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Field of Tilton 85 Bermuda grass produces cyanide, killing cattle

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on Sun, 06/24/2012 - 11:29am

I kid you not.

Dr. Gary Warner, an Elgin veterinarian who specializes in cattle, conducted the necropsy. Preliminary tests revealed the Tifton 85 grass, which has been here for years, had suddenly started producing cyanide gas, poisoning the cattle.

"Coming off the drought that we had the last two years, we're concerned it was a combination of events that led us to this," said Warner. "The problem is, we don't know, and there needs to be some caution exercised until we know more about the situation."

What is more worrisome: Other farmers have tested their Tifton 85 grass, and several in Bastrop County have found their fields are also toxic with cyanide. However, no other cattle have died.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are dissecting the grass to determine if there might have been some strange, unexpected mutation.

Another alternative seems to fungus.

So have we been eating low levels of cyanide in our beef, because nobody thought to test grass for it?

NOTE Seems not to be GMO. Creepy enough, though.

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Submitted by cg.eye on

They're feeding on the cyanide grass, so what feeds on them? Chickens?

For stewards of the food chain, they're not taking much care with stopping the contamination....

Submitted by hipparchia on

in several species/hybrids of grass and grass-related plants.

some factors that offset or reduce the toxicity:

the cyanide doesn't exist in the plant as free cyanide - the animal eating it has to have particular enzymes in its digestive system to convert the less- or non-toxic chemically-bound form to the much more toxic free cyanide form. not all animals will produce free cyanide when they eat cyanide-containing grass.

if the animal does have in its digestive system the particular enzymes needed to convert the nontoxic form to the toxic form, the pH and physical structure of the animal's digestive system affect how rapidly the animal produces and/or neutralizes the free cyanide. a cow's four stomach are much more efficient at at releasing the free cyanide from the grass than is a horse's one stomach, for instance, so if a horse and a cow eat the same amount of the same grass, the horse will be exposed to less of the toxic form and will be less likely to die.

in the grass species known to produce cyanide, it's typically only in the new growth. so you let the grass grow to a certain age/height before using it for hay/feed/silage/pasture.

fertilizer ratios are important. if you use too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorus, the plant will use the extra nitrogen to make cyanide.

when new growth in these grasses happen after some kind of damage, like frost or drought, the likelihood that the grass will make cyanide is even higher than usual.

i found some other references out there on the interwebs, but this one seems to be the most thorough and informative:

http://pubstorage.sdstate.edu/AgBio_Publ...

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