Dr. Krishona Martinson, equine extension specialist from the University of Minnesota, shares her type 5 list of toxic plants commonly found in hay. We discuss how to avoid them, how to spot them, and what your horse may experience. So learn how to keep your horse safe by inspecting that hay!
Dr. Krishona Martinson, equine extension specialist from the University of Minnesota, shares her type 5 list of toxic plants commonly found in hay. We discuss how to avoid them, how to spot them, and what your horse may experience. So learn how to keep your horse safe by inspecting that hay!
Krishona Martinson: welcome to extension horses. Tack box talk series horse stories with a purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University. And today we're gonna be talking about toxic plants that you can find in your hay. So things that you may not know they're there. So we brought one of our toxic plant specialists back to the program. So welcome back, Dr. Martinson.
Thank you for having me.
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Okay. So I know we've even heard some things, at least social media, which is always a great place to get all your info, or at least get the get, the rumors and the and the gossip right?
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Kris Hiney: But it is pretty common that that you could potentially
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Kris Hiney: find or not find. I guess that's maybe the bigger problem of plants in your hay that are toxic to horses. So you've got kind of some things for us to look out for.
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Krishona Martinson: Yeah. So I you know, I thought. I mean, there's so much we could cover right. But let's take it into kind of bite sized bits. So I thought we would really talk about maybe what I perceive. And again, this is, you know, my, my list.
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Krishona Martinson: Sort of the top 5 top toxic plants that we commonly see in hay? Now I completely understand that, depending on where you are, I mean, Kris, you're in Oklahoma. I'm in Minnesota. We have different environments. But here's the reality hay Is a very mobile product.
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Krishona Martinson: and a lot of times hay n, you know, parts of the country that maybe have more conducive weather conditions. Like the Upper Midwest, where I'm at, hay tends to move from there down to the drier southern parts of the State, or during the winter months.
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Krishona Martinson: when you're still producing hay in the west, it moves to the southeast, for example. So while these toxic plants are very common in the Midwest, they may end up in your backyard just because of the mobile nature of hay.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah. And and you know, we also, I just point out, like some hay is produced as like monocultures, right? So that hay? It's all Bermuda. They've done weed control. But for us down here we have a lot of sometimes pastures that are bailed with without like. It's
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Kris Hiney: things that are standing tall, and we bail it right. And are we all in the up in the Midwest? I was like ditch, hay? Or CRP, right? So it's CRP hay. So it's not always just a uniform. This is the only species there.
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Krishona Martinson: Oh, absolutely. And so I think you know, one of the things is because, honestly, we're horse people. I mean, I'm a plant person. Your, I would say you're a plant person, too. But the reality is, we're not all plant people. So I do. II would strongly encourage horse owners to know what is commonly fed in hay in your area that way. If you can easily identify, say it's orchard grass, or alfalfa, or red clover or Bermuda grass.
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Krishona Martinson: you have a better chance of identifying when something shouldn't be there, and I think one of the weeds that we commonly see in in the Midwest, and also we commonly see it transported in hay across the country, mostly accidentally, is hoary allysum.
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Krishona Martinson: and again, this is a podcast. But visually, if you could just come along with us for a minute.
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Krishona Martinson: hoary allysum has a white flower, but it's a very wiry plant. It has smaller
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Krishona Martinson: leaves, and it's kind of a grayish green. It's not a bright green, so it does kind of stand out, and it produces seeds very quickly. So a lot of times you'll see these little teeny black seeds that look like they've been stuck between cellophane paper, and they look like they're in pods. So the seed pod itself is, see through. And you see these tiny little like teardrop shaped
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Krishona Martinson: seed pods. And that is what the hoary alllysum. Looks like. Now you can Google, hoary allysum, and get a ton of really great pictures. But again, white flower, grayish, greenish stemmy or plant, and it looks very different than things that should be in your hey? Like legumes and grasses.
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Kris Hiney: and that's the one. Do do we want to talk about?
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Krishona Martinson: Individual symptoms are kind of do collectively at the end, symptoms that horses may have if they're eaten something. Well, I mean, the symptoms are sort of different. So it's probably best to take a, you know, just to take some time and talk about the symptoms.
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Krishona Martinson: So the symptoms of hoary allysum.
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Krishona Martinson: really, within hours of the horse starting to consume hoary alyssum in the hay. What you'll find is the horses will become almost appear laminitiic, They get a lot of swelling usually in their back legs.
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Krishona Martinson: But the problem with hoary alyssum, is that not all horses react the same to it. So some horses have a very severe reaction, and they will become not weight bearing. They will lay down, but always have a ton of swelling usually in their back legs, and
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Krishona Martinson: it's one of those things where there isn't an apparent injury. There isn't an apparent other reason for the swelling other than usually a new source of hay has been introduced. Now the horse and another horse in that same pen may not have any symptoms.
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Krishona Martinson: So it does kind of cause confusion. But you know, just look at the hay, introduce new hay slowly. We want to do that just for good horse health, anyways, but it's usually that swelling of the back legs that we see.
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So you said, kind of look at the hay? And I'm just thinking practically, because sometimes, you know.
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Kris Hiney: weeds also don't grow uniformly throughout a field a lot of times like you said. Maybe it's place where there's poor fertility or something, and that's why the only thing that seems to survive is weed there? Right? So
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Kris Hiney: I mean, how does that mean? One needs to inspect, like, you know, every flake I cause. I mean, you know, sometimes it's dark out and like.
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Krishona Martinson: Is there any guidance about how we kind of proceed through that? Well, I think if you have a trusted hay supplier, or you are growing the hay yourself, and you have a lot of confidence, you can maybe be less
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Krishona Martinson: dedicated to and to inspecting every bit of hay. But if you are working with a new hay supplier, or maybe even yourself, if you've taken over a new field, I would be quite.
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Krishona Martinson: I would be more vigilant when it comes to looking through the hay. And again, once you get that trust with either yourself or the hay supplier, you can maybe relax a little bit. But again, just look. But you are right,Kris.
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Krishona Martinson: You know the weeds don't grow uniform, and so you're probably going to have patches, and they tend to grow along a fence line along a tree line. Or maybe there's just less
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Krishona Martinson: disturbance from cutting, and also a lot of these weeds thrive and drought conditions which, of course, we've had substantially across the Us. So if you're buying hay During a droughty time. Just be extra vigilant, because again, these weeds are tough
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Krishona Martinson: and they tend to grow in environments that are other species. Don't.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, yeah. You would wish that our wonderful little plants would keep growing. But no, it's only the nasty weeds.
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Krishona Martinson: Okay, so be on the lookout for the little white flowers gray green. Wiry plant, alright, what is our next plant that we wanna be looking out for? Yeah. So the next one is foxtail in foxtail isn't a toxicity
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Krishona Martinson: per se, but it's more of a physical issue. So it is the seed heads of the fox tail. So if you, I always think of a baby brush or a baby bottle cleaner. You know how it's kinda like spiky and kind of hard. So the foxtail
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Krishona Martinson: well, a bottle cleaner or like a little lab cleaner, right? One of those like little cleaner things. I don't need just probably a formal name, but I don't know if that name is but it's the foxtail seed head that
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Krishona Martinson: that causes the problem. The grass is just fine. But the seed head has these little microscopic barbs. So when the horse ingests it, it becomes little barbs become lodged in the soft palate of the horse's mouth, and they get ulcers, and they tend to go off feed, so it's not like a toxicity where they
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Krishona Martinson: kind of die from it. But we have had horses that have eaten hay that is so severely infested with foxtail that it. It reaches a point where it's hard for them to recover, because they're off feed for so long, because obviously have to remove all those little, those little barbs
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Krishona Martinson: and then it's gotta heal, and that just takes time in in in the horse. So the foxtail seed heads are the issue. We usually say horses can tolerate about 10%, because honestly, foxtail is literally everywhere.
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Krishona Martinson: But it's those bales that have just a significant amount that we want to avoid.
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Kris Hiney: And when you say foxtail right, there's like a lot of versions of
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Krishona Martinson: grass with Barbie heads, right? So it's not just like here is N species. There's a host of these things. Yes, yes, there, yes, yellow foxtail, green foxtail, giant foxtail. And you tell them apart with how the leaf attaches to the stem, which to a horseperson you're like. I'm peacing out right. I don't care about that, but they all have
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Krishona Martinson: that seed head where you can see the little awns coming off of it. It looks spiky and it's rough like if you run your hand down that I mean, you can just feel that it's rough. And those little teeny hairs.
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Krishona Martinson: you know, from that seat head is what get lodged in their mouth, and you can see it'd be like you having, you know, 10 little slivers under your fingernails right like that's painful until you can get them out. So. But again the grass. The grass part. The blade isn't toxic is the seed head is more of a physical
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Krishona Martinson: issue and similar to hoary alyssum in a pat. These are common in hay, because in the pasture a horse is gonna graze around them, and hay, it's accidental, Justin, because they can't sort as well as they can in a pasture. So they just accidentally eat it.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, shout out to our Oklahoma grasses, we have this thing, Three Awn, right. I'm sure you've heard of three awn like what the devil right it when it gets into my dogs. Cokes have fluffy aussies. It burrows into their skin like literally, and leaves a a pustule inflammation trail through the animal's body until they can inject it or ejected or walled up like it's terrible things, and you can get poked with them yourself. So
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Krishona Martinson: yeah, you guys have that. We have winter level, the play field, I guess.
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Krishona Martinson: Oh, funny. So okay, so I would say, then, if your horse is kind of backing off a feed, or you know, cause they get mouth sore, so I would say, any kind of behavior change, or, you know, bridling, haltering, etc., I would. I would kinda want to look at at my feed a little bit.
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Krishona Martinson: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, Kris, you mentioned the most source. And with any of these poisonous plants a lot of the symptoms we see are mimicked by other diseases and disorders. So we don't wanna automatically assume that it's a poisonous plant. Because what if it's some.
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Krishona Martinson: you know, foot and mouth disease, or, you know, pick your pick your disease. So we're talking about poisonous plants. We really want evidence of ingestion. So you find a half eaten plant or you find it in their feed. We want the symptoms to match the plant that we think they ingested.
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Krishona Martinson: And then, unfortunately, with a lot of our business plans, we're not sure of the actual toxic agent. But sometimes there are diagnostic tests. You could help to at least rule out other diseases and kind of bring you back. But the reality is, if horses are well fed, they tend not to
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Krishona Martinson: seek out these plants, but in hay it's hard, because it's that accidental ingestion piece that we struggle with.
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Kris Hiney: and I know we've got some more grasses. But I'm gonna segue here. So because you're also the Queen of Hay Feeders. So is this one of those, you know. It's kinda to me like a a double edged sword. If you go with
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Kris Hiney: free choice feeding, and ad libitum at them a lot of times they'll be like, Okay, I won't eat that part, but when we either restrict intake for weight management, which that's probably more people than not.
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Kris Hiney: or are, you know, so often now, and I do it too. I use slow feeders to try to keep them chewing for longer periods of the day, but I guarantee you there's no sorting going on. If I'm using a a slow feeder because they're like, this is my little stem. I get to eat now. Num.
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Krishona Martinson: yeah. And I mean, Kris, you are spot on, and I don't know if any research has confirmed this. But sometimes things are just common sense, and we can observe them. So I think if you are really confident and have high quality, hay, it is II mean, I th. The research favors the use of slow feeds on a variety of things for the vast majority of horses, yes, a thin horse, or a picky horse or horse with poor teeth, different scenario.
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Krishona Martinson: But if your hay is not of good quality, and hopefully, there aren't toxic plants. But maybe there's 10% foxtail, and you want to allow them the chance to sort as much as a horse can.
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Krishona Martinson: That might be a really good argument for leaving that slow feed hay net off. and that's a judgment call people are gonna have to make. I thought we always give concrete black and white answers here.
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Krishona Martinson: Well, I come to the wrong 2 people. Okay, give me another toxic plant in a hay. Yes, so the other one another one. This is our third out of 5 is wild parsnip and wild parsnip is fairly easy to identify. It has a yellow what we call umble flower. It looks like an umbrella, hence umble.
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Krishona Martinson: So it's kind of a big umbrella shaped yellow flower, probably the size of your hand. If you kind of spread out your hand, or most average sized human hands, and it's part of the carrot family. So the leaf is very, I would say, kind of feathery looking
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Krishona Martinson: and it is very common. I mean, it is taking over roadways or ditches throughout the Us. And this one is is really tough because it is toxic to. It's toxic to humans and all and all grazing animals. This is the if you Google wild parsnips, you gotta kind of have your mind straight the minute the wild parsnip touches your skin.
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Krishona Martinson: What rubs on your skin interacts with UV light. And you get these giant festering blisters on humans. And internally, we see that in horses. So what we see on the outside, we can, you know, is happening on the horses inside. So obviously they become very, very sick
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Krishona Martinson: it wild parsnip is not usually found in hay fields that are routinely cut because it doesn't like to be cut. Of course, roadways and ditches are maybe cut once a year. So it is very, very common and again
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Krishona Martinson: very distinctive leaf, that big yellow flower, and if you touch it, or trying to get rid of it in your fence line, you know, or the edge of a hay field, you need to be wearing long sleeve shirts or your arms will blister.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I've personally seen the results of wild parsnip. And it is amazing like ye, yeah, you don't just get over it. You might need medical like, go to the doctor because you touch this sucker? Because
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Krishona Martinson: and you know, obviously, you and I aren't, you know, veterinarians. So we're threading kind of lightly on the treatment aspects of things. But for all of these, obviously, the very first thing we wanna do is remove the horse from the feed source. But with the wild parsnip, because it interacts with sunlight. If you have a place to get horses out of sun, a barn, and a stall, a lean to can find them to that lean to for 48 h, and it will lessen the symptoms.
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Because again, you want, you don't want them to be interacting with the sunlight.
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Krishona Martinson: So now the question that comes to my mind, the wild parsnip retains the same toxicity, and it's dried for yes, so all of these plants retain it, and are, you'll have the same issues, whether it's graze fresh or whether it's found in hay. But these are more commonly found in hay.
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Krishona Martinson: Got it?
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Krishona Martinson: Okay? Alright. What's next on the list. So the fourth one is just a general kind of weed seeds. And sometimes we see weed seeds, not only in hay, but also, if somebody's maybe growing oats and keeping it themselves to feed their horses. But we really tend to see weed seeds when maybe our hay fields are
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Krishona Martinson: kind of reaching their natural end of their life, and there's maybe more opening spaces and more weeds, and a lot of weed seeds that are in the Mustard family, so that'd be like wild mustard cockle Burr, you know any of those mustards?
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Krishona Martinson: It takes a very small amount, and these are tiny seeds out the kind of the size of like a pinhead.
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Krishona Martinson: If you have a lot of seeds in your hay that are ingested, it's really common for horses and cattle, and, you know, pick your grazing livestock to get pretty severe diarrhea from those weed seeds. It's upsetting to them. So if you have hay that is really weedy, whether it's kind of towards the end of its life, or if you planted a brand new hay field.
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Krishona Martinson: and this is your first cutting a lot of times. The very first cutting is weedy because it takes a while for that hay field to establish. So a lot of times that maybe that first cutting we'd maybe like to push off to beef cattle, or something that can tolerate this a little bit better. But even they have a limit. So brand new seeding, hay, hay That's reaching its end of life, or unblown oats
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Krishona Martinson: are the main causes of weed seeds, and what we normally see is just really severe diarrhea with these horses. Is that just because it's irritating the bowel lining? Yeah, I you know some.
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Krishona Martinson: I'm sometimes we don't. We aren't sure, but I'm sure it's an irritant, and they're just tiny. And even if you, it's harder with round bales and big square bales. But if you are feeding kind of some weedy or small square bales, maybe you're feeding it some type of feeder. If you take that flake and just give it a couple of shakes. If you see a whole bunch of little black seeds fall to the bottom.
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Krishona Martinson: you know, you might want to rethink your hay Choice? Yeah. no, and we don't want to spread more of them, either. So well, and that's the thing. A lot of these are viable in manure. And then if we spread the manure back onto various fields, we are just repopulating the soil seed bank.
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Kris Hiney: So another plug for composting. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And correct composting. Yes, yeah. The yeah. Yeah. To kill the weeds. You do have to do all the know what temperature. So not just be like, there's a pile.
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Krishona Martinson: Alright. I think you've got one more category for us, and then I'm gonna throw one at 2 alright. So the last one in, hay is clover, and everybody's probably think way wait back up we feed clover. I want to be clear. Clover is a wonderful forge for horses.
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Krishona Martinson: However.
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Krishona Martinson: when clover is infected with a mold. For example, there is something called black blotch disease, and that is what actually causes slobbers. So it's not the red clover itself. It's when that red clover is infected with a mold, and it isn't a mold like moldy hay. It's it's mold that just happens in the environment when it's really hot and humid.
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Krishona Martinson: And there's a lot of places in the Us that have really dense stands of clovers that are, you know, they use for hay production, and it also is hot and humid. And that's how we get slobbers. It's not the red clover itself.
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Krishona Martinson: but it is when the red clover is infected with that mold, and I think we've all seen horses with slobbers.
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Krishona Martinson: Obviously it it. It retains its toxicity, and hay and horses will literally drool buckets of saliva. It isn't dangerous to the horse, although everything, thinks their horse has, rabies but of course, if you're going into a showmanship class, and you're trying to keep your beautiful outfit clean and your horses flowering buckets of saliva. That's a challenge.
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Kris Hiney: It usually runs its course, and we just want to make sure that horses always have really good access to water, because they are losing so much fluid through the act of slobbering slaframine
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Kris Hiney: I believe, is also present in white clover as as well. And so because white clover is typically more common in pastures. During certain seasons. You also see that with not just red clover? It's it's apparently this fungus really likes Clover to hang out with, or something. It hangs out with clover absolutely.
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Krishona Martinson: and the other clover that we just keep an eye on is not as common. It's sweet clover, and
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Krishona Martinson: that is commonly used by, you know, departments of transportation to help kind of establish different vegetation and roadways and ditches. And the sweet clover isn't an issue unless it's bailed too wet and starts to mold in the bale, and then we can see issues with horses bleeding
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Krishona Martinson: because clovers naturally have coumarol, and when it molds it turns into dye dicoumaral, which we can use in various rodent poisonings, and you can see we can have some horses that have some bleeding issues, but that's only when it molds. And honestly, sweet clover isn't really common. But again, if you're harvesting a lot of hay from a right of way or a ditch. It is really common in those settings.
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Kris Hiney: Yes. And so just as our fun fact, dicoumoral, all is where Warfarin comes from inhibitor. So if your dog accidentally eats it. It's not the clover, but the go directly to the doctor. That was a random aside. Alright. So here's you. Gotta guess what grass. And hey, I'm gonna ask you about right as a weed that I get all the time. Come on, you know it.
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Krishona Martinson: You tell me you tell me, Kris
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Johnson. Grass.
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Kris Hiney: So here's a deal. I am just not good on Johnson grass, because we don't have it up here. Why not?
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Krishona Martinson: Because winter kills everything, including the human spirit. I don't know, although this yes, I mean winter hasn't been horrible recently. However, yeah. So I am just not a good person to talk about Johnson grass, because it's not something that we struggle with, although I know in other parts of the country it is a huge issue. Umhm, yeah. So
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Kris Hiney: it also is one of those grasses that does better
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Kris Hiney: than other species in drought, like nothing was is like yay drought right? But it just tends to still be able to grow and reproduce more so than maybe the desirable species.
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Kris Hiney: So I'll give my little plug on Johnson grass. It's safer, and hay, than it is. Grazed so that should you know, if you do find it in your hay? That should make you feel a little bit better cause it does. It'll it really loves the margins of fields and things like that. But it's pretty obvious it is a wide leaf, maybe
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Kris Hiney: an inch or so, and it's ribbed right? So it'll look like this thing down the middle of it, and it's a robust plant like it gets big if you allow it.
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Kris Hiney: So we kind of use that same thing like, stay below 10% you probably fine don't freak out if, like, they eat just a little bit of it. And again safer in this case harvested than grazed, because for us, you know, the drought conditions or like after the freeze or frost. Those are kind of the, you know. You wanna make sure that the horses aren't eating it. But we get asked about that one a lot. So I thought I would at least
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Krishona Martinson: plug my Johnson grass. Yeah. Nope, that's good that you have that expertise Kris, because I certainly don't.
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Krishona Martinson: I don't know if it's expertise. But yeah, no, it's it's around a lot. So. And I think I'll just conclude by maybe getting on my soapbox for just a minute. But with any of these plants again, the horses are not going to actively seek them out, but in hay? It is that accidental ingestion. But
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Krishona Martinson: remember that a well managed hay field can out compete a lot of these weeds. So just keep an eye. Make sure you're fertilizing, you know. Make sure you're filling in those maybe some of those little bare areas that that we can't help. Maybe, like, you know, in in field approaches and things of that nature.
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Krishona Martinson: but also no way is time to pull the plug on the hay field. I mean, especially if you have legumes. Their life span is usually 3 to 5 years in great conditions. So with grasses, you maybe get more, you know, much longer term stands, but we still have to manage them.
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Krishona Martinson: and if you are going to choose to use a herbicide, make sure you read the label. make sure it is labeled for a hay field and not your lawn. Completely different environments.
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Krishona Martinson: Make sure it lists the weed that you're trying to kill, and then, if there is a harvest restriction you have to follow it.
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Krishona Martinson: So it's really important to, you know. Use herbicides when they make sense. But before you do it, read the label, and then, just like, you know, I suggested. Just. It's impossible to be able to identify every weed. But just try to know the main beneficial forages that should be in your hay. And that should be able to help you identify when something isn't in there and that is when the red flag should be raised
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Kris Hiney: yeah. Yeah. And again, if you're feeding free choice and the horses are leaving certain species behind, II might want to go inspect those. Yeah. And you know your county extension office, your local ag cooperative. If you have a soil water conservation district, even if you have a master gardener program in your area.
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Krishona Martinson: those individuals tend to be really good with weed identification. And you know, don't be free to reach out if if something's really concerning you, or if you do start to have issues, that you're just having trouble. Explaining
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Kris Hiney: yeah and then snap a pic or them off, although don't break off wild parsnip don't touch it. No, not unless you have gloves on. Yes, okay. Anything else. Advice for horse owners identifying a toxic plants in their hay?
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Kris Hiney: No, I think we've covered it. And again, this is just my little list of 5 that are most common. Obviously, it's not an exhaustive list. It's just a place to start. Okay? Well, we appreciate your time, Dr. Martinson. And if you're interested in more information about weeds, you can visit us at extension horses. org, and then also check out our web page because we always have fun, educational online courses and activities geared for adult and youth alike.
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So with that I will sign us off. And this has been another tack box. Talk Horse stories with a purpose.