Buttercup

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Re the buttercups, we've sprayed a grass field off with a good dose of glyphosate for reseeding. There's a few buttercups, how toxic are they when dying for cattle and sheep? Sheep obv graze them when thriving but are they toxic while dying? I'm not looking for "read the label" btw as the label tells you nowt really in this regard.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Re the buttercups, we've sprayed a grass field off with a good dose of glyphosate for reseeding. There's a few buttercups, how toxic are they when dying for cattle and sheep? Sheep obv graze them when thriving but are they toxic while dying? I'm not looking for "read the label" btw as the label tells you nowt really in this regard.

Personally I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. They aren’t ever toxic to the degree that ragwort is, and that’s only toxic in large quantities (as they might eat when dead & palatable).
 

Goweresque

Member
Location
North Wilts
Buttercups are only toxic when eaten green, when cut and wilted, or made into hay they lose their toxicity. An animal would have to eat a lot to be affected, and its highly unlikely to be fatal, the main symptoms are diarrhoea and an inflamed mouth:

 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Spray with at or nearly full rate envy, use an adjuvant. Spray now whilst they are growing hard. They will stop growing and slowly begin to fade away after 10 days. Correct fertility or pH issues in the soil also to encourage the grass to take up the free space.
I keep hearing that Envy is great for buttercups. We've used it twice now at either full rate or almost full rate with a litre of fluroxypyr. Really not impressed. Wouldn't be so bad if it was cheap and cheerful but it's not.

We've got a silage field to spray this week, is there anything better or am I going to be wasting my money again? Obv Forefront would be ideal but a no go on silage ground?
 

Audi90

Member
Livestock Farmer
Try full rate MCPA on a warm morning when the field is yellow with Buttercups. It costs about £7 an acre and even if they come back slowly over the years it's cheap enough to go again and the clover usually survives too.
 
I keep hearing that Envy is great for buttercups. We've used it twice now at either full rate or almost full rate with a litre of fluroxypyr. Really not impressed. Wouldn't be so bad if it was cheap and cheerful but it's not.

We've got a silage field to spray this week, is there anything better or am I going to be wasting my money again? Obv Forefront would be ideal but a no go on silage ground?

When was the envy applied?

Forefront is even more pricey than envy, this is your issue.

If you have used envy in good faith and aren't impressed then you might want to contact your local Corteva representative and speak with them. They are usually pleased to talk to customers and engage with them when issues arise.

Buttercups are difficult to eliminate in my experience, I've used MCPA at full rate and with adjuvants etc etc and never had what I would call total control from it.
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Advice needed please.

have had a few cattle affected by celery leaved buttercup. For those that don’t know it has the highest concentration of runculin of all the BC varieties. Cattle can get a taste for it and hunt it out….. causes vasculitis and possibly death.

Took quite a bit of hunting to find the plant around the farm but now we have we need to kill it. It will involve spraying in the bottom of hedges… primarily blackthorn and some hawthorn. What spray would members recommend for a sure kill? Would rather not glypho nor kill the hedges. Application method shouldn’t be a deciding factor (I.e. knapsack;))

thanks All
 
Advice needed please.

have had a few cattle affected by celery leaved buttercup. For those that don’t know it has the highest concentration of runculin of all the BC varieties. Cattle can get a taste for it and hunt it out….. causes vasculitis and possibly death.

Took quite a bit of hunting to find the plant around the farm but now we have we need to kill it. It will involve spraying in the bottom of hedges… primarily blackthorn and some hawthorn. What spray would members recommend for a sure kill? Would rather not glypho nor kill the hedges. Application method shouldn’t be a deciding factor (I.e. knapsack;))

thanks All


In this scenario I would probably try MCPA (find out if it will work out the species in question) as it is a lot safer and gives a wider margin for error. Using something else near hedges and possibly gardens etc etc would give me the willies frankly.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
When was the envy applied?

Forefront is even more pricey than envy, this is your issue.

If you have used envy in good faith and aren't impressed then you might want to contact your local Corteva representative and speak with them. They are usually pleased to talk to customers and engage with them when issues arise.

Buttercups are difficult to eliminate in my experience, I've used MCPA at full rate and with adjuvants etc etc and never had what I would call total control from it.
We did a small grass field almost a month ago with full rate Forefront. Some of the buttercups are looking poorly and others look like they were happy for us giving them a drink.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,284
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top