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Best way to treat a lawn that is shared with guinea pigs
Mike Lyle wrote:
Neil Jones wrote: [...] Here we go again. I have posted several times about this but it needs doing again I see, No actually it isn't s poison that is stored in the liver. The damage is cumulative but the poison disappears. There is actually very very little risk from ragwort at all. It can cause poisoning in very very rare cases but that is usually caused by it being present in hay. There are a whole series of thresholds before any damage is done at all so, contrary to what you may have read, small doses have no effect at all. I know that there is a lot of stuff around telling you that Ragwort is dangerous but it all comes from a few dodgy sources who have been publicising it for their own interests. It is almost a classic example of how to deceive people with bad science. Since I got interested in this I have spent a lot of time checking scientific papers to get at the truth. Some of the bad science has even got repeated in government press releases! For more details on the science see http://www.ragwortfacts.com/ There is little risk to animals like rabbits and Guinea pigs for unless it is dried it tastes and smells so awful to them that they won't touch it. In fact one of the signs that a place is being overgrazed, by rabbits or anything else, is that ragwort its growing there in abundance. The moth is gorgeous and the website debunks a myth about that too, but it isn't the only thing that depends on this plant. As a sometimes enthusiastic revisionist about many things, I agree it's an interesting site; but it doesn't seem to quote very many papers, and it certainly doesn't deny the toxicity of these plants. There is an abvious logical flaw in what you are saying. Just because a website says something that a lot of other websites do not say does not mean it is wrong. It is the scientific facts that count. There actually isn't a lot of study that has been done so the fact that ony a few papers are quoted does nothing to undermine credibility, RAgwort poisoning is actually very rare, but certain people have made a big fuss and misused statistics in a very very unethical way to mislead people. We know it is very rare because internationally there are a set of scientific papers that say this. You find for example that someone has written a scientific paper in Holland because of a poisoning incident, caused incidentally by gross stupidity, and that it is interesting because a case hasn't been reported in years. The French looked into it and couldn't find a case! You don't want them in hay or silage. That is the only place they cause problems and then only if there is sufficient. I wasn't at all cheered by reading that some unnamed scientific hooligans only managed to kill 75% of a sample of cattle by feeding them 0.6% of their body weight of fresh ragwort a day for 20 days: in the dried form, that would be quite a small amount -- perhaps something like the volume of a packet or two of tea -- and might well escape the stockman's detection. The way the result was quoted represented the dose as very large, and appeared to be an attempt at reassurance. You have to compare it with the hysteria. You have government press releases repeating nonsense from the Equine press that the seeds are dangerous because they might be inhaled. At the level of toxicity this is daft, yet we have the highways agency talking about it as if it is a "Weapon of mass Destruction". THey are wasting money clearing it from places where it does not pose any risk what so ever. Small doses will cause ZERO damage because of a whole series of biochemical thresholds which have to be exceeded before any damage is done to the animal at all. The compounds in Ragwort are actually non-toxic and have to be converted before they can cause damage. The class of compounds produced that then go on to cause problems are found in small amounts in a whole range of foodstuffs including bread and coffee. We don't get poisoned because the dose is below a damage threshold. There are a lot of places where these chemicals occur in larger amounts, both in common plants which aren't ragwort, ( I shan't name them because I don;t want to start another bout of hysteria) and in places like bonfires, incinerators and vehicle exhausts. I was struck by the quoted findings of a US study on the seed dispersal of one species (it didn't say, but I assume it was only a single species). It seemed the results of the study were being called in evidence to suggest that there was no need to worry much about ragwort populations on waste ground catastrophically "infecting" cultivated areas: my intuitive sense is that that's right, as long as neighbouring areas are well managed. It is Senecio jacobeae the common ragwort that all the fuss is about. I recall seeing another paper with similar conclusions. It is so obvious anyway that most seeds will not fly long distances. Of course people shouldn't panic about the ragworts; but they _are_ toxic, and they aren't endangered, so getting them out is generally a good idea, especially in fodder crops. Even if one has no susceptible stock, I think it's reasonable to be a good neighbour to others, especially if any of one's neighbours are practising organic husbandry -- they should be helped, not given extra work. Actually the whole fuss is already wasting a lot of public money and threatening to cause an awful lot of work for people. Based on the ragwort hysteria a Scottish MSP who has been repeating a lot of silly things without checking them tried to introduce an amendment to a law making it a crime to have a toxic plant of any kind anywhere where an animal might eat it. Fortunately somone with some knowledge of ecology spotted it and rather late in the day too. As an entomologist I know there is a basic rule. ALL plants contain toxins of one kind or another. Brassica poisonging and Onion poisoning are both well known in livestock. Brassicas contain allyl isothiocynate and the lethal dose of that in cattle is around 0.001% of body weight. The environmental effects of such a law could be disastrous. People removing bluebells and foxgloves because they believe it is demanded by law. Imagine having to destroy all those woods full of wild garlic. Oak trees are mildly poisonous too! We already have people believing that you have to control ragwort by law which is not the case. Neil Jones http://www.butterflyguy.com/ |
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