February 28, 2025 • 76 mins
Join the host, Dr. Carson Roberts, as he discusses forage toxicity issues for Missouri livestock with Dr. Tim Evans.
Contact Tim: https://healthsciences.missouri.edu/directory/personnel/tim-evans/
Survey: https://missouri.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7W2aUGOLZ0oKYjs
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to the Productive Pasturespodcast, the podcast
where we talk about forageproduction, forage livestock
interactions and the business dynamicsof grazing management.
I'm your host, CarsonRoberts, Missouri forage specialist.
Join me to visit withsome of the most progressive minds
in Missouri's forage and livestockindustry.
We'll share ideas that could help maximizeyour profitability
(00:25):
and productivity.
Welcome to the podcast.
And, my name is Carson Roberts,and I'm your host.
And we are talking today with Tim.
We are in Tim's glorified office.
(00:46):
Is this isthis is by no means your office.
No, no,my office is a crime scene right now, so.
So it would not be a good placefor us to be in.
So. Right.
Yeah.
So, Tim,
can you can you talk a littleabout your job title, what you do?
Yeah. On a daily basis.
(01:08):
Well, that's one of the big mysteriesat the University of Missouri
and in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
What does Doctor Tim Evans really do?
So here we go.
So, name is, Tim J.
Evans.
PhD got a DVM, PhD,
so a couple three letter words and,and a few other things down the road.
(01:30):
My mom doesn't even know what I do, but,actually, I'm a,
I have board certificationin animal reproduction
and in veterinary toxicology.
And actually,both of those things, come together.
So what I do now is,I have an academic appointment
(01:52):
as an associate professorin the Department of Biomedical Sciences,
where I teach, toxicologyto the veterinary students.
I also teach in a coupleof clinical rotations, and then I have
about 40%, of my appointment
is, extension and engagement.
(02:14):
So I'm a, state specialist in animalhealth and veterinary toxicology.
And then within the college,the the, dean just decided that
I'm the c squared e cubed,which is the coordinator
of continuing education,extension and engagement.
(02:35):
So there we go. I have a broad.
Broad, I'm a I'm
a jack of all tradesand and a master of very few, but,
I've been a veterinarian for, for 40,
almost 43 years in 2025 and,
and and I've done a lot with,I been at the University of Missouri
(02:58):
for 25, 26 years, but who's counting?
So. Right.
Very cool.
How long have you been at Mizzou?
Actually, about 30 years.
Came my, I moved here
with my wifeand my two little kids at the time.
In 1993, in the big flood of 1993.
(03:22):
So 31 years, almost 32 now. Yeah, yeah.
Let's just we'll just keep at it.
It's over 30 years. It's over 30.
Yeah, it's over 30 years.
But, but I think, you know,
so a lot of what I do is involved in
I love being a teacherand I love teaching our students.
(03:43):
I love, teaching our alumni.
And over the years, I've really developed
a passion, for helping our,
helping our producers and helping
extension agents, extension personnel.
I'm not sure extensionagent is a it's an ancient
term, but it's it extension faculty.
(04:05):
Go ahead and and serve, serve our producers. So.
Right. Yeah.
And and in the past, you know,there used to be an, extension
agent in every county,and you know, probably
mostly because of short staffing, there are regional,
what we call field specialists,which would be your extension agent.
(04:28):
Yeah, per se,but but yeah, as, as, specialists,
we work very closelywith, with those people
because they are on the front linesto a lot of the phone calls that come in.
Yeah, a lot of those things probably doget filtered through through the extension
specialist fields specialistbefore they come to the state specialist.
(04:50):
Yeah.
And I was doingI was getting a lot of contact prior
to having an extension engagement,appointment.
But, I was getting to, to a stage in my career
where,that was actually one of the things
I really enjoy the most about my job
(05:11):
is, is working with,
other state specialists and working with,
the field specialists, and
and againtrying to integrate veterinary medicine
with, with all of those related, topics.
And I, a lot of that happened,because of during Covid, I went ahead
(05:36):
and got in on some of the town hallsand things like that.
And I really think that educatingveterinary students
to be, good practitioners in rural areas,
you have to take an integrated approach
to how you're interactingwith, your producers.
(05:57):
And I, I like the idea.
I know thisI like this idea of partnerships between,
producers Extension's
extension and, and practitioners,
if you spell it all out,it's p squared pep.
But that's so that, you know,but I think this idea
(06:17):
that there's a synergy that happenswhen you get all of those,
all of those individuals talking together
and integrating and tryingto find the best solution to the problem.
Right? Yeah.
And and you know, in, in the sciences,we don't sometimes
we don't realize the human aspect
(06:38):
to a lot of the decisions that are made,
you know, on farm or elsewhere
because, because there's such a huge humanhuman aspect to the science that the,
you know,almost have to be in professional
at bothto really be good at diagnosing an issue.
And, and so yeah. Yeah.
(07:00):
And I think that I think that's the thingis that you and I have talked about
before is, is the idea that,
you know, in
extension oftentimesthe answer is it depends.
And it depends on, what's happening,what's happening on the ground.
What are the viable options,what are the determinants
(07:21):
that are going to help that personmake the best decision for them.
And that's not going to bethe same for, for
for really.
Any two people, there's always going to besome kind of or production system.
There's always going to be some,some variations depending on on that.
(07:41):
So yeah. Yeah.
Very cool.
Well, you know, I got exposedto poisonous plants in a pretty young age.
At least, you know,
there was a guy and he was a mentor in my,
youth and, and,
young adult life a little bit,
(08:04):
and he was an ARS scientists at,Oh, what do they call it?
That?
And Logan, Utah, there's a well,what's it called? The.
Oh, it's the poisonous plants lab.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and he and his,
son was was in my class in ain high school.
(08:25):
Brian Stegelmeier.
I don't know if you know the name.
Oh, he's legend. He's legendary.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Legendary. I knew him on a personal level.
Oh, wow. Very cool guy.
Oh, you've.
But you've been in the presenceof greatness.
There we go.
Yeah, yeah.
Brian knows a lot of lot of stuffand and a lot of information.
(08:49):
And actually, I've collaboratedwith the poisonous plant lab
in, in Loganon a number of different things.
We, a couple of, a couple of their,researchers came to Missouri
and we went and were harvesting a lot of,of white snake root.
And we went through for thatparticular plant
(09:11):
causes problems in, in cattle and horses.
And they were collecting itfrom a variety of different places.
And what they found is that some of it
had the toxic compoundsthey were expecting.
Some of it did not.
So again, that impacts
whether you're goingto see the toxic effects.
(09:33):
And I think when we talk about planttoxins,
they are in most cases,
secondary metabolitesand the growing conditions,
the environmental conditions,they're all going to impact that.
And I, we,you know, when I see a big problem
(09:54):
with poisonous plants, it'susually that perfect storm.
And that perfect storm involvesin involves
the plants, the poisons and involves
the, the patients, the animal.
All of the things about the pathogenesishow that the
(10:14):
how those poisons, work,how the animal responds and then
you have nutrition, you have weatehr,
you have, lots of things,
genetics, and then you've got management.
And, and again,usually when it really goes that,
(10:35):
the to heck in a handbasket,I have no idea what that means,
but it's a good it's a good termwhen things go wrong,
there's usually multiple factorsthat are that are contributing to that.
Yeah.
And right, right.
It's a just a perfect storm of of.
Yeah.
OOPSesand and and I didn't know that and.
(10:58):
Yeah. Yeah.
So anyway. Yeah.
And particularlyyou know, with particularly with,
weather conditions are unpredictable,particularly in Missouri.
Welcome to the state where, where, wherethe weather if you don't like the weather,
wait an hour and, and,
(11:19):
you know, kids,you know, kids could experience us,
our students can experience, a, a heat day,
a cold day or tornado day, a drought day.
A flood day, all in the same day.
They just don't know whythey're not going to school.
So there we go. Yeah, yeah,
(11:41):
yeah.
You pretty much summed up Missouri,
but, you know,
I, I often
consider sheep to be the number one animal
that it's susceptibleto, to, poisonous things.
And maybe that's because when I was a kid,Brian would always talk about the,
(12:03):
dissecting sheep and stuff like that.
But in Missouri, is there one animal
that seems to always, die from something?
Is there is there any certain specieswithin the ruminant category that
that is uniquely susceptible, or are theyjust, susceptible to different things?
(12:23):
Yeah.
It's,you know, it depends on the toxicants.
And now the poisonous plant laboratoryin, in Logan, Utah.
What theythey actually use sheep and goats
as their go to ruminantsspecies because they can do
(12:44):
they can set up,
they can set up research
and it's much more affordable
to be using those speciesthan, than perhaps cattle.
So and, and sheep and
and again the other thing is,is that particular in Utah,
(13:05):
in portions of the western United States,where we still have
a lot of sheep in the, in the standard,you know, the standard way that people,
in some cases manage sheepis they take the sheep and they put them
in a truck and they drive them 100 miles,and they put them out in a,
put them out in a pasturewould be a very euphemistic term.
(13:28):
Rangeland, rangeland.
They put them out in rangeland.
There might not be some water.
There might not be muchin the way of feed.
And, come back in a weekand and and see what they've done and.
Right.
And sometimes sheep have opted to dieif that's, that's there's just.
Yeah, they're they're looking they're,they're looking for,
(13:50):
they're looking for a way for a way,way out, a place, a place to die.
Yeah. I think it's always funny.
I, I don't know if you've seen iton social media, but there's that.
There'sa video of a sheep stuck in a trench,
and the guy pulls him out by the legand sets him up,
and then he runs a few feetand jumps back in the trench.
(14:11):
And that's just.
There's, I have a couple of anyone that,
and I was, raised in California,
the state, not, not the town in Missouri.
But we had sheep, my brother in FFA and,
(14:32):
and I and 4-H and, and, you know,
they are, they're truly a
an interesting, interesting species.
Not one that I would want
to depend on for, a life or death decision, so.
(14:53):
Right. Well,they they evolved with humans.
I think they're the longestdomesticated animal in the world.
Oh, yeah, they’re one of them, certainly.
And and so they're reliant on human humansand shepherds.
Is is pretty strong.
And when and when humansare referred to as, sheep.
That's not necessarily, necessarily a compliment, but.
(15:17):
Right.
Yeah.
Not necessarily, butI, I think the other thing is, is that,
because of their natureand how they are raised,
they are often put in situationswhere they, they have
the ability to make do where
other animals might not be able to.
(15:41):
Right now, Missouri is not a particularly,
big sheep stateother than, let's say, FFA.
And 4-H and that, we do
have a fair amount of goats,particularly,
the meat goats, the boar,goats, those types of things.
(16:02):
And again, with sheep,we see a lot of issues
having to do with, with copper.
And so a lot of times you know,people think that goats and sheep
can eat the same rationbecause they're the same thing.
One's got wool, one doesn't.
And that's really not, not the case.
(16:25):
Sheep, are very sensitive to,
excessive copper in their dietbecause they don't they don't excrete it.
Right.
That mainly comes from the, the,
the nutrition rationthat you're feeding them.
Right?
Sure.
Your your mineral supplement. Exactly.
(16:46):
And especially the mixed ones.
If you're feeding a sheep like a cow, mineral
cow or a mineral or horses.
Horses even is is is even worse.
And I've been situationswhere someone was feeding a mineral mix
that was designedfor both sheep and goats.
(17:09):
And so they describedwhat the range of copper would be.
And it was a very, very broad range.
When when someone does thatin a manufacturing, situation,
if as long as they're within that range,
then it's fine and they can changewhere they're at in that range
(17:33):
without necessarilytelling you that they've changed it.
So it might be the case that that,
you know, before it was ten partsper million copper.
And then when they finish, it's
20 partsper million or 40 parts per million.
And and that's a potential disasterwaiting to occur.
(17:57):
And again, sheep
I think part of the, the, the
the deal with with with sheep and
and andand giving them and giving them do credit
yeah I'm giving sheep credit but
but the, the point is,is that they are definitely,
prey their prey animal.
(18:19):
They think like an animal that is prey.
And so you don't want toyou don't want to show
that you're ill or not functioning
well if you're in, a flock,
because those on the edge are the onesthat are going to be most susceptible.
(18:42):
That's Doctor Tim Evanstrying to be a sheep psychologist.
That's a that's a pretty that'sa pretty frightening, frightening thing.
But I'm sure there's this sheeppsychologist somewhere in the world.
Yeah.
But if you're out therelistening to the podcast
and you're a sheep psychologist,email me and I will get you on.
(19:04):
And yeah, we'll have a lot of interestingconversation.
Yeah, it'sprobably a very bad idea to have that.
But yeah.
But back to your your question, Carson.
And looking at it, this is actually, this is a cattle state.
We have lots of cattleand we have lots of,
(19:25):
there's lots of potential plantsand things that can be a problem.
And so a lot of the intoxicationthat I deal with or management situations,
involve, involve cattle,
when it comes to horses,the major issues
(19:46):
we deal with in horses is certainly, the toxic endophyte infected tall fescue
and that the horse is kind of the pregnantmare.
It's kind of the, canary in the cave
to those, ergot alkaloids,particularly the ergo peptide alkaloids.
And so milk production,
(20:08):
is completely dependent on prolactin.
And so when you get lowlevels of prolactin
and because of the ergot alkaloids,then you're going to have a mare
that's not going to have milk,you're going to have a foal
that has a failure of passive transfer.
(20:28):
In cattle the things we're going to seeprimarily with the ergot
alkaloids are going to be,
responses that are very temperaturedependent, temperature
dependent,and also involving vaso constriction.
so if its really, really cold,
(20:48):
we're going to see dry gangrene,in the feet.
Fescue, fescue foot,
we can also have problems in the taillike a someone might call it fescue tail.
You can see fescue ears but that whole.
That's a cold weather.
Cold weather phenomenon.
Then when we get to the summerthen we get to the summer and it's hot,
(21:12):
then vessels are constricted
in, in the, in the surface of the skin.
And they can't,they can't get rid of the heat.
And so they regulate their temperature.Yeah. Yeah.
So they get hypothermic and, and again,a lot of jump in the pond.
They jump in the pond.
When I first came to, to Missouri, I,
(21:35):
had grown up in, in, in California,I spent some time in Texas.
And I truly believethat cattle, were terrestrial mammals.
When I came to Missouri,
it didn't take me
very long to realize that they were,
amphibious.
Or, or they were either in,
(21:58):
yeah, amphibious mammalsor they were aquatic mammals. So.
Hippopotamus. Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, I think those are the,those are the things that you deal with
and, and and and knowing and,
and and againbeing a specialist in veterinary
in animal reproduction or theriogenology
(22:18):
or a veterinary toxicology.
I still believe I'm the only person
in the worldwith those particular board certifications
telling youhow critical is to have both of those.
But Missouri is the one place
where I fit, where I fit perfectly.
(22:39):
Great.
Yeah, well, well, we're glad to have you.
So my my first question that I have, andI'm really curious about this, what is the
number one
reasons from a from a toxic standpoint.
Number one reason cow dies that you see.
But what is the most common fromfrom all the calls that you've received,
(23:03):
where, where, you know, somebody calls,hey, I have 20 dead cows, you know.
Yeah.
The what's the most commonand just to let you know, it's always 25.
Oh, 25 it's always 25.
I gave a talk to some folks, up in the northern part of the state,
and the only lesson that they had
was that they needed to own 24 or 26because 25 were going to die.
(23:23):
So that wasn't exactly the messageI was trying to get.
But so,
again, I would say two of the major,things that we deal with
when we get that,that perfect storm we've talked about is,
nitrate, nitrite intoxication,where because of drought conditions,
(23:45):
we get stress plants,they accumulate nitrate.
And that potentially, can lead
to, can can lead to death.
The other
so mainly on this when we're talking aboutsorghum, Sudan grass, sorghum,
Johnson grass and, and cornand corn from the standpoint
(24:09):
that what happens is they go aheadand they harvest the corn,
and then they have a bunch ofthey have a bunch of stocks
or they're going to go ahead andand feed green chop.
But they decide and and greenchop needs to be fed quickly.
It needs to be fed. You cut it.You feed it.
(24:30):
Sometimes what happens when you,when you don't feed it immediately
that pile of green chopyou get the same reaction
that happening in that pilethat happens in the rumen
and and you get the nitrateconverted into nitrite.
That's what happens in the room.
And, and that nitrite is what goes ahead
(24:53):
and, causes the hemoglobin,
not to be able to bind oxygenso that you get this chocolate
brown bloodand they can die relatively quickly.
They can have, premature parturition.
They can have moreof a chronic condition.
(25:13):
But again, what people usually notice is
you pretty
much are going to pay attentionto 25 dead cows.
So the the other an interesting
enough, the sorghum species,
the sorghum species can or are famousfor accumulating nitrate.
(25:35):
They also can have,
cyanogenic glycosides, sugars that,
that include a cyanide group.
And so they can cause cyanide poisoningor prussic acid poisoning.
Right.
Usually, usually they're not going toproduce, both of them at the same time.
(25:57):
Generally drought stresscorn mature is going to have
and sorghum is nitrate in the stems.
And, young, immature, rapidly growing,
sorghum species,
is liable to have elevated levelsin the, in the leaves.
(26:18):
And so actually
couple years ago,
we had a drought and then all of a sudden,
we had some rain and,
in one portion of the state particularly,
I mean, I, I was there,
you know, probably in July,and nothing was growing.
(26:41):
And then all of a sudden,about a month later, we had some rain,
and all of a sudden we had all this lush
green Johnson grass.
There wasn't a lot of of forage available.
The people had their cattle and saw
that there was saw that, oh,we don't have any.
(27:03):
We have nothing for them to eat here.
Let's go ahead and open the gateand let's put,
let's, let's put 150 cows and calves,
that are, hungry into this,
pasture with lush green,Johnson green, lush grass,
(27:23):
and that that a lot of,a high number of cattle.
It was, it was more than 25 and it was,it was a sad thing.
So. So with that now, when,
sorghum species,
including Johnsongrass, the mechanism for them to develop
(27:45):
prussic acid is rapid expansion of cells.
Okay.
At least from from my understanding.
Oh, no. That's good.
And and so and so when,when the plant is growing rapidly.
And and this happens when they are,
you know, between the 12 and 16inch tall phase, you know.
(28:06):
Yeah.
And, when, when it's very lush and green and,
at least at least for sorghum sedan grassand then and,
and then also when they freezebecause when they're freeze that expansion
and, and the cellular cytoplasm material
is, is burst into into the plant and,
(28:28):
and that expansion also causesthe prussic acid to develop.
So yeah.
So the, the key around that,
at least from my understanding,is rapid expansion of the cells.
Either eitherbecause of very rapid growth.
Yeah.
Or because of, because of freezing.
That's what's going to cause the theprussic acid to develop at high levels.
(28:52):
Yeah, or trampling, trampling any type of
because what happens is you've got, the compounds that have got,
that have got sugarand they've got, the cyanide.
And then what happens within the,
within the plant andand again, this is dangerous.
(29:14):
Doctor Evans talking plant physiology. But
they have beta
glucosidase within the leaves.
And they alsoand they also have hydroxy nitro lysis.
And so if the plant, the material is dying
from trampling from freezing,those compounds come together.
(29:37):
And the reason that cattle
and ruminants are especially susceptible
is that there's beta glucosidase
from the,from the microorganisms in the rumen.
And and so that does the same,the same, the same thing.
(29:57):
So ruminants are very susceptible andruminants and monogastics are susceptible.
If you have those particular plants
that are traumatizedand and then you're, you're creating
that potential, for, for prussic
acid, hydro cyanic acid.
(30:19):
Or I just say cyanide.
Does that that jive with. Yes. Yeah.
So that'sthat sounds right. And interesting.
So so the most poisonous plant is, is,
very useful plant at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah, I believe so.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
I'll be talking at the, at the springforage conference and talking about
(30:43):
safety tips for livestock safety tips for,
for,
warm season forages, grasses.
And I think the thing is, is that,you know, it's interesting,
you know, we call it Johnson grassif we're considering it a weed
(31:03):
and we call it perennial sedan,if we're considering it a pasture plant.
But the fact is, it is a very,
it's a very hardy and and durable plant,
and it and it responds to,
to various stressors fairly dramatically.
(31:25):
If though, it's
higher than
we say, 24in just to say two feet.
And if we have damage to it,we wait two weeks.
Again, some people a week to ten days,I just
I in my in my advancing age,
(31:47):
I go two feet tall and two weeksjust to make sure.
And, I, I think that two weeksrule of thumb is pretty standard.
I've, I've heard that a number of places.
So yeah, I think it's,I think it's, it's standard.
You can get away with a little bit less,but you know,
(32:08):
as yourself as an extension,
as an extension specialist,
agronomist, and me as a veterinarian.
I don't want 25 dead cowsto be named after me.
I don't want the Tim Evans death incident
of 2025, and, and and so,
(32:31):
I try to be on, on on the cautious side.
The other thing that's important is
how do you manage that grass?
And the other thing is how do you manageintroduction to the grass?
Because I think oftentimesI remember in forage
and and filling out my record bookand always talking about,
(32:52):
you know,how do you introduce animals to new feed,
how do you introduce them to a new forage?
Well, you want the animal to be fed.
You want to introduce them gradually.
The most valuable animalsthat we're going to have on our, on,
on a, on a farm in Missouriare going to be our pregnant cattle.
(33:13):
So you don't want to put those out first.
You may want to use steersor or other animals,
but you do things to offer haywhen they're when they're out there.
Exactly. Yeah, they have their choice.
Although I'm not necessarily convinced
that they're going to choose wisely.
(33:34):
But I think I think there's a varietyof different strategies.
And I think I again, aswe talked about earlier,
I think the idea of having a using, it,
the producer, extension,
the practitioner and,
and all of them aware of what is going onthat's going to help the producer,
(33:59):
deal with the situationthe best, the best way. So.
Right. Cool.
Interesting.
So moving on from from that, let's talk about another plant.
What what's the next.
What's the next one that comesto your mind that's poisonous to animals?
(34:21):
Actually choose to eat?
Well, yeah.
And and again, we're in the fescue belt.
So if you're in the fescue belt, not that
I think we get much mortality, from,
toxic
endophyte infected, tall fescue grass.
Or if we have or if we haveor if we have ergot,
(34:45):
but, ergot types, grasses or grains, but
least for the
toxic endophyte infected tall fescue.
It's a given that our animalsare going to be exposed to that.
And so and, and and that typically likewe talked about earlier lower performance
maybe some lameness issuesand and stuff like that.
(35:08):
Yeah.
And and I think the other thing thoughis to understand that
understanding the historyis really important and understanding that
at one point in time, 50, 60,
maybe 70 or 80 years now,I've been here for about 30 years.
But there was a point in timewhere there wasn't,
(35:28):
there weren't a lot of grassesthat were growing in Missouri.
I mean, grasses like, dependable.
Most grasses forageslike dependable weather.
They like rain.They like things like that.
They like to be able.
That's that's what plants like.
But the toxic endophytethat produces some good compounds.
(35:52):
And then the toxic ergot alkaloids,particularly the ergo
peptide alkaloids,they can grow about anywhere.
I mean, it's people have called itthe wonder grass.
I mean, it can grow just about anywhere.
Yeah.
And and and do well, it'sjust the problem is, is that
(36:14):
if that's the maingrass that you're growing in, particularly
if it's really coldor if it's really warm hot,
you're going to have some, you're goingto have some problems and some animals
are going to be more susceptiblethan, than than others.
And so one has to figure out how to,
(36:36):
how to manage that, that situation.
Right.
Can you explainjust for a second, how to identify, say,
fescue foot or you mentioned somethingabout the tails.
Yeah. How do how how do you identify.
Yeah. That, that that's occurring.
(36:56):
And what the problem is.
Yeah.
The, the, the the,
25, 2500, dollar
word is,
you're looking for dry gangreneor or even just lameness.
And so what usually happens an interestingenough, it's the left hind foot.
(37:21):
For some reason, I don't know I don't knowwhy is it always the left one?
Not always.
But in the literature
it they talk about itbeing in the left hind
and I have no idea why that is, although
I've seen a lot of animalswhere it started in the left hind,
(37:41):
so I don't know why it's a mystery,
but what you first will happen is
you will see, particularlyif it's if you've had a cold
spell, is
you will see that the animals,you'll see some lameness.
There'll be some swelling,particularly around the coronary band.
(38:06):
And then, you know, the coronary bandis, is, is there's the hoof
and where the hoof joinsthe rest of the leg,
that circumference there,that's the coronary band,
kind of the soft tissue as,that's this next to this.
Yeah.That attaches the hook to the. It's about.
Exactly. Yeah.
(38:26):
You're doing a great jobof translating that.
That's that's a good so. Right.
I figured thatthat needed clarification because,
some people may not know.
Well, no.
And I'm not allowed to say wordsthat are completely understandable
all the time, sobut I but at that area where the hoof
joins, the the soft tissue in the leg,
(38:50):
or maybe even higher,you'll start to see,
kind of a, a a line forming a demarcation
between live tissue and dead tissue and,
and that's called, dry gangrene.
And, but anyhow and, and
(39:11):
and there's even instances where
the feet have actually fallen off,but that would have to be pretty high
concentrations of the toxinsand really, really cold.
But a lot of what we see isthese animals are lame.
And when animals are lameand they can't walk, as well,
(39:31):
they're not going to do as wellof, of eating.
They're not going to do as gooda job of producing, producing
milk to feed their, to feed their calves, etc..
And so that's what we end up seeing now.
We can also see it in the other,just so distal,
that means,distal means away from the center.
(39:55):
And so,
at the tip of the tail, we typically can,
can lose the tip of the tail,we can lose the tip of the ears.
So the tip of the tail whereall the hair is, where the switch switch.
Yeah. We losing the switchand you lose the switch.
And and it just swells upor it just dies and falls off
(40:15):
I what happens is, is that
oftentimespeople are surprised by that occurring
because they don't see it,
because you don't see the lame,they don't see a lameness.
They just see the tail.
And then they may see some swellingjust above the switch.
And then you might still start to see thatthat line
of demarcationbetween where there's blood flow,
(40:38):
where there's blood flow aboveand no blood flow and there's a switch.
And then, right, almost as ifyou put a castrating band at that point.
Exactly.
It's that's essentially what the compounds
in the produced by the endophyte,
the fungus, the invisible fungus
(41:00):
that's within the plantand the one that's toxic, that produces,
the ergo peptide alkaloids, ergotalkaloids, ergo peptide alkaloids.
That is, yeah.
The that's what you're going to, that's what you're going to end up.
That's what you're going to end up seeing.
(41:21):
So there's another fungus.
So another fungus that you can't see.
I had a there was a gentleman,a colleague of mine who,
who told everyone that he could tell
whether, the fescue was in fact,
whether there was a fescuewas affected by endophyte.
(41:43):
Well, the fact is, 90 plus percent of it
in, particularly in Missouriis going to be with the toxic endophyte.
But it's invisible.
You can't right.
You can't see it.
It's a it's a fungal associationwithin the cell.
Yeah. Or in the, in the plant cell.
Yeah. Kind of in between.
It's intracellular intracellular.
(42:03):
So endophyte that's what that
that's what that means is that it's within the plant now.
Yeah.
There's another fungus called Claviceptspurpurea.
Let's just call it ergot okay.
And ergot is commonnot just in in fescue right.
Oh okay.
Because there were issueswith with people in the early colonies.
(42:27):
Yeah. Right.
Ergot.
Right. Yeah.
Because they were eating rye bread. Yeah.
It was ergot.
Ergot infected I guess. Yeah.
And and it made him go crazy or something.
The Salem witch trials, the.
Yeah. The French Revolution.
You know, obviouslythere were other factors involved,
(42:48):
but the ergot alkaloids,
is a broad class of compounds
and what happens is, is that particularlywhen there's cool, wet,
cool wet springs there, the seed head
or the seed where the where
(43:08):
the, where the seed is forming,
actually gets infected by this fungusand this fungus, the sclerosis
of this ergot body, it actuallyis kind of dark brown or purplish.
It looks like it actually looks like.
Rat feces rat pellet rat.
(43:29):
Thank you but it it replaces the seed
and it producesextreme high concentrations
of those ergot alkaloids,ergo pepsin alkaloids.
And so for instance,we talked about the tail switch.
Well and losing that generally
(43:50):
with fescuewe would lose it in the winter.
If I'm in a situationwhere they're losing the tail
switch and it's in the summer,
that almost always in my mind means
that we probably havesome ergotized grasses, grains.
(44:10):
I've seen
orchard grass, Timothy
grass, brome grass, ryegrass,
wheat, oats, barley,
rye, all of that triticale.
All of those can be affected, by the,by by the ergot.
So does that go away?
(44:32):
Let's let's say you, harvest dry forage hay,
those pastures, that have ergot,
does it translate into the hayor does that die?
Yeah.
And and it depends on when,
when you, when you, make it into the hay.
Oftentimeswhat happens for managing, as you are
(44:56):
well aware with the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue
a lot of what we'll dois we'll mow off the seed heads,
because that's where there'sa lot of concentration of the toxins.
And we don't want to get down into that.
Into that what, that lower
three inchesor two and a half to three inches.
Yeah. Where are the concentrates.
(45:17):
But with hay,
particularly if the, the sclerosis
of the ergot bodies,those rat pellets or mouse pellets,
if they go ahead and you
and you make it into hay
when they're mature, a,
(45:40):
a high percentage of them will fall off
in the hay during the hay making process.
Raking, baling. Exactly.
We did some research on that, a number of years ago.
And, and that's,that is actually very helpful.
And then also probablyin the drying process,
(46:01):
we know that the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue those the
the toxins that we're concerned aboutwill go down in their concentrations,
during the drying process and all that.
And it's possible that,
it's possiblethat if there are any of the ergot bodies,
(46:24):
that they could possibly be infected,but we don't know.
We don't know.
And so what happensis the part of that life
cycle of the ergot
is that those ergot bodies fall off,
they go into the ground,they go ahead and they overwinter.
That's how they they're in the ground and
(46:48):
and then
in the cool, wet spring,they start kind of sprouting.
It's interesting to know that,
when we had a lot of deep tilling,
a lot of deep tilling was used
to decrease the amount of,
of ergot infection in cereal grains,
(47:09):
small cereal grains, not corn,but wheat, barley, triticale, rye.
Interesting.
So, so people would plow toto deep plows, plow.
Yeah. Turn everything over. Exactly.
So that they can,get that endophyte deeper
into the or the fungus or the fungus.
Fungus? Yeah.The endophyte that's. Sorry.
(47:30):
Yeah, yeah, but but with low till
and no till becoming the standards.
Right.
We've started to see, some,
more of the problem most of the time.
They do a lot of
they can do, oh, they can go ahead
(47:54):
and with, with sieves
and with, gravimetric tables.
The ergot bodies gravimetric weight.
The ergot bodies are pretty heavy,and they go to the bottom
and they go with the screeningsand so you can reduce it.
So, at least in the grain, at least,
(48:17):
at least if trying to graze it,that would be a different.
Yeah, that's a very different thing.
That's where, cutting off the,during the hay or depending
on what's going on, cutting, taking off the seed heads.
Those are potentialthose are some of the options.
Yeah, yeah.
So, one thing that I've always thought,a way
(48:39):
to avoid some of these messes,I guess you would call them
is to.
Is to, ensure that your animalshave a diverse diet.
In the pasture.
Is that is that something that you.
I guess you don't see many. Good.
I guess you don't seevery many good examples, do you?
(48:59):
Well, I you know,I think I honestly believe
that that fescue
can, toxicendophyte infected tall fescue.
And certainly there may be a placefor nontoxic endophyte infected fescue
in some management schemes,but I do believe we can,
(49:22):
we can manage
we can manage our, our way,
through,
through the toxicendophyte infected tall fescue.
And so how do we do that?
Well, we don't want to,
be dependent on that kind of foragewhen it's really, really cold.
(49:45):
And we don't want to be dependent on.
It's really, really hot.
And, and, using, diverse forages.
Again, it it's, it's a cool seasongrass.
And, and do it
using, pasture rotation,
(50:06):
not using it during the summerwhen it's hot, letting it grow, possibly
having, possibly having some,
a fall stockpile, it growing in the fall.
In a ina, I those are things that you can do.
There's a number of,
(50:27):
there's a number of, Treatments, additives that,
that are, are sold to
that might be helpful personally.
I haven't seen,a great deal of evidence of that,
but I think the big thingis managing the seed
heads, going ahead using the hay.
(50:50):
And, and again, if you're,if you're concerned, certainly.
There are, there are chemical analysisthat can be done further.
Ergo, pepsin alkaloid, although,
that's probably more important in horses.
(51:11):
Horses again.
Horses again being the horses again
being the canary in the cave for that,
you really shouldn'thave any of the endophyte.
Right.
So, so if you're a horse owner, it's
better to avoid at least a horse ownerthat has brood mares, right?
(51:32):
Yeah.
If you have aif you have a couple geldings.
Yeah. Maybe not an issue.
Late gestation.
It's the late gestation.
what I like to term, ergo peptidealkaloid,
toxicosis in, in, in pregnant mares.
And it to me,because horses are so sensitive,
(51:57):
to exposure
to those ergot peptide alkaloids,it doesn't it doesn't really matter
if it's from the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue
or it's coming fromit's coming from the ergot.
And there's really not a lot of argument,
(52:18):
in the science of what
the toxic principles are, in horses,in cattle,
there's some debate whether itwhether it is the
ergo pepsin alkaloidsor other ergot alkaloids or what happens.
And so I just, I just avoid that controversy
(52:42):
when we're talking in, in, in bovine,bovine terms, although,
The ergo peptidealkaloids are, are well documented
as certainly there being a relationshipin most cases, sometimes,
sometimes it's not as preciseas you'd like it to be now in.
(53:02):
Oh go ahead.
One of the things that I, I want, people to,
make note of is that when we're talkingabout these symptoms,
which is basicallywhat we've been talking about,
usually production has been harmed far
before these symptoms show upexactly a long time before it.
(53:24):
It's the same.
It's the same in the row crop worldwhen they talk about weeds,
by the time you see the weedsin the field, it's, you know,
a lot of harm has already occurred,you know?
Yeah, yeah.
These compounds, not only do they impact,
the, the, the blood vessels and,
(53:44):
and and again prolactin,
although it'skind of a, an unfortunate name.
These compounds,
cause, hypo prolactanemia
or low prolactin, but prolactin, it'skind of an unfortunate name
because then you thinkall it has to do with is milk production.
(54:08):
But prolactin does a whole lot of thingsin the body.
It's a hormone that is, that is involved
in a lot of metabolism.
And and it can there's other aspectswhere you get
you get decreased.
(54:30):
You get decreased feed consumption.
You have animalsthat just don't feel very good.
Before you see some of those,some of those other things
and they get a very restricted,restricted blood flow alone is enough
to not make any critter or personfeel good, right?
(54:51):
Yeah.
You know, because because that'sjust less oxygen through the body.
Yeah.
And, many people have accused me of not having
a lot of oxygen to my brain, and so,occasionally.
So, yeah,you've heard some of those choices, so.
But the the the thing about
and it's important to understand,
(55:14):
in mares,and it's particularly late gestation
particularly they'll say the last,
the last 60 days thoughI don't think there's any,
there's any perfect reasonfor have pregnant mares,
exposed to toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue
other than the factif that's the only thing that's growing
(55:37):
normally we take the mares offof those type of pastures in any hay.
That might contain that.
The last 60 days.
Definitely the last
30 days, particularly if you have,
if you have good breeding dates,
you've had repeated pregnancy examinations
(55:59):
so that you, so that, you know,
when the mayor is due to foal,because the most common thing
you're going to see is agalactia,agalactia, agalactia, agalactia.
That's what I tell students.
And when I see them,they go agalactia, agalactia, agalactia.
Yeah. It’s that important.
They'll see the agalactia, no milk.
(56:21):
Okay. Agalactia, no milk.
The foal will have a failure,a passive transfer.
It won't get the antibodiesit needs to get from the mother.
But in addition to that,we may also see, retained
after birth, retained fetal membranes.
(56:42):
We may see prolong gestation in the mare.
We may see, where the, the,
fetal membranes, are presented
before, the foal comes out.
That's not supposed to happen.
That's a premature placental separation.
(57:06):
The foal may be abnormal in itself.
We use technical terms like dis mature.
Over mature, post mature dummy foal.
That's not so technical.
Where the foal may not be,may not be normal.
And,
I think those are, and one of the things
(57:29):
really important to emphasize is
many people who own horses.
And even peoplewho have been doing it for a long time
are extremely dependenton development of the utter,
the mammary gland,to tell when the mares going to foal.
(57:53):
And so what happens is,and I was doing some research,
about 20 something years ago,and I was checking
I used some poniesand they were getting a, semi-synthetic,
ergo peptide alkaloid, an injection of it.
And, I was checking one of the,one of the
(58:14):
the pony maresdidn't look like she was going to foal.
And then I went, maybe 300 yards away.
And within ten minutes,I got a call, and there was a baby out.
I mean, I used to I foaled outprobably a thousand mares in my,
in my pre univer, my pre graduate school
(58:34):
career and
and I couldn't tell that a marewas going to foal in in ten minutes.
So, and because,because of the, toxicity.
Yeah.
Because of the, the agalactia.
Yeah. And so no milk.
And so what happens is
cattle, you know, you probably have,
(58:59):
depending on the circumstances, 10%,
difficult births in cattle.
But, you know, that can be from
a big bull, little heiferthat can be from a leg back.
And and cows can still can still survivesome of those processes.
Yeah. Small pelvis. Pelvis. Yeah.
(59:19):
But but a mare therethat it's over in an hour okay.
And in fact an hour would be a long time.
And so if things are going to go wrongthey go really wrong really quickly.
And if you don't know that the mareis going to foal, you're not there.
And so it becomes even a,
(59:40):
a bigger problembecause of that circumstance.
Yeah.
And, and I guess that'swhy a lot of these, racehorse
barns have these high tech camerasand all this stuff.
Yeah, they're set up so they canmonitor horse activity and.
Yeah, be there at a moment's notice,I guess.
(01:00:02):
Yeah, yeah.
So I think that's important.
And and again, from the standpoint of the,
novel endophyte infected tall fescue
or the nontoxic endophyte infectedtall fescue grass.
I think it probably
(01:00:22):
if one
has the capital to invest in that,
that that, change in the pasturethat that kind of pasture renovation.
Then, with pregnant mares,
that may be the way to gobecause they're not very tolerant at all.
It hardly takes very littleto cause a potential problem now.
(01:00:47):
Right.
That may not be.
And and again,there's differences and sensitivity.
So, you know, some people will saywell it's 300 parts per billion.
So 300, you know,
parts of the, of the, the ergo
pepsin alkaloids,
(01:01:08):
and that would come outto being a microgram
per billion would be a microgram,of the toxin
per kilogram of the grass.
And, some people will say,
well, 300 that's you're going to havemultiple animals affected,
but what about the really sensitiveanimal that it only takes
(01:01:35):
50 partsper billion or something like that?
And those are the things that we end upseeing and, and we see in cattle as well,
that there are some animalsthat are more susceptible than others.
And so is that a genetic, traitor is that a learned trait
or I guess epigenetic?
You know, that's really interesting.
(01:01:57):
There's probably there's probably genomic
and epigenomic.
Aspects of that,
but there actually are, let's see.
What's the single nucleotide polymorphism.
So snip and SNP, there's one
(01:02:19):
of that has to do with the,
the gene that codes for, the dopamine,
the D2 dopamine, receptor.
Maybe, maybe also the, the D1 receptor.
But, those are what the toxins interactis what we call receptors.
(01:02:43):
And so it may be that
some animals are more tolerant,
particularly in cattle are more tolerant,
of of the heat or particularly
the increased body temperatureassociated with the toxins.
And again, right.
(01:03:04):
If we're going to talkabout that, there's a, a, a
a genetic abnormality,
I can't necessarily saythat there is an epigenetic and of course,
an area of great interestright now is the idea
of of, of fetal programing
(01:03:26):
and the idea that when, when offspring,
are exposed to,
stress while they're in utero
or in the early neonatal period,they can go ahead
and it may impact their future, their future development.
(01:03:50):
Interesting.
So some of the chemicalsthat they're exposed to or the,
the, the diet,
I guess you could say that they're exposedto while they're while they're inside.
Yeah, can influence.
Yeah. Poor nutrition.
Starvation is something that's been shownin cattle that can impact,
(01:04:12):
reproductive traitsas well as other other things.
Other aspects of, of,
of the offspring.
And so this is an this is an, an
and again,one of the things to consider with fescue,
there does appear to be some adaptation
(01:04:37):
animals that have been exposed to thethose compounds their whole lives
do much betterwhen exposed to them than an animal
that has never been exposedand naive individual
never previously exposed to
the toxic endophyte infected tall fescue.
(01:05:01):
Can respond
very dramatically.
They, can really,
be adversely affected in multiple waysby that exposure.
So, let's say, you know, if you'reif you're a seed stock producer, and,
and you had the option to seed endophyte
(01:05:24):
infected tall fescue, you know, you're inyou're living in Missouri, right?
Yeah.
And you had the option between endophyteinfected tall fescue, a novel,
novel endophyte infected fescue,
for your seed to seed a pastureor even to seed your whole farm.
Maybe,maybe the better option is to to plant
(01:05:47):
something like Kentucky 31and endophyte infected fescue
because the seed stock that you're sellingcould go to an endophyte infected farm.
Is that. Yeah.
And that's a, that's a traditional
that would be a traditional viewthat those animals being adapted,
(01:06:08):
there are some novel endophyte
a nontoxic endophyte or low toxic
novel endophyte that produce
low cut very low concentrations
of the ergo peptide alkaloids.
And so talking to various different,
(01:06:29):
individuals in the field.
And, and again, I'm a board member of a,
of an organization,the Grassland Alliance.
And, it's idea,
traditionally has been to be,
stressing the importance of novelendophyte.
(01:06:51):
My approachis, more of an integrated approach
of pasture renovation that may include,
the novel endophyte,but may also include introduction
of different types of grassesand things like that,
or going ahead and,
and interceding, the novel endophyte in a pasture
(01:07:15):
that has a lot of the, toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue, other types
of management schemes to look at that,particularly in particularly in cattle.
And I, I've talked to individualswho have had used
a, a nontoxic, low toxic
low toxic
(01:07:39):
endophyte infectedtall fescue low concentrations.
And those are the heifersthat have been produced,
do. Well,
but they also have done well
when introduced to a pasture
that has the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue.
(01:08:02):
So they're getting enough of the compoundsto have to have adapted
so that they don'tthey don't, deteriorate dramatically.
So, so maybe a good strategy
then is, is to mitigate,
(01:08:22):
you know, mitigate.
So you're not a 100%,
foraging on infected tall fescue,but the your,
if you have,
I guess a variety of forages to go to,
but that the animal is exposed to it
at some point in its useful life.
(01:08:46):
Yeah, I, I think I think another
I think another important aspect is,
you know, you can do genetic testing,you can do a lot of things, but.
Look at your cattle.
Look at how they're how they're growing.
And the animals that you want to,
(01:09:07):
to keep back as your replacementheifers are the animals
that do well in situationswith the toxic endophyte.
infected tall fescue.
I mean, you can go aheadand look at a bunch of,
a bunch of, of, ofof calves, weaned calves
(01:09:29):
and the ones that have,
a slick hair coat,the ones that, their hair coat,
if they're aif they're an Angus, it's actually black.
And it doesn't have the reddish brown,hair and the long hair.
And they're gaining weight well,and they're doing well.
(01:09:49):
Those are the animals that you want to,
that you want to maintainand keep in your herd.
And I think that it's important to have,
to have, an an open mind.
Missouri is unique because of what grasses
(01:10:10):
will growand flourish in the state. Right.
Which is pretty much every grass ever.
Yeah.
And and so it's so and againand understanding
what production system are theyare, is their production system
based on producing replacement heifers
(01:10:30):
and those being purchased by other peopleat an auction and those animals
that maybe have never been exposed to,
the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue end up
then being exposed to the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue.
That may be athat's not an ideal an ideal situation.
(01:10:54):
But when you're when you're talking about,
multiple different types of grasses,
different different grasses,
the nontoxic endophyte infected
fescue may be another alternative
to to consider.
(01:11:16):
But again it needs to be an intentionaland strategic decision.
And what's that going to look like.
And and and again,
it all depends on how much, pasture landdo you have,
how much and, how much knowledgedo you have and how, how much
(01:11:37):
do you understand pasture management,rotation, those types of things.
Those are all those are all factors
that are going to come into the decisionmaking process.
All right.
So on the rotation bit,
what what is bestfor managing for for good management.
(01:11:58):
Yeah.
Now you're there.
You're getting kind of outside of my,outside of my wheelhouse.
That'swhere I would call you on the phone.
Yeah.
And and say, what I understand
what I understand is, is that
if you take the animal,if you take the animal off
of the endophyte infected tall fescue,it seems like two weeks to a month.
(01:12:24):
Just that shortperiod of time may be affected.
They lose some of themfor their adaptation, which may.
That adaptation may may not be something
with in that in that animal'sgenomics or epigenomics.
It could also be in the,
the microbiome that which is the,
(01:12:47):
the all of the organismsthat are growing in the rumen.
And how do they handle those compounds.
So there's a lot of factors.
There's a lot of factors to consider.
Looking at the management.
And again, that that's the importance
(01:13:08):
of an extension of me
being able to go to an agronomist and say,
hey, what's going to workfor this particular individual?
What does he have?
What are what's his availability of time?
What is the land that he has?
What are the type of animalsthat he's doing?
(01:13:30):
How many animals does he have?
Those are all those important,those important things.
And so I try to follow, well, I try to put people in contact
with the individualswho can give them, the appropriate,
the appropriate information.
See, look, I actually said, I don't know.
(01:13:51):
Yeah. In a roundabout way. Yeah. You know.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know thatI've been trained as a college professor.
I've been trained, there's a way to say,
I don't know, but still, I know.
So there we go.
I know, I don't know, but,Or I know somebody that can help you.
Well, and that's part of it.
That's the value of extensionand engagement is knowing
(01:14:15):
the people who can help
with the particular decision.
And so, and,and that's one of the things that I enjoy
quite a bit is, is going ahead and,
and talking to, individuals like,
like you or our livestock specialistsgetting that information.
(01:14:39):
And I think trying to integratethe veterinarian into that management
as, as well, I think that's, the the ideal way to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I probably need to get going,but I appreciate you for your time.
Now, if somebody wants to find you,how do they.
(01:15:03):
How do they contact you?
Yeah.
My, email address is,
is Evanst@missouri.edu.
Okay.
Evanst@missouri.edu.
My office phonewhich will generally go to, voicemail
(01:15:23):
is (573) 884-9270.
All right. Great.
And they can also find your informationon the world Wide Web.
Yeah. Search.
Yes. I'm somewhere on the highway.
Yeah. Tim. Tim Evans.
Mizzou.
And you're probablyone of the first people to pop up.
Probably. Maybe. Maybe. So there you go.
(01:15:47):
Yeah.
All right, well,I appreciate the opportunity. So.
Yeah, thanks for thanks for talking.
And, this is great. Great content.
So, so talking is not somethingthat I have a problem with. So.
Thank you for listeningto the Productive Pastures podcast,
(01:16:07):
brought to you by University of Missouri'sNorthern Missouri Research, Extension
and Education Center, Universityof Missouri Extension, and SARE.
The best way to help the showgrow is to complete the survey found
in the show notes.
Welcome to the Productive Pasturespodcast, the podcast
where we talk about forageproduction, forage livestock
interactions and the business dynamicsof grazing management.
I'm your host, CarsonRoberts, Missouri forage specialist.
Join me to visit withsome of the most progressive minds
in Missouri's forage and livestockindustry.
We'll share ideas that could help maximizeyour profitability
(00:25):
and productivity.
Welcome to the podcast.
And, my name is Carson Roberts,and I'm your host.
And we are talking today with Tim.
We are in Tim's glorified office.
(00:46):
Is this isthis is by no means your office.
No, no,my office is a crime scene right now, so.
So it would not be a good placefor us to be in.
So. Right.
Yeah.
So, Tim,
can you can you talk a littleabout your job title, what you do?
Yeah. On a daily basis.
(01:08):
Well, that's one of the big mysteriesat the University of Missouri
and in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
What does Doctor Tim Evans really do?
So here we go.
So, name is, Tim J.
Evans.
PhD got a DVM, PhD,
so a couple three letter words and,and a few other things down the road.
(01:30):
My mom doesn't even know what I do, but,actually, I'm a,
I have board certificationin animal reproduction
and in veterinary toxicology.
And actually,both of those things, come together.
So what I do now is,I have an academic appointment
(01:52):
as an associate professorin the Department of Biomedical Sciences,
where I teach, toxicologyto the veterinary students.
I also teach in a coupleof clinical rotations, and then I have
about 40%, of my appointment
is, extension and engagement.
(02:14):
So I'm a, state specialist in animalhealth and veterinary toxicology.
And then within the college,the the, dean just decided that
I'm the c squared e cubed,which is the coordinator
of continuing education,extension and engagement.
(02:35):
So there we go. I have a broad.
Broad, I'm a I'm
a jack of all tradesand and a master of very few, but,
I've been a veterinarian for, for 40,
almost 43 years in 2025 and,
and and I've done a lot with,I been at the University of Missouri
(02:58):
for 25, 26 years, but who's counting?
So. Right.
Very cool.
How long have you been at Mizzou?
Actually, about 30 years.
Came my, I moved here
with my wifeand my two little kids at the time.
In 1993, in the big flood of 1993.
(03:22):
So 31 years, almost 32 now. Yeah, yeah.
Let's just we'll just keep at it.
It's over 30 years. It's over 30.
Yeah, it's over 30 years.
But, but I think, you know,
so a lot of what I do is involved in
I love being a teacherand I love teaching our students.
(03:43):
I love, teaching our alumni.
And over the years, I've really developed
a passion, for helping our,
helping our producers and helping
extension agents, extension personnel.
I'm not sure extensionagent is a it's an ancient
term, but it's it extension faculty.
(04:05):
Go ahead and and serve, serve our producers. So.
Right. Yeah.
And and in the past, you know,there used to be an, extension
agent in every county,and you know, probably
mostly because of short staffing, there are regional,
what we call field specialists,which would be your extension agent.
(04:28):
Yeah, per se,but but yeah, as, as, specialists,
we work very closelywith, with those people
because they are on the front linesto a lot of the phone calls that come in.
Yeah, a lot of those things probably doget filtered through through the extension
specialist fields specialistbefore they come to the state specialist.
(04:50):
Yeah.
And I was doingI was getting a lot of contact prior
to having an extension engagement,appointment.
But, I was getting to, to a stage in my career
where,that was actually one of the things
I really enjoy the most about my job
(05:11):
is, is working with,
other state specialists and working with,
the field specialists, and
and againtrying to integrate veterinary medicine
with, with all of those related, topics.
And I, a lot of that happened,because of during Covid, I went ahead
(05:36):
and got in on some of the town hallsand things like that.
And I really think that educatingveterinary students
to be, good practitioners in rural areas,
you have to take an integrated approach
to how you're interactingwith, your producers.
(05:57):
And I, I like the idea.
I know thisI like this idea of partnerships between,
producers Extension's
extension and, and practitioners,
if you spell it all out,it's p squared pep.
But that's so that, you know,but I think this idea
(06:17):
that there's a synergy that happenswhen you get all of those,
all of those individuals talking together
and integrating and tryingto find the best solution to the problem.
Right? Yeah.
And and you know, in, in the sciences,we don't sometimes
we don't realize the human aspect
(06:38):
to a lot of the decisions that are made,
you know, on farm or elsewhere
because, because there's such a huge humanhuman aspect to the science that the,
you know,almost have to be in professional
at bothto really be good at diagnosing an issue.
And, and so yeah. Yeah.
(07:00):
And I think that I think that's the thingis that you and I have talked about
before is, is the idea that,
you know, in
extension oftentimesthe answer is it depends.
And it depends on, what's happening,what's happening on the ground.
What are the viable options,what are the determinants
(07:21):
that are going to help that personmake the best decision for them.
And that's not going to bethe same for, for
for really.
Any two people, there's always going to besome kind of or production system.
There's always going to be some,some variations depending on on that.
(07:41):
So yeah. Yeah.
Very cool.
Well, you know, I got exposedto poisonous plants in a pretty young age.
At least, you know,
there was a guy and he was a mentor in my,
youth and, and,
young adult life a little bit,
(08:04):
and he was an ARS scientists at,Oh, what do they call it?
That?
And Logan, Utah, there's a well,what's it called? The.
Oh, it's the poisonous plants lab.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and he and his,
son was was in my class in ain high school.
(08:25):
Brian Stegelmeier.
I don't know if you know the name.
Oh, he's legend. He's legendary.
Yeah. So, yeah.
Legendary. I knew him on a personal level.
Oh, wow. Very cool guy.
Oh, you've.
But you've been in the presenceof greatness.
There we go.
Yeah, yeah.
Brian knows a lot of lot of stuffand and a lot of information.
(08:49):
And actually, I've collaboratedwith the poisonous plant lab
in, in Loganon a number of different things.
We, a couple of, a couple of their,researchers came to Missouri
and we went and were harvesting a lot of,of white snake root.
And we went through for thatparticular plant
(09:11):
causes problems in, in cattle and horses.
And they were collecting itfrom a variety of different places.
And what they found is that some of it
had the toxic compoundsthey were expecting.
Some of it did not.
So again, that impacts
whether you're goingto see the toxic effects.
(09:33):
And I think when we talk about planttoxins,
they are in most cases,
secondary metabolitesand the growing conditions,
the environmental conditions,they're all going to impact that.
And I, we,you know, when I see a big problem
(09:54):
with poisonous plants, it'susually that perfect storm.
And that perfect storm involvesin involves
the plants, the poisons and involves
the, the patients, the animal.
All of the things about the pathogenesishow that the
(10:14):
how those poisons, work,how the animal responds and then
you have nutrition, you have weatehr,
you have, lots of things,
genetics, and then you've got management.
And, and again,usually when it really goes that,
(10:35):
the to heck in a handbasket,I have no idea what that means,
but it's a good it's a good termwhen things go wrong,
there's usually multiple factorsthat are that are contributing to that.
Yeah.
And right, right.
It's a just a perfect storm of of.
Yeah.
OOPSesand and and I didn't know that and.
(10:58):
Yeah. Yeah.
So anyway. Yeah.
And particularlyyou know, with particularly with,
weather conditions are unpredictable,particularly in Missouri.
Welcome to the state where, where, wherethe weather if you don't like the weather,
wait an hour and, and,
(11:19):
you know, kids,you know, kids could experience us,
our students can experience, a, a heat day,
a cold day or tornado day, a drought day.
A flood day, all in the same day.
They just don't know whythey're not going to school.
So there we go. Yeah, yeah,
(11:41):
yeah.
You pretty much summed up Missouri,
but, you know,
I, I often
consider sheep to be the number one animal
that it's susceptibleto, to, poisonous things.
And maybe that's because when I was a kid,Brian would always talk about the,
(12:03):
dissecting sheep and stuff like that.
But in Missouri, is there one animal
that seems to always, die from something?
Is there is there any certain specieswithin the ruminant category that
that is uniquely susceptible, or are theyjust, susceptible to different things?
(12:23):
Yeah.
It's,you know, it depends on the toxicants.
And now the poisonous plant laboratoryin, in Logan, Utah.
What theythey actually use sheep and goats
as their go to ruminantsspecies because they can do
(12:44):
they can set up,
they can set up research
and it's much more affordable
to be using those speciesthan, than perhaps cattle.
So and, and sheep and
and again the other thing is,is that particular in Utah,
(13:05):
in portions of the western United States,where we still have
a lot of sheep in the, in the standard,you know, the standard way that people,
in some cases manage sheepis they take the sheep and they put them
in a truck and they drive them 100 miles,and they put them out in a,
put them out in a pasturewould be a very euphemistic term.
(13:28):
Rangeland, rangeland.
They put them out in rangeland.
There might not be some water.
There might not be muchin the way of feed.
And, come back in a weekand and and see what they've done and.
Right.
And sometimes sheep have opted to dieif that's, that's there's just.
Yeah, they're they're looking they're,they're looking for,
(13:50):
they're looking for a way for a way,way out, a place, a place to die.
Yeah. I think it's always funny.
I, I don't know if you've seen iton social media, but there's that.
There'sa video of a sheep stuck in a trench,
and the guy pulls him out by the legand sets him up,
and then he runs a few feetand jumps back in the trench.
(14:11):
And that's just.
There's, I have a couple of anyone that,
and I was, raised in California,
the state, not, not the town in Missouri.
But we had sheep, my brother in FFA and,
(14:32):
and I and 4-H and, and, you know,
they are, they're truly a
an interesting, interesting species.
Not one that I would want
to depend on for, a life or death decision, so.
(14:53):
Right. Well,they they evolved with humans.
I think they're the longestdomesticated animal in the world.
Oh, yeah, they’re one of them, certainly.
And and so they're reliant on human humansand shepherds.
Is is pretty strong.
And when and when humansare referred to as, sheep.
That's not necessarily, necessarily a compliment, but.
(15:17):
Right.
Yeah.
Not necessarily, butI, I think the other thing is, is that,
because of their natureand how they are raised,
they are often put in situationswhere they, they have
the ability to make do where
other animals might not be able to.
(15:41):
Right now, Missouri is not a particularly,
big sheep stateother than, let's say, FFA.
And 4-H and that, we do
have a fair amount of goats,particularly,
the meat goats, the boar,goats, those types of things.
(16:02):
And again, with sheep,we see a lot of issues
having to do with, with copper.
And so a lot of times you know,people think that goats and sheep
can eat the same rationbecause they're the same thing.
One's got wool, one doesn't.
And that's really not, not the case.
(16:25):
Sheep, are very sensitive to,
excessive copper in their dietbecause they don't they don't excrete it.
Right.
That mainly comes from the, the,
the nutrition rationthat you're feeding them.
Right?
Sure.
Your your mineral supplement. Exactly.
(16:46):
And especially the mixed ones.
If you're feeding a sheep like a cow, mineral
cow or a mineral or horses.
Horses even is is is even worse.
And I've been situationswhere someone was feeding a mineral mix
that was designedfor both sheep and goats.
(17:09):
And so they describedwhat the range of copper would be.
And it was a very, very broad range.
When when someone does thatin a manufacturing, situation,
if as long as they're within that range,
then it's fine and they can changewhere they're at in that range
(17:33):
without necessarilytelling you that they've changed it.
So it might be the case that that,
you know, before it was ten partsper million copper.
And then when they finish, it's
20 partsper million or 40 parts per million.
And and that's a potential disasterwaiting to occur.
(17:57):
And again, sheep
I think part of the, the, the
the deal with with with sheep and
and andand giving them and giving them do credit
yeah I'm giving sheep credit but
but the, the point is,is that they are definitely,
prey their prey animal.
(18:19):
They think like an animal that is prey.
And so you don't want toyou don't want to show
that you're ill or not functioning
well if you're in, a flock,
because those on the edge are the onesthat are going to be most susceptible.
(18:42):
That's Doctor Tim Evanstrying to be a sheep psychologist.
That's a that's a pretty that'sa pretty frightening, frightening thing.
But I'm sure there's this sheeppsychologist somewhere in the world.
Yeah.
But if you're out therelistening to the podcast
and you're a sheep psychologist,email me and I will get you on.
(19:04):
And yeah, we'll have a lot of interestingconversation.
Yeah, it'sprobably a very bad idea to have that.
But yeah.
But back to your your question, Carson.
And looking at it, this is actually, this is a cattle state.
We have lots of cattleand we have lots of,
(19:25):
there's lots of potential plantsand things that can be a problem.
And so a lot of the intoxicationthat I deal with or management situations,
involve, involve cattle,
when it comes to horses,the major issues
(19:46):
we deal with in horses is certainly, the toxic endophyte infected tall fescue
and that the horse is kind of the pregnantmare.
It's kind of the, canary in the cave
to those, ergot alkaloids,particularly the ergo peptide alkaloids.
And so milk production,
(20:08):
is completely dependent on prolactin.
And so when you get lowlevels of prolactin
and because of the ergot alkaloids,then you're going to have a mare
that's not going to have milk,you're going to have a foal
that has a failure of passive transfer.
(20:28):
In cattle the things we're going to seeprimarily with the ergot
alkaloids are going to be,
responses that are very temperaturedependent, temperature
dependent,and also involving vaso constriction.
so if its really, really cold,
(20:48):
we're going to see dry gangrene,in the feet.
Fescue, fescue foot,
we can also have problems in the taillike a someone might call it fescue tail.
You can see fescue ears but that whole.
That's a cold weather.
Cold weather phenomenon.
Then when we get to the summerthen we get to the summer and it's hot,
(21:12):
then vessels are constricted
in, in the, in the surface of the skin.
And they can't,they can't get rid of the heat.
And so they regulate their temperature.Yeah. Yeah.
So they get hypothermic and, and again,a lot of jump in the pond.
They jump in the pond.
When I first came to, to Missouri, I,
(21:35):
had grown up in, in, in California,I spent some time in Texas.
And I truly believethat cattle, were terrestrial mammals.
When I came to Missouri,
it didn't take me
very long to realize that they were,
amphibious.
Or, or they were either in,
(21:58):
yeah, amphibious mammalsor they were aquatic mammals. So.
Hippopotamus. Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, I think those are the,those are the things that you deal with
and, and and and knowing and,
and and againbeing a specialist in veterinary
in animal reproduction or theriogenology
(22:18):
or a veterinary toxicology.
I still believe I'm the only person
in the worldwith those particular board certifications
telling youhow critical is to have both of those.
But Missouri is the one place
where I fit, where I fit perfectly.
(22:39):
Great.
Yeah, well, well, we're glad to have you.
So my my first question that I have, andI'm really curious about this, what is the
number one
reasons from a from a toxic standpoint.
Number one reason cow dies that you see.
But what is the most common fromfrom all the calls that you've received,
(23:03):
where, where, you know, somebody calls,hey, I have 20 dead cows, you know.
Yeah.
The what's the most commonand just to let you know, it's always 25.
Oh, 25 it's always 25.
I gave a talk to some folks, up in the northern part of the state,
and the only lesson that they had
was that they needed to own 24 or 26because 25 were going to die.
(23:23):
So that wasn't exactly the messageI was trying to get.
But so,
again, I would say two of the major,things that we deal with
when we get that,that perfect storm we've talked about is,
nitrate, nitrite intoxication,where because of drought conditions,
(23:45):
we get stress plants,they accumulate nitrate.
And that potentially, can lead
to, can can lead to death.
The other
so mainly on this when we're talking aboutsorghum, Sudan grass, sorghum,
Johnson grass and, and cornand corn from the standpoint
(24:09):
that what happens is they go aheadand they harvest the corn,
and then they have a bunch ofthey have a bunch of stocks
or they're going to go ahead andand feed green chop.
But they decide and and greenchop needs to be fed quickly.
It needs to be fed. You cut it.You feed it.
(24:30):
Sometimes what happens when you,when you don't feed it immediately
that pile of green chopyou get the same reaction
that happening in that pilethat happens in the rumen
and and you get the nitrateconverted into nitrite.
That's what happens in the room.
And, and that nitrite is what goes ahead
(24:53):
and, causes the hemoglobin,
not to be able to bind oxygenso that you get this chocolate
brown bloodand they can die relatively quickly.
They can have, premature parturition.
They can have moreof a chronic condition.
(25:13):
But again, what people usually notice is
you pretty
much are going to pay attentionto 25 dead cows.
So the the other an interesting
enough, the sorghum species,
the sorghum species can or are famousfor accumulating nitrate.
(25:35):
They also can have,
cyanogenic glycosides, sugars that,
that include a cyanide group.
And so they can cause cyanide poisoningor prussic acid poisoning.
Right.
Usually, usually they're not going toproduce, both of them at the same time.
(25:57):
Generally drought stresscorn mature is going to have
and sorghum is nitrate in the stems.
And, young, immature, rapidly growing,
sorghum species,
is liable to have elevated levelsin the, in the leaves.
(26:18):
And so actually
couple years ago,
we had a drought and then all of a sudden,
we had some rain and,
in one portion of the state particularly,
I mean, I, I was there,
you know, probably in July,and nothing was growing.
(26:41):
And then all of a sudden,about a month later, we had some rain,
and all of a sudden we had all this lush
green Johnson grass.
There wasn't a lot of of forage available.
The people had their cattle and saw
that there was saw that, oh,we don't have any.
(27:03):
We have nothing for them to eat here.
Let's go ahead and open the gateand let's put,
let's, let's put 150 cows and calves,
that are, hungry into this,
pasture with lush green,Johnson green, lush grass,
(27:23):
and that that a lot of,a high number of cattle.
It was, it was more than 25 and it was,it was a sad thing.
So. So with that now, when,
sorghum species,
including Johnsongrass, the mechanism for them to develop
(27:45):
prussic acid is rapid expansion of cells.
Okay.
At least from from my understanding.
Oh, no. That's good.
And and so and so when,when the plant is growing rapidly.
And and this happens when they are,
you know, between the 12 and 16inch tall phase, you know.
(28:06):
Yeah.
And, when, when it's very lush and green and,
at least at least for sorghum sedan grassand then and,
and then also when they freezebecause when they're freeze that expansion
and, and the cellular cytoplasm material
is, is burst into into the plant and,
(28:28):
and that expansion also causesthe prussic acid to develop.
So yeah.
So the, the key around that,
at least from my understanding,is rapid expansion of the cells.
Either eitherbecause of very rapid growth.
Yeah.
Or because of, because of freezing.
That's what's going to cause the theprussic acid to develop at high levels.
(28:52):
Yeah, or trampling, trampling any type of
because what happens is you've got, the compounds that have got,
that have got sugarand they've got, the cyanide.
And then what happens within the,
within the plant andand again, this is dangerous.
(29:14):
Doctor Evans talking plant physiology. But
they have beta
glucosidase within the leaves.
And they alsoand they also have hydroxy nitro lysis.
And so if the plant, the material is dying
from trampling from freezing,those compounds come together.
(29:37):
And the reason that cattle
and ruminants are especially susceptible
is that there's beta glucosidase
from the,from the microorganisms in the rumen.
And and so that does the same,the same, the same thing.
(29:57):
So ruminants are very susceptible andruminants and monogastics are susceptible.
If you have those particular plants
that are traumatizedand and then you're, you're creating
that potential, for, for prussic
acid, hydro cyanic acid.
(30:19):
Or I just say cyanide.
Does that that jive with. Yes. Yeah.
So that'sthat sounds right. And interesting.
So so the most poisonous plant is, is,
very useful plant at the same time.
Yeah. Yeah, I believe so.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
I'll be talking at the, at the springforage conference and talking about
(30:43):
safety tips for livestock safety tips for,
for,
warm season forages, grasses.
And I think the thing is, is that,you know, it's interesting,
you know, we call it Johnson grassif we're considering it a weed
(31:03):
and we call it perennial sedan,if we're considering it a pasture plant.
But the fact is, it is a very,
it's a very hardy and and durable plant,
and it and it responds to,
to various stressors fairly dramatically.
(31:25):
If though, it's
higher than
we say, 24in just to say two feet.
And if we have damage to it,we wait two weeks.
Again, some people a week to ten days,I just
I in my in my advancing age,
(31:47):
I go two feet tall and two weeksjust to make sure.
And, I, I think that two weeksrule of thumb is pretty standard.
I've, I've heard that a number of places.
So yeah, I think it's,I think it's, it's standard.
You can get away with a little bit less,but you know,
(32:08):
as yourself as an extension,
as an extension specialist,
agronomist, and me as a veterinarian.
I don't want 25 dead cowsto be named after me.
I don't want the Tim Evans death incident
of 2025, and, and and so,
(32:31):
I try to be on, on on the cautious side.
The other thing that's important is
how do you manage that grass?
And the other thing is how do you manageintroduction to the grass?
Because I think oftentimesI remember in forage
and and filling out my record bookand always talking about,
(32:52):
you know,how do you introduce animals to new feed,
how do you introduce them to a new forage?
Well, you want the animal to be fed.
You want to introduce them gradually.
The most valuable animalsthat we're going to have on our, on,
on a, on a farm in Missouriare going to be our pregnant cattle.
(33:13):
So you don't want to put those out first.
You may want to use steersor or other animals,
but you do things to offer haywhen they're when they're out there.
Exactly. Yeah, they have their choice.
Although I'm not necessarily convinced
that they're going to choose wisely.
(33:34):
But I think I think there's a varietyof different strategies.
And I think I again, aswe talked about earlier,
I think the idea of having a using, it,
the producer, extension,
the practitioner and,
and all of them aware of what is going onthat's going to help the producer,
(33:59):
deal with the situationthe best, the best way. So.
Right. Cool.
Interesting.
So moving on from from that, let's talk about another plant.
What what's the next.
What's the next one that comesto your mind that's poisonous to animals?
(34:21):
Actually choose to eat?
Well, yeah.
And and again, we're in the fescue belt.
So if you're in the fescue belt, not that
I think we get much mortality, from,
toxic
endophyte infected, tall fescue grass.
Or if we have or if we haveor if we have ergot,
(34:45):
but, ergot types, grasses or grains, but
least for the
toxic endophyte infected tall fescue.
It's a given that our animalsare going to be exposed to that.
And so and, and and that typically likewe talked about earlier lower performance
maybe some lameness issuesand and stuff like that.
(35:08):
Yeah.
And and I think the other thing thoughis to understand that
understanding the historyis really important and understanding that
at one point in time, 50, 60,
maybe 70 or 80 years now,I've been here for about 30 years.
But there was a point in timewhere there wasn't,
(35:28):
there weren't a lot of grassesthat were growing in Missouri.
I mean, grasses like, dependable.
Most grasses forageslike dependable weather.
They like rain.They like things like that.
They like to be able.
That's that's what plants like.
But the toxic endophytethat produces some good compounds.
(35:52):
And then the toxic ergot alkaloids,particularly the ergo
peptide alkaloids,they can grow about anywhere.
I mean, it's people have called itthe wonder grass.
I mean, it can grow just about anywhere.
Yeah.
And and and do well, it'sjust the problem is, is that
(36:14):
if that's the maingrass that you're growing in, particularly
if it's really coldor if it's really warm hot,
you're going to have some, you're goingto have some problems and some animals
are going to be more susceptiblethan, than than others.
And so one has to figure out how to,
(36:36):
how to manage that, that situation.
Right.
Can you explainjust for a second, how to identify, say,
fescue foot or you mentioned somethingabout the tails.
Yeah. How do how how do you identify.
Yeah. That, that that's occurring.
(36:56):
And what the problem is.
Yeah.
The, the, the the,
25, 2500, dollar
word is,
you're looking for dry gangreneor or even just lameness.
And so what usually happens an interestingenough, it's the left hind foot.
(37:21):
For some reason, I don't know I don't knowwhy is it always the left one?
Not always.
But in the literature
it they talk about itbeing in the left hind
and I have no idea why that is, although
I've seen a lot of animalswhere it started in the left hind,
(37:41):
so I don't know why it's a mystery,
but what you first will happen is
you will see, particularlyif it's if you've had a cold
spell, is
you will see that the animals,you'll see some lameness.
There'll be some swelling,particularly around the coronary band.
(38:06):
And then, you know, the coronary bandis, is, is there's the hoof
and where the hoof joinsthe rest of the leg,
that circumference there,that's the coronary band,
kind of the soft tissue as,that's this next to this.
Yeah.That attaches the hook to the. It's about.
Exactly. Yeah.
(38:26):
You're doing a great jobof translating that.
That's that's a good so. Right.
I figured thatthat needed clarification because,
some people may not know.
Well, no.
And I'm not allowed to say wordsthat are completely understandable
all the time, sobut I but at that area where the hoof
joins, the the soft tissue in the leg,
(38:50):
or maybe even higher,you'll start to see,
kind of a, a a line forming a demarcation
between live tissue and dead tissue and,
and that's called, dry gangrene.
And, but anyhow and, and
(39:11):
and there's even instances where
the feet have actually fallen off,but that would have to be pretty high
concentrations of the toxinsand really, really cold.
But a lot of what we see isthese animals are lame.
And when animals are lameand they can't walk, as well,
(39:31):
they're not going to do as wellof, of eating.
They're not going to do as gooda job of producing, producing
milk to feed their, to feed their calves, etc..
And so that's what we end up seeing now.
We can also see it in the other,just so distal,
that means,distal means away from the center.
(39:55):
And so,
at the tip of the tail, we typically can,
can lose the tip of the tail,we can lose the tip of the ears.
So the tip of the tail whereall the hair is, where the switch switch.
Yeah. We losing the switchand you lose the switch.
And and it just swells upor it just dies and falls off
(40:15):
I what happens is, is that
oftentimespeople are surprised by that occurring
because they don't see it,
because you don't see the lame,they don't see a lameness.
They just see the tail.
And then they may see some swellingjust above the switch.
And then you might still start to see thatthat line
of demarcationbetween where there's blood flow,
(40:38):
where there's blood flow aboveand no blood flow and there's a switch.
And then, right, almost as ifyou put a castrating band at that point.
Exactly.
It's that's essentially what the compounds
in the produced by the endophyte,
the fungus, the invisible fungus
(41:00):
that's within the plantand the one that's toxic, that produces,
the ergo peptide alkaloids, ergotalkaloids, ergo peptide alkaloids.
That is, yeah.
The that's what you're going to, that's what you're going to end up.
That's what you're going to end up seeing.
(41:21):
So there's another fungus.
So another fungus that you can't see.
I had a there was a gentleman,a colleague of mine who,
who told everyone that he could tell
whether, the fescue was in fact,
whether there was a fescuewas affected by endophyte.
(41:43):
Well, the fact is, 90 plus percent of it
in, particularly in Missouriis going to be with the toxic endophyte.
But it's invisible.
You can't right.
You can't see it.
It's a it's a fungal associationwithin the cell.
Yeah. Or in the, in the plant cell.
Yeah. Kind of in between.
It's intracellular intracellular.
(42:03):
So endophyte that's what that
that's what that means is that it's within the plant now.
Yeah.
There's another fungus called Claviceptspurpurea.
Let's just call it ergot okay.
And ergot is commonnot just in in fescue right.
Oh okay.
Because there were issueswith with people in the early colonies.
(42:27):
Yeah. Right.
Ergot.
Right. Yeah.
Because they were eating rye bread. Yeah.
It was ergot.
Ergot infected I guess. Yeah.
And and it made him go crazy or something.
The Salem witch trials, the.
Yeah. The French Revolution.
You know, obviouslythere were other factors involved,
(42:48):
but the ergot alkaloids,
is a broad class of compounds
and what happens is, is that particularlywhen there's cool, wet,
cool wet springs there, the seed head
or the seed where the where
(43:08):
the, where the seed is forming,
actually gets infected by this fungusand this fungus, the sclerosis
of this ergot body, it actuallyis kind of dark brown or purplish.
It looks like it actually looks like.
Rat feces rat pellet rat.
(43:29):
Thank you but it it replaces the seed
and it producesextreme high concentrations
of those ergot alkaloids,ergo pepsin alkaloids.
And so for instance,we talked about the tail switch.
Well and losing that generally
(43:50):
with fescuewe would lose it in the winter.
If I'm in a situationwhere they're losing the tail
switch and it's in the summer,
that almost always in my mind means
that we probably havesome ergotized grasses, grains.
(44:10):
I've seen
orchard grass, Timothy
grass, brome grass, ryegrass,
wheat, oats, barley,
rye, all of that triticale.
All of those can be affected, by the,by by the ergot.
So does that go away?
(44:32):
Let's let's say you, harvest dry forage hay,
those pastures, that have ergot,
does it translate into the hayor does that die?
Yeah.
And and it depends on when,
when you, when you, make it into the hay.
Oftentimeswhat happens for managing, as you are
(44:56):
well aware with the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue
a lot of what we'll dois we'll mow off the seed heads,
because that's where there'sa lot of concentration of the toxins.
And we don't want to get down into that.
Into that what, that lower
three inchesor two and a half to three inches.
Yeah. Where are the concentrates.
(45:17):
But with hay,
particularly if the, the sclerosis
of the ergot bodies,those rat pellets or mouse pellets,
if they go ahead and you
and you make it into hay
when they're mature, a,
(45:40):
a high percentage of them will fall off
in the hay during the hay making process.
Raking, baling. Exactly.
We did some research on that, a number of years ago.
And, and that's,that is actually very helpful.
And then also probablyin the drying process,
(46:01):
we know that the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue those the
the toxins that we're concerned aboutwill go down in their concentrations,
during the drying process and all that.
And it's possible that,
it's possiblethat if there are any of the ergot bodies,
(46:24):
that they could possibly be infected,but we don't know.
We don't know.
And so what happensis the part of that life
cycle of the ergot
is that those ergot bodies fall off,
they go into the ground,they go ahead and they overwinter.
That's how they they're in the ground and
(46:48):
and then
in the cool, wet spring,they start kind of sprouting.
It's interesting to know that,
when we had a lot of deep tilling,
a lot of deep tilling was used
to decrease the amount of,
of ergot infection in cereal grains,
(47:09):
small cereal grains, not corn,but wheat, barley, triticale, rye.
Interesting.
So, so people would plow toto deep plows, plow.
Yeah. Turn everything over. Exactly.
So that they can,get that endophyte deeper
into the or the fungus or the fungus.
Fungus? Yeah.The endophyte that's. Sorry.
(47:30):
Yeah, yeah, but but with low till
and no till becoming the standards.
Right.
We've started to see, some,
more of the problem most of the time.
They do a lot of
they can do, oh, they can go ahead
(47:54):
and with, with sieves
and with, gravimetric tables.
The ergot bodies gravimetric weight.
The ergot bodies are pretty heavy,and they go to the bottom
and they go with the screeningsand so you can reduce it.
So, at least in the grain, at least,
(48:17):
at least if trying to graze it,that would be a different.
Yeah, that's a very different thing.
That's where, cutting off the,during the hay or depending
on what's going on, cutting, taking off the seed heads.
Those are potentialthose are some of the options.
Yeah, yeah.
So, one thing that I've always thought,a way
(48:39):
to avoid some of these messes,I guess you would call them
is to.
Is to, ensure that your animalshave a diverse diet.
In the pasture.
Is that is that something that you.
I guess you don't see many. Good.
I guess you don't seevery many good examples, do you?
(48:59):
Well, I you know,I think I honestly believe
that that fescue
can, toxicendophyte infected tall fescue.
And certainly there may be a placefor nontoxic endophyte infected fescue
in some management schemes,but I do believe we can,
(49:22):
we can manage
we can manage our, our way,
through,
through the toxicendophyte infected tall fescue.
And so how do we do that?
Well, we don't want to,
be dependent on that kind of foragewhen it's really, really cold.
(49:45):
And we don't want to be dependent on.
It's really, really hot.
And, and, using, diverse forages.
Again, it it's, it's a cool seasongrass.
And, and do it
using, pasture rotation,
(50:06):
not using it during the summerwhen it's hot, letting it grow, possibly
having, possibly having some,
a fall stockpile, it growing in the fall.
In a ina, I those are things that you can do.
There's a number of,
(50:27):
there's a number of, Treatments, additives that,
that are, are sold to
that might be helpful personally.
I haven't seen,a great deal of evidence of that,
but I think the big thingis managing the seed
heads, going ahead using the hay.
(50:50):
And, and again, if you're,if you're concerned, certainly.
There are, there are chemical analysisthat can be done further.
Ergo, pepsin alkaloid, although,
that's probably more important in horses.
(51:11):
Horses again.
Horses again being the horses again
being the canary in the cave for that,
you really shouldn'thave any of the endophyte.
Right.
So, so if you're a horse owner, it's
better to avoid at least a horse ownerthat has brood mares, right?
(51:32):
Yeah.
If you have aif you have a couple geldings.
Yeah. Maybe not an issue.
Late gestation.
It's the late gestation.
what I like to term, ergo peptidealkaloid,
toxicosis in, in, in pregnant mares.
And it to me,because horses are so sensitive,
(51:57):
to exposure
to those ergot peptide alkaloids,it doesn't it doesn't really matter
if it's from the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue
or it's coming fromit's coming from the ergot.
And there's really not a lot of argument,
(52:18):
in the science of what
the toxic principles are, in horses,in cattle,
there's some debate whether itwhether it is the
ergo pepsin alkaloidsor other ergot alkaloids or what happens.
And so I just, I just avoid that controversy
(52:42):
when we're talking in, in, in bovine,bovine terms, although,
The ergo peptidealkaloids are, are well documented
as certainly there being a relationshipin most cases, sometimes,
sometimes it's not as preciseas you'd like it to be now in.
(53:02):
Oh go ahead.
One of the things that I, I want, people to,
make note of is that when we're talkingabout these symptoms,
which is basicallywhat we've been talking about,
usually production has been harmed far
before these symptoms show upexactly a long time before it.
(53:24):
It's the same.
It's the same in the row crop worldwhen they talk about weeds,
by the time you see the weedsin the field, it's, you know,
a lot of harm has already occurred,you know?
Yeah, yeah.
These compounds, not only do they impact,
the, the, the blood vessels and,
(53:44):
and and again prolactin,
although it'skind of a, an unfortunate name.
These compounds,
cause, hypo prolactanemia
or low prolactin, but prolactin, it'skind of an unfortunate name
because then you thinkall it has to do with is milk production.
(54:08):
But prolactin does a whole lot of thingsin the body.
It's a hormone that is, that is involved
in a lot of metabolism.
And and it can there's other aspectswhere you get
you get decreased.
(54:30):
You get decreased feed consumption.
You have animalsthat just don't feel very good.
Before you see some of those,some of those other things
and they get a very restricted,restricted blood flow alone is enough
to not make any critter or personfeel good, right?
(54:51):
Yeah.
You know, because because that'sjust less oxygen through the body.
Yeah.
And, many people have accused me of not having
a lot of oxygen to my brain, and so,occasionally.
So, yeah,you've heard some of those choices, so.
But the the the thing about
and it's important to understand,
(55:14):
in mares,and it's particularly late gestation
particularly they'll say the last,
the last 60 days thoughI don't think there's any,
there's any perfect reasonfor have pregnant mares,
exposed to toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue
other than the factif that's the only thing that's growing
(55:37):
normally we take the mares offof those type of pastures in any hay.
That might contain that.
The last 60 days.
Definitely the last
30 days, particularly if you have,
if you have good breeding dates,
you've had repeated pregnancy examinations
(55:59):
so that you, so that, you know,
when the mayor is due to foal,because the most common thing
you're going to see is agalactia,agalactia, agalactia, agalactia.
That's what I tell students.
And when I see them,they go agalactia, agalactia, agalactia.
Yeah. It’s that important.
They'll see the agalactia, no milk.
(56:21):
Okay. Agalactia, no milk.
The foal will have a failure,a passive transfer.
It won't get the antibodiesit needs to get from the mother.
But in addition to that,we may also see, retained
after birth, retained fetal membranes.
(56:42):
We may see prolong gestation in the mare.
We may see, where the, the,
fetal membranes, are presented
before, the foal comes out.
That's not supposed to happen.
That's a premature placental separation.
(57:06):
The foal may be abnormal in itself.
We use technical terms like dis mature.
Over mature, post mature dummy foal.
That's not so technical.
Where the foal may not be,may not be normal.
And,
I think those are, and one of the things
(57:29):
really important to emphasize is
many people who own horses.
And even peoplewho have been doing it for a long time
are extremely dependenton development of the utter,
the mammary gland,to tell when the mares going to foal.
(57:53):
And so what happens is,and I was doing some research,
about 20 something years ago,and I was checking
I used some poniesand they were getting a, semi-synthetic,
ergo peptide alkaloid, an injection of it.
And, I was checking one of the,one of the
(58:14):
the pony maresdidn't look like she was going to foal.
And then I went, maybe 300 yards away.
And within ten minutes,I got a call, and there was a baby out.
I mean, I used to I foaled outprobably a thousand mares in my,
in my pre univer, my pre graduate school
(58:34):
career and
and I couldn't tell that a marewas going to foal in in ten minutes.
So, and because,because of the, toxicity.
Yeah.
Because of the, the agalactia.
Yeah. And so no milk.
And so what happens is
cattle, you know, you probably have,
(58:59):
depending on the circumstances, 10%,
difficult births in cattle.
But, you know, that can be from
a big bull, little heiferthat can be from a leg back.
And and cows can still can still survivesome of those processes.
Yeah. Small pelvis. Pelvis. Yeah.
(59:19):
But but a mare therethat it's over in an hour okay.
And in fact an hour would be a long time.
And so if things are going to go wrongthey go really wrong really quickly.
And if you don't know that the mareis going to foal, you're not there.
And so it becomes even a,
(59:40):
a bigger problembecause of that circumstance.
Yeah.
And, and I guess that'swhy a lot of these, racehorse
barns have these high tech camerasand all this stuff.
Yeah, they're set up so they canmonitor horse activity and.
Yeah, be there at a moment's notice,I guess.
(01:00:02):
Yeah, yeah.
So I think that's important.
And and again, from the standpoint of the,
novel endophyte infected tall fescue
or the nontoxic endophyte infectedtall fescue grass.
I think it probably
(01:00:22):
if one
has the capital to invest in that,
that that, change in the pasturethat that kind of pasture renovation.
Then, with pregnant mares,
that may be the way to gobecause they're not very tolerant at all.
It hardly takes very littleto cause a potential problem now.
(01:00:47):
Right.
That may not be.
And and again,there's differences and sensitivity.
So, you know, some people will saywell it's 300 parts per billion.
So 300, you know,
parts of the, of the, the ergo
pepsin alkaloids,
(01:01:08):
and that would come outto being a microgram
per billion would be a microgram,of the toxin
per kilogram of the grass.
And, some people will say,
well, 300 that's you're going to havemultiple animals affected,
but what about the really sensitiveanimal that it only takes
(01:01:35):
50 partsper billion or something like that?
And those are the things that we end upseeing and, and we see in cattle as well,
that there are some animalsthat are more susceptible than others.
And so is that a genetic, traitor is that a learned trait
or I guess epigenetic?
You know, that's really interesting.
(01:01:57):
There's probably there's probably genomic
and epigenomic.
Aspects of that,
but there actually are, let's see.
What's the single nucleotide polymorphism.
So snip and SNP, there's one
(01:02:19):
of that has to do with the,
the gene that codes for, the dopamine,
the D2 dopamine, receptor.
Maybe, maybe also the, the D1 receptor.
But, those are what the toxins interactis what we call receptors.
(01:02:43):
And so it may be that
some animals are more tolerant,
particularly in cattle are more tolerant,
of of the heat or particularly
the increased body temperatureassociated with the toxins.
And again, right.
(01:03:04):
If we're going to talkabout that, there's a, a, a
a genetic abnormality,
I can't necessarily saythat there is an epigenetic and of course,
an area of great interestright now is the idea
of of, of fetal programing
(01:03:26):
and the idea that when, when offspring,
are exposed to,
stress while they're in utero
or in the early neonatal period,they can go ahead
and it may impact their future, their future development.
(01:03:50):
Interesting.
So some of the chemicalsthat they're exposed to or the,
the, the diet,
I guess you could say that they're exposedto while they're while they're inside.
Yeah, can influence.
Yeah. Poor nutrition.
Starvation is something that's been shownin cattle that can impact,
(01:04:12):
reproductive traitsas well as other other things.
Other aspects of, of,
of the offspring.
And so this is an this is an, an
and again,one of the things to consider with fescue,
there does appear to be some adaptation
(01:04:37):
animals that have been exposed to thethose compounds their whole lives
do much betterwhen exposed to them than an animal
that has never been exposedand naive individual
never previously exposed to
the toxic endophyte infected tall fescue.
(01:05:01):
Can respond
very dramatically.
They, can really,
be adversely affected in multiple waysby that exposure.
So, let's say, you know, if you'reif you're a seed stock producer, and,
and you had the option to seed endophyte
(01:05:24):
infected tall fescue, you know, you're inyou're living in Missouri, right?
Yeah.
And you had the option between endophyteinfected tall fescue, a novel,
novel endophyte infected fescue,
for your seed to seed a pastureor even to seed your whole farm.
Maybe,maybe the better option is to to plant
(01:05:47):
something like Kentucky 31and endophyte infected fescue
because the seed stock that you're sellingcould go to an endophyte infected farm.
Is that. Yeah.
And that's a, that's a traditional
that would be a traditional viewthat those animals being adapted,
(01:06:08):
there are some novel endophyte
a nontoxic endophyte or low toxic
novel endophyte that produce
low cut very low concentrations
of the ergo peptide alkaloids.
And so talking to various different,
(01:06:29):
individuals in the field.
And, and again, I'm a board member of a,
of an organization,the Grassland Alliance.
And, it's idea,
traditionally has been to be,
stressing the importance of novelendophyte.
(01:06:51):
My approachis, more of an integrated approach
of pasture renovation that may include,
the novel endophyte,but may also include introduction
of different types of grassesand things like that,
or going ahead and,
and interceding, the novel endophyte in a pasture
(01:07:15):
that has a lot of the, toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue, other types
of management schemes to look at that,particularly in particularly in cattle.
And I, I've talked to individualswho have had used
a, a nontoxic, low toxic
low toxic
(01:07:39):
endophyte infectedtall fescue low concentrations.
And those are the heifersthat have been produced,
do. Well,
but they also have done well
when introduced to a pasture
that has the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue.
(01:08:02):
So they're getting enough of the compoundsto have to have adapted
so that they don'tthey don't, deteriorate dramatically.
So, so maybe a good strategy
then is, is to mitigate,
(01:08:22):
you know, mitigate.
So you're not a 100%,
foraging on infected tall fescue,but the your,
if you have,
I guess a variety of forages to go to,
but that the animal is exposed to it
at some point in its useful life.
(01:08:46):
Yeah, I, I think I think another
I think another important aspect is,
you know, you can do genetic testing,you can do a lot of things, but.
Look at your cattle.
Look at how they're how they're growing.
And the animals that you want to,
(01:09:07):
to keep back as your replacementheifers are the animals
that do well in situationswith the toxic endophyte.
infected tall fescue.
I mean, you can go aheadand look at a bunch of,
a bunch of, of, ofof calves, weaned calves
(01:09:29):
and the ones that have,
a slick hair coat,the ones that, their hair coat,
if they're aif they're an Angus, it's actually black.
And it doesn't have the reddish brown,hair and the long hair.
And they're gaining weight well,and they're doing well.
(01:09:49):
Those are the animals that you want to,
that you want to maintainand keep in your herd.
And I think that it's important to have,
to have, an an open mind.
Missouri is unique because of what grasses
(01:10:10):
will growand flourish in the state. Right.
Which is pretty much every grass ever.
Yeah.
And and so it's so and againand understanding
what production system are theyare, is their production system
based on producing replacement heifers
(01:10:30):
and those being purchased by other peopleat an auction and those animals
that maybe have never been exposed to,
the toxic endophyte infectedtall fescue end up
then being exposed to the toxic endophyteinfected tall fescue.
That may be athat's not an ideal an ideal situation.
(01:10:54):
But when you're when you're talking about,
multiple different types of grasses,
different different grasses,
the nontoxic endophyte infected
fescue may be another alternative
to to consider.
(01:11:16):
But again it needs to be an intentionaland strategic decision.
And what's that going to look like.
And and and again,
it all depends on how much, pasture landdo you have,
how much and, how much knowledgedo you have and how, how much
(01:11:37):
do you understand pasture management,rotation, those types of things.
Those are all those are all factors
that are going to come into the decisionmaking process.
All right.
So on the rotation bit,
what what is bestfor managing for for good management.
(01:11:58):
Yeah.
Now you're there.
You're getting kind of outside of my,outside of my wheelhouse.
That'swhere I would call you on the phone.
Yeah.
And and say, what I understand
what I understand is, is that
if you take the animal,if you take the animal off
of the endophyte infected tall fescue,it seems like two weeks to a month.
(01:12:24):
Just that shortperiod of time may be affected.
They lose some of themfor their adaptation, which may.
That adaptation may may not be something
with in that in that animal'sgenomics or epigenomics.
It could also be in the,
the microbiome that which is the,
(01:12:47):
the all of the organismsthat are growing in the rumen.
And how do they handle those compounds.
So there's a lot of factors.
There's a lot of factors to consider.
Looking at the management.
And again, that that's the importance
(01:13:08):
of an extension of me
being able to go to an agronomist and say,
hey, what's going to workfor this particular individual?
What does he have?
What are what's his availability of time?
What is the land that he has?
What are the type of animalsthat he's doing?
(01:13:30):
How many animals does he have?
Those are all those important,those important things.
And so I try to follow, well, I try to put people in contact
with the individualswho can give them, the appropriate,
the appropriate information.
See, look, I actually said, I don't know.
(01:13:51):
Yeah. In a roundabout way. Yeah. You know.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know thatI've been trained as a college professor.
I've been trained, there's a way to say,
I don't know, but still, I know.
So there we go.
I know, I don't know, but,Or I know somebody that can help you.
Well, and that's part of it.
That's the value of extensionand engagement is knowing
(01:14:15):
the people who can help
with the particular decision.
And so, and,and that's one of the things that I enjoy
quite a bit is, is going ahead and,
and talking to, individuals like,
like you or our livestock specialistsgetting that information.
(01:14:39):
And I think trying to integratethe veterinarian into that management
as, as well, I think that's, the the ideal way to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I probably need to get going,but I appreciate you for your time.
Now, if somebody wants to find you,how do they.
(01:15:03):
How do they contact you?
Yeah.
My, email address is,
is Evanst@missouri.edu.
Okay.
Evanst@missouri.edu.
My office phonewhich will generally go to, voicemail
(01:15:23):
is (573) 884-9270.
All right. Great.
And they can also find your informationon the world Wide Web.
Yeah. Search.
Yes. I'm somewhere on the highway.
Yeah. Tim. Tim Evans.
Mizzou.
And you're probablyone of the first people to pop up.
Probably. Maybe. Maybe. So there you go.
(01:15:47):
Yeah.
All right, well,I appreciate the opportunity. So.
Yeah, thanks for thanks for talking.
And, this is great. Great content.
So, so talking is not somethingthat I have a problem with. So.
Thank you for listeningto the Productive Pastures podcast,
(01:16:07):
brought to you by University of Missouri'sNorthern Missouri Research, Extension
and Education Center, Universityof Missouri Extension, and SARE.
The best way to help the showgrow is to complete the survey found
in the show notes.
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