70 



BULLETIN 1245, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



PREVENTION OF LOSSES 



In a former bulletin 4 attention was directed to the fact that most 

 of the losses from poisonous plants occur when the animals are short 

 of feed, and it was suggested that the larger part of the stock poison- 

 ing is indirectly due to scarcity of proper forage. This fact of the 

 intimate relation of scarcity of feed to stock poisoning can not be 

 too strongly impressed on the people who handle range animals in 

 the West. 



There is apparently a popular idea that range animals will volun- 

 tarily seek out poisonous plants and eat them from preference. It may 

 be stated as a general fact that this is not true. Animals seldom eat 

 poisonous plants except as they are driven to do so by lack of other 

 feed. Almost all poisonous plants are actually distasteful to live- 

 stock and under ordinary circumstances will be avoided. The only 

 exception, perhaps, is the group of loco plants. Animals do fre- 

 quently acquire a taste for loco and under some circumstances will 

 eat nothing else, even in the presence of other forage; and yet the 

 initial feeding in the case of loco plants is almost invariably brought 

 about by scarcity of feed. 



It has long been known that loco eating is ordinarily commenced 

 in the winter season or in the early spring when the loco plants are 

 green and luscious, and before the grass has started. The loco plants 

 at that time are the most prominent plants on the plains, and animals 

 commence to eat them because of lack of other feed. Many animals 

 after feeding on loco a short time acquire a liking for it and will 

 continue to eat it even in the presence of an abundance of other feed. 

 This is not true, however, of all loco-eating animals, for there are 

 very many which, after the grass has started, will leave the loco and 



will recover entirely 

 from the effects which 

 have been produced by 

 the preceding feeding. 

 In the matter of the 

 other plants, the rela- 

 tion between starvation 

 and the eating of the 

 poisonous plant is still 

 more marked. For in- 

 stance, the larkspurs 

 spring up immediately 

 after the snow leaves 

 the mountains a n d 

 grow much more rap- 

 idly than the surround- 

 ing grasses, and if cat- 

 tle are allowed to go to 

 the upper ranges before the grasses have had a fair start, they find 

 already occupying the ground the succulent larkspur plants in large 

 numbers. Sometimes the cattle come from dry winter feed and are 

 anxious to gorge themselves with any green material they find. 

 Under such circumstances if they come upon a field of larkspur they 



I? ^-a****^ 



. I V 



Figure 33. — A steer poisoned by rayless j^oldenrod, 

 Aplopappus heterophyllus, jiist before dtuth 



* Marsh, C. D. prevention op losses of livestock from plant poisoning. U. 

 Dept. Agr. Farmers' Bui. 720, 11 p. 1916. 



