Post by mtngranny on Sept 18, 2008 12:32:02 GMT -5
Yesterday some new friends who also used to have a family cow and dairy goats came over. The mom started talking about this plant that can cause death if your cow eats it and you drink the milk. Being an amateur herbalist I have numerous plant books on hand so we were able to look up Snakeroot and found that it is indeed listed as being fatal in humans.
A thorough inspection of the pasture and other areas where the cows go didn't turn up any plants, but we found alot growing along the road! Today I am pulling as much of it out as I can find.
It is in bloom right now so easy to identify.
We had expected there would be few plants toxic to cattle in our area since it has been farmed for centuries and this is a big cattle-growing region. We can never find hemlock, for example. But finding so much of this toxic plant is pretty scary. I thought other family cow owners ought to know about this as apparently it isn't common knowledge.
Supposedly the reason noone dies from this anymore is that all commercially-sold milk is pooled so that a given "batch" is from hundreds of cows and any toxic element would be so diluted as to have no effect. The opposite is true for us as family cow owners--we drink the milk from our one cow so if she were to eat snakeroot the results could be tragic..
I read older posts that suggested cows would be highly unlikely to consume this plant unless they had nothing else--however the fact that people have died means it's happened before. If snakeroot grows in your area you may want to check and make sure you do not have any.
If anyone has further info (not much was available on the web) or knows why this shouldn't be a big concern I would appreciate feedback. Thanks for reading.
A thorough inspection of the pasture and other areas where the cows go didn't turn up any plants, but we found alot growing along the road! Today I am pulling as much of it out as I can find.
It is in bloom right now so easy to identify.
We had expected there would be few plants toxic to cattle in our area since it has been farmed for centuries and this is a big cattle-growing region. We can never find hemlock, for example. But finding so much of this toxic plant is pretty scary. I thought other family cow owners ought to know about this as apparently it isn't common knowledge.
Supposedly the reason noone dies from this anymore is that all commercially-sold milk is pooled so that a given "batch" is from hundreds of cows and any toxic element would be so diluted as to have no effect. The opposite is true for us as family cow owners--we drink the milk from our one cow so if she were to eat snakeroot the results could be tragic..
I read older posts that suggested cows would be highly unlikely to consume this plant unless they had nothing else--however the fact that people have died means it's happened before. If snakeroot grows in your area you may want to check and make sure you do not have any.
If anyone has further info (not much was available on the web) or knows why this shouldn't be a big concern I would appreciate feedback. Thanks for reading.