The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: Zan on August 29, 2021, 12:02:56 pm
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I've been trying to identify a sort of giant grass that is growing on my land ( photos in identification forum) and in the process showed someone a photo who said there were ergot spores in the seed heads. I have been looking in the field and I think he might be right--- I have never seen it before but it does look like it from photos on google. It's not very widespread as far as I can see, and only noticeable in this giant grass, but I am concerned that it might not be easily seen in the small seed heads of other grasses. This field is left all summer so the horses graze down the standing grass in the winter, so it hasn't been topped.
All I can find online about ergot poisoning is in grain. I can't see how dangerous it is in pasture anywhere. Does anyone know if a small amount will be dangerous?Topping now would just spread it about I would think so future management suggestions would also be appreciated. Should I be panicking?
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Close up of seed head with ergot
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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 :(
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That is interesting. I have a sheep with low grade liver damage--- lab assumed it was fluke but my vets agree that it can't be because I am meticulous in treating and testing for it and always get negative results. She's been a bit of a mystery, but there may have been ergot in the standing grass last winter that I was unaware of.
SallyintNorth--- do you know what part f the country that was in please?
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That is interesting. I have a sheep with low grade liver damage--- lab assumed it was fluke but my vets agree that it can't be because I am meticulous in treating and testing for it and always get negative results. She's been a bit of a mystery, but there may have been ergot in the standing grass last winter that I was unaware of.
:idea: Maybe we're getting somewhere. I hadn't realised ergot was still such a problem.
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SallyintNorth--- do you know what part f the country that was in please?
Norwich
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That is interesting. I have a sheep with low grade liver damage--- lab assumed it was fluke but my vets agree that it can't be because I am meticulous in treating and testing for it and always get negative results. She's been a bit of a mystery, but there may have been ergot in the standing grass last winter that I was unaware of.
:idea: Maybe we're getting somewhere. I hadn't realised ergot was still such a problem.
It is good to have a probable answer to Acorn's liver problem, but I have to say my head is just about exploding with the implications. My winter grazing is about 4.5 acres and since this discovery everyone is now crammed onto the horses' 2.5 acre summer field, which is well grazed down. I really hope I can find some professional help to get the winter field usable.
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Intrigued by the ergot problem, I did a bit of research. If I was you, [member=212919]Zan[/member], I would go around the land either with a weed burner to zap infected seed heads on the large grass clumps or pick the seed heads and then burn elsewhere (before the ergot infected seeds drop off).
Next year/s, survey for any new growth of the mega grass and remove or prevent from forming seed heads (and so on).
[Rye grasses are, apparently, particularly susceptible to ergot infection.]
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Intrigued by the ergot problem, I did a bit of research. If I was you, [member=212919]Zan[/member], I would go around the land either with a weed burner to zap infected seed heads on the large grass clumps or pick the seed heads and then burn elsewhere (before the ergot infected seeds drop off).
Next year/s, survey for any new growth of the mega grass and remove or prevent from forming seed heads (and so on).
[Rye grasses are, apparently, particularly susceptible to ergot infection.]
At first I thought it was limited to the giant clumps and was going to do just that, but I've been looking again and I can see some in some cocksfoot grass as well. I'm also not sure about some of the very small seed heads of other grasses--- I can see small black specks in some, but not sure if that's it. APHA were closed today -- bank holiday--- so I'm going to phone them in the morning and hopefully they can advise. Ideally I would like some expert to come out and do a site visit and then advise a course of action. At first sight there isn't an awful lot, but there are some individual seed heads affected scattered over the whole 4.5 acres.
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:fc: for you Zan
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Thanks Fleecewife.
I phoned APHA, who passed me on to SAC at St Boswells, who passed me on to the Veterinary Investigation Centre, who passed me on to an Agricultural Consultant at SAC, Lanark. With all the usual switchboard frustration along the way. All the humans I spoke to were really, really nice and doing their best to help. The consultant is coming out to do a site visit on Thursday. I will report back then.
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Thanks Fleecewife.
I phoned APHA, who passed me on to SAC at St Boswells, who passed me on to the Veterinary Investigation Centre, who passed me on to an Agricultural Consultant at SAC, Lanark. With all the usual switchboard frustration along the way. All the humans I spoke to were really, really nice and doing their best to help. The consultant is coming out to do a site visit on Thursday. I will report back then.
Congratulations on your perseverance, [member=212919]Zan[/member] . I've never heard of this fungus, wouldn't know what to look for
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The AHDB (Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board) says: All cereals are susceptible. In order of decreasing susceptibility: rye, triticale, wheat, barley, oats. Ergot is also relatively common in wild grasses throughout the UK.
[member=26320]doganjo[/member] Ergot was the cause of the Salem witch trials apparently although QI would probably give me bells and clangers for that. It's a fungus which is found on grasses but more importantly to humans on cultivated cereal crops. When eaten it can cause Ergotism:
<< Early symptoms of poisoning include nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and weakness, numbness, itching, and rapid or slow heartbeat. Ergot poisoning can progress to gangrene, vision problems, confusion, spasms, convulsions, unconsciousness, and death.>>
I don't know how that fits with the Salem witch trials but there you go
I have found what could possibly be some ergot bodies on some wild grass at our roadside, but I'm not convinced. Usually they grow into horrible black long deformed grains, which fall to the ground and develop over the winter to infect grasses the following year
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When I was walking my dogs today I was checking out any long grass I saw for ergot. There were definitely some in the verges and round the margins of a field that had been cut for hay. Not great swathes of it,just a few here and there. The botanist that I spoke to at SAC said it has been a bad year for it and she has also spotted it in verges etc. I am hoping that the conclusion will be that small amounts are pretty routine and there isn't enough in my field to be a serious problem, but I'll wait and see what the agri consultant says. He's already ruled out baling and burning because he said a lot of the ergots would fall to the ground in the process, and topping would definitely be of no benefit now it's actually there, because that wouldn't remove it.
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Congratulations on your perseverance, [member=212919]Zan[/member] . I've never heard of this fungus, wouldn't know what to look for
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It took most of the day in between jobs! I wasn't going to give up though .
I had heard of ergot vaguely in relation to people going mad from eating infected bread in the middle ages, but I had no idea it was still about, and certainly no idea that it could be a problem to livestock in grass. I did a lot of googling over the weekend and it was pretty depressing, though most cases seem to relate to them eating it in grain.
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Very nice consultant from SAC came out today. What I feared was ergot is ergot. We walked the field and it's widespread--- not great swathes of it, but everywhere we stopped to look we found a few scattered affected seed heads. So my first thought of walking round the field zapping it with a blow torch weed killer thing is out of the question.
He was pretty gloomy. There's no chemical control, and the only way to be 100% safe is to not use the grazing for livestock. I don't have that option, so he suggested topping it high, to leave as much leafy green stuff as possible, leaving it to dry, and the ergots will hopefully drop down to ground level and not be eaten. It's not great, but it's better than just leaving it, because while it's on standing stalks they will eat it accidentally while eating the greenery.
I suppose this will also have the benefit of scattering the ergots around, so even if some are eaten accidentally it won't be enough to do harm.
He said baling and burning would be pointless because the ergots would probably all fall out in the process of baling.
The ergots will stay dormant in the soil so I will have to top repeatedly next summer so the grass just doesn't get a chance to flower. Without flowering heads there will be no ergot.
I'm not happy. I don't like solutions that aren't good solutions, but I don't seem to have any options.
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Why [member=212919]Zan[/member] is simple repeat-topping not a good solution ?
Problem is the concurrent management of surrounding land - you need to talk to your neighbours.
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Why [member=212919]Zan[/member] is simple repeat-topping not a good solution ?
Problem is the concurrent management of surrounding land - you need to talk to your neighbours.
Repeat topping is the solution for next year--- as long as I stop the grass from flowering the ergot bodies will have nothing to form on so there will be no ergot, but this year the ergot bodies are formed so they will still be lying there after topping. Gravity and rain should drive them down where they won't be eaten . I hope. I'm just feeling anxious about it because the consultant wouldn't commit himself to the field being 100% safe after topping this year. The ergot will still be there.
The neighbours are all commercial stock farmers with grazed fields and no seed heads. I think the infestation has possibly come from a strip of rough ground alongside a drainage ditch that runs along the bottom between my field and next door. It would be impossible to top or even strim because of fallen trees, undergrowth etc, so I think I'll just have to keep topping and never have standing grass again.
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This is probably an undoable option, but would it be impossible to cut all the infected heads carefully by hand, barrow them off the grazing area and burn them all? Maybe friends would help in return for a picnic :D Doing it by hand would not shake off the ergots as topping by machine would. At the very least it would be worth trying to cut them all by hand in areas off the pasture which will be the cause of re-infestation. You say it's in patches so although 5.5 acres is alot to face I think it could be done section by section.
I am not happy about the ergots lying on the ground. From what I've read they develop on the ground then re-infest the grass grains in the summer, so they're not just dormant when they're on the ground but going through their reproduction sequence. It could be OK if you can stay on top of repeat toppings to prevent seedheads forming, but we're due a wet summer next year so it might not be so easy.
It doesn't sound as if the SAC man could be as helpful as you had hoped :(
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That was my plan originally-- to go round collecting it all and burn it, but it's just not doable. It's not in clumps anywhere, but sort of sprinkled across the whole area. Although it didn't look like there was a lot from checking small areas of the field, when we systematically walked the whole field yesterday we discovered it was everywhere, but just odd ones here and there,if that makes sense.
I'm really not happy about it still being in the field at all. If the topper goes too high he might miss some, and if he goes too low there will be great clumps of rotting grass ( with ergot in it) lying on the surface stopping the new grass from growing, so I'm not even convinced his theory of the ergots dropping to the ground where they won' t be eaten works. So far I can't find any other options to try. There are fungicides they sometimes use on grain, which aren't hugely effective and needs to be done before the ergot bodies have actually formed anyway, so there's no chemical solution. Heavy duty chemicals might have just been swopping one poison for another anyway.
I'm really horrified at how my lovely weed free grass can be so horribly dangerous.
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Spoke to an agronomist this morning who agreed with topping now, but also said to leave to dry for a few days then harrow the field both ways, up and down and then across, which makes sense. That will hopefully drive the ergot bodies down to the earth.Then top to stop seed heads next year.
He said it's been a really bad year for it--- has had clients with it in grazing, and also one client who had to burn all her winter hay supply because of it.
My friend Mike, who does pasture management for a lot of horsey people, is here topping at the moment, and he's had two phone calls about ergot today.
So this is a warning folks-- beware of ergot in grass seed heads. Having standing grass for winter grazing has worked really well for me up till now, but I will never have standing grass again.
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I have just had a wander around one of my fields (not topped, but well grazed with only a few heads of wild grassess standing) and found some ergot on them.... as well as on the uncut sides of my driveway etc, where it is not going to be a problem anyway... so I think it is widespread this year.
Won't be letting the goats out to graze anymore this autumn, as their field never gets topped until October..., need to check it tomorrow in better light.
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I have just had a wander around one of my fields (not topped, but well grazed with only a few heads of wild grassess standing) and found some ergot on them.... as well as on the uncut sides of my driveway etc, where it is not going to be a problem anyway... so I think it is widespread this year.
Won't be letting the goats out to graze anymore this autumn, as their field never gets topped until October..., need to check it tomorrow in better light.
Sorry to hear you have it too. It seems to be very widespread this year. I had thought my smaller field the horses are in all summer would be fine because it is grazed right down, but of course there are rank patches which the horses won't eat, but the sheep, who are now shut in there with them, would. When I checked these patches there were seed heads with ergot on them in every patch. It's like a nightmare--- I've been spending hours hand picking the seed heads off these patches. I can't even relax and think the animals are safe shut in there.
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Oh so not good [member=212919]Zan[/member] - gonna have to pick or cut for "as long as" unfortunately. If you can stand the relentless picking, it's probably what I would do (rather than cut).
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[member=152775]arobwk[/member] I don't think I have any choice but to pick it by hand in the field they are actually living in--- cutting it would be too risky. I've been round it five times now and still finding the odd bit. I am now picking any seed heads whether they have ergot or not, because I reckon some of them go on to develop it after I've passed by thinking they were fine.
I still have the perimeter of the big field to go round where the topper didn't reach. I am,literally, having nightmares about this stuff.
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[member=152775]arobwk[/member] I don't think I have any choice but to pick it by hand in the field they are actually living in--- cutting it would be too risky. I've been round it five times now and still finding the odd bit. I am now picking any seed heads whether they have ergot or not, because I reckon some of them go on to develop it after I've passed by thinking they were fine.
I still have the perimeter of the big field to go round where the topper didn't reach. I am,literally, having nightmares about this stuff.
Hope your dreaming is rather more peaceful by now [member=212919]Zan[/member] !?
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[member=152775]arobwk[/member] a lot better thanks--- I'm out of panic mode now ;D. I've been lucky with the weather--- the grass often stops growing here at the beginning of September because of the cold, but the mild temperatures, combined with finally getting some rain, has meant a) there's been enough grass for everyone in the horses' small summer field and b) there's so much growth on the grass in the big field since it was topped that I'm pretty confident when they go back on it the ergot will be way down below where they will be grazing.
Two things of note for anyone who ever has this problem-- firstly, if you notice ergot early on don't assume what you see is all there is, because it does keep on developing on seed heads which were apparently clean at first sight, and secondly, beware of rye grass. The tall, bleached seed heads of other grasses are easy to spot, but rye grass seed heads are lower to the ground, and here they were behind the taller grasses in maturing, so the ergot developed later. If there's any danger left on my ground it will be on ryegrass, which was either too low at time of topping, or has actually grown and matured since topping. I've been as thorough as I can though and it will be minimal if there is any. There's so much clean grass for them to eat it hopefully will be okay.