwort is a host plant for many species of wildlife. We have just come back from our son's house in a town, and his wife is actively encouraging ragwort - there are loads of bees, hoverflies and so on enjoying the flowers, and no agricultural land nearby to infest, so no probs.
Like you, we pull out any ragwort which appears on our land and yes, this year there has been much more growing. I think it is probably to do with the very dry summer.
We have quite a lot of ragwort too, but summer's been relatively wet around here (Leicestershire)
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I noticed there's lots on council verges on roads little and large, but apparently the rules are a bit more relaxed these days because ragwort is a host plant for many species of wildlife. We have just come back from our son's house in a town, and his wife is actively encouraging ragwort - there are loads of bees, hoverflies and so on enjoying the flowers, and no agricultural land nearby to infest, so no probs.
Like you, we pull out any ragwort which appears on our land and yes, this year there has been much more growing. I think it is probably to do with the very dry summer.
We have quite a lot of ragwort too, but summer's been relatively wet around here (Leicestershire)
Not that then :D
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I think that everything has been growing well this year. My fields are getting overtaken with clover.
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I think that everything has been growing well this year. My fields are getting overtaken with clover.
Loads of clover here too - amazing smell.
I have been noticing today how many berries the rowans have this year
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You now have to prevent ragwort from spreading onto agricultural land. Yes, we have a bumper year too.
Prolonger dry spell reducing grass cover followed by wet has meant ideal conditions I believe.
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You must be onto something. I thought there was a lot more foxgloves than usual this year too.
And cleggs, I got bitten quite heavily this summer.
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Seems to me Councils (or is it Highways Agency) are not very prompt about pulling ragwort. This year might be a bumper year, but seems to me there is more and more in road verges year on year !
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There is absolutely tons of ragwort round here. We pull it from our fields and then burn it but the guys who farm the land beyond our boundaries don't bother. They occasionally come round and spray off the field boundaries (there's a strip left uncultivated round the edge of the crop which the shoot vehicles use) but it's often after the ragwort has already seeded. 2021 does seem to have been a bumper year for it though. I hate the stuff, and it stinks!
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Seems to me Councils (or is it Highways Agency) are not very prompt about pulling ragwort. This year might be a bumper year, but seems to me there is more and more in road verges year on year !
I have never seen ragwort pulled on verges. I doubt the councils/highways have the manpower these days. If it is in a verge next to my boundary I pull it.
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My local authority hasn't repaired the potholes I reported in April this year, I can't see them making any great efforts to remove ragwort either.
That said, I read a bit of the government document referred to earlier and it seemed that the emphasis was on areas that are used for agricultural purposes and it almost suggested it was too great a problem for organisations other than farmers to bother with.
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One local council help organise volunteer parties to pull ragwort each BHS ragwort week. They arrange disposal and provide black bin bags and hi viz tabards. I think that the original initiative was from a council member who was also a BHS member.
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There is absolutely no need to pull ragwort from road verges and other non-agri fields - it is an important plant for certain insects and we humans need to stop to just pull up (or worse - spray it off) everything that may not be to our liking! I have ragwort here and there on my land, in small quantities and it doesn't spread very much at all.
There is a whole chapter on it in Isabella Tree's book on Rewilding about the struggles with ragwort - but they stuck to their guns and left it. The Cinnaber moths loved it too. And their cattle, horses, pigs did not die of ragwort poisoning either...
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We have plenty of cinnabar moths and the caterpillars seem very happy on groundsel.
I have had the heartbreak of nursing and losing ponies that had been grazing ragwort before coming here.
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"The general public as well as landowners and farmers should be aware of or have an understanding of the legal implications outlined in the Weeds Act 1959 and what obligations you have if ragwort is found to be growing on your land. The law states that you may be legally obliged to clear and prevent the spread of ragwort. Failure to do so is a criminal offence and you may face legal proceedings as a result."
I'm not going to argue over whether folk can live with their wagwort: I'm just reporting what I've read!
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I allow it to grow round the house/garden/yard, removing flower heads as they go over, before seeding.
But none allowed in the fields.
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We have plenty of cinnabar moths and the caterpillars seem very happy on groundsel.
I have had the heartbreak of nursing and losing ponies that had been grazing ragwort before coming here.
I find that interesting as you see loads of apparently healthy equines grazing fields with little grass and loads of ragwort growing; but they won't touch it.
In addition - my grandfather used to plough with horses so had kept horses all his life and would have been very aware of what could harm them. Yet he had ragwort growing profusely in his paddocks - apparently with no ill effects. I can remember staying at my grandparent's when I was very young and seeing a pasture filled with ragwort, and a horse happily grazing there. (I actually remember most, all the striped caterpillars eating the yellow plants.) Now apparently an equine has to eat @ 7% of its body weight in ragwort before the ragwort will harm it. So I'm really intrigued to know how the ponies that you nursed (so presumably more than 1) came to eat so much ragwort that it actually killed them. Was it in hay, as opposed to the living plant? Or if they actually ate the growing plant - what was it that made them eat it ?
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We have plenty of cinnabar moths and the caterpillars seem very happy on groundsel.
I have had the heartbreak of nursing and losing ponies that had been grazing ragwort before coming here.
I find that interesting as you see loads of apparently healthy equines grazing fields with little grass and loads of ragwort growing; but they won't touch it.
In addition - my grandfather used to plough with horses so had kept horses all his life and would have been very aware of what could harm them. Yet he had ragwort growing profusely in his paddocks - apparently with no ill effects. I can remember staying at my grandparent's when I was very young and seeing a pasture filled with ragwort, and a horse happily grazing there. (I actually remember most, all the striped caterpillars eating the yellow plants.) Now apparently an equine has to eat @ 7% of its body weight in ragwort before the ragwort will harm it. So I'm really intrigued to know how the ponies that you nursed (so presumably more than 1) came to eat so much ragwort that it actually killed them. Was it in hay, as opposed to the living plant? Or if they actually ate the growing plant - what was it that made them eat it ?
Horses won't normally eat live growing ragwort as it has a bitter taste, but when dried and in amongst hay there is no taste other than the hay so they eat it unknowingly. It still has the same toxic qualities though whether live or dried
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Hence my question - Doganjo! We are all aware ( presumably) of its toxicity whether fresh or dried. My point is that horses won't eat it fresh. But Buttermilk said that the ponies had "grazed" the stuff and that's what I find worrying. I'm therefore wondering if there were some unusual circumstances which caused the ponies to eat something they would normally not touch, while it was still growing, or whether it was in fact hay that they ate.
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Ragwort has two growing stages, of which the earlier is a flat rosette. Horses kept on starvation paddocks - as many owners do these days, in the war on laminitis (huge topic, not going into that here....) - may not have much choice about what they munch, and can't see the ragwort rosettes to avoid them.
Ragwort poisons over a period, toxins building up in the liver. I have heard a couple of stories where vets have decreed that the ragwort standing in the field was the culprit for a sudden death - in cattle as well as equines - but that makes no sense whatsoever to me. Horses which are poisoned by ragwort develop symptoms over time, they are not healthy one day and dead the next.
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We have plenty of cinnabar moths and the caterpillars seem very happy on groundsel.
I have had the heartbreak of nursing and losing ponies that had been grazing ragwort before coming here.
I find that interesting as you see loads of apparently healthy equines grazing fields with little grass and loads of ragwort growing; but they won't touch it.
In addition - my grandfather used to plough with horses so had kept horses all his life and would have been very aware of what could harm them. Yet he had ragwort growing profusely in his paddocks - apparently with no ill effects. I can remember staying at my grandparent's when I was very young and seeing a pasture filled with ragwort, and a horse happily grazing there. (I actually remember most, all the striped caterpillars eating the yellow plants.) Now apparently an equine has to eat @ 7% of its body weight in ragwort before the ragwort will harm it. So I'm really intrigued to know how the ponies that you nursed (so presumably more than 1) came to eat so much ragwort that it actually killed them. Was it in hay, as opposed to the living plant? Or if they actually ate the growing plant - what was it that made them eat it ?
When a riding school closed down several of the ponies came to us at the RDA. Within two years all had died from liver disease. Apparently the riding school fields were full of ragwort and the vet reckoned that the long term exposure was the cause.
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I've been doing a bit of ragwort research:
It seems all ragwort species are poisonous (pyrrolizidine alkaloids) with the poison having a cumulative effect on liver function over time (as reported by others).
It is best to mechanically pull ragwort no later than its "rosette" stage of growth: seemingly after that, there is every chance that enough root will be left to regenerate (which might explain why roadsides are harbouring more ragwort year an year !?) So pull early TASers.
To note that Comfrey and Butterbur also contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids !
If one feels the need to apply a herbicide, apply when plant is young or is just regenerating new seasonal growth.
[Ragwort has its ecological "place": I don't suppose any of us would want to completely eradicate it from the UK, but a bit more control would be a good thing me thinks.]
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I'm ok with removing ragwort off my ground because none of my neighbours are, so the caterpillars wont go hungry.
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Interestingly, this came up on my FaceAche feed this morning
As I join the ranks of people baling and burning their winter standing hay because it's infested with ergot, it does make me wonder how much of the idiopathic liver damage we usually blame on ragwort is actually caused by mycotoxins in forage that are usually completely overlooked :(
Pic of ergot in [member=212919]Zan[/member]'s post here (https://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/land-management/ergot/msg767931/#msg767931)
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Exactly! So much liver damage is blamed on ragwort because it is actually very difficult to prove what has caused the damage. So if there's ragwort growing in a field that must be the answer - even though most animals won't touch the live plant, and it also takes an awful lot to kill an animal.
Contrary to popular belief - the toxins in ragwort do not accumulate in the liver.They are gradually broken down. But the damage done to the liver by the toxins can build up if an animal is constantly eating the plant as in hay. If only small amounts are eaten, the liver is able to regenerate itself.
There are however many other poisonous things that animals will eat readily such as laurel, sycamore seeds, acorns etc. Even elder leaves are classed as poisonous yet I've watched my sheep and donkeys tucking in to them before I realised. But I have some ragwort in the field also - so if any of them had developed liver problems the ragwort would automatically have got the blame.
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At least ragwort is easy to see!
Here at Tipton's Croft in Shropshire we leave the ragwort in the margins and scrub areas as it is so good for the wildlife (the Cinnabar moth is entirely dependent on it) but we pull it from the meadow that gets cut for hay and each year there is less and less. This year very little at all.