Controlling/preventing buttercup sprouts in foraging areas?

[DonyaQuick]

Glyphosate is very poisonous. Much more than buttercups.

Researchers from the University of Hawaii have shown that the intestinal flora of honey bees becomes disterted when they are exposed to glyphosate. Glyphosate is a component of weed killers like Roundup, which has long been suspected of being harmful to bees and a lot of other insects.

The infected / dead insects get eaten by songbirds, chickens and other species higher in the food chain. For me this would be a real no go.

I will not be using chemical weed killers for the buttercup issue. Some kind of herbicide had been used on the lawn of my property before I purchased it, I suspect for the purpose of getting rid of broad leaf plants and trying to encourage grass. It wasn't done properly though and had turned some areas into a scrubbly, largely baren mess that was rapidly taken over by every kind of ant - which then of course went straight for the house as soon as the big summer rains hit. I also put what little lawn clippings I did get the first season into my compost and that seemed to kill everything in the pile; couldn't properly compost anything from the lawn until the next year. Took another year after that for the original dead pile to finally show any signs of proper decomposion, and then it vanished to nothing really fast. Seems enough time eventually ellapsed with whatever was applied, since I don't have that problem with any of my more recent piles...but I don't want a repeat.

 

[StarOnFire59]

I'm pretty confident it's the buttercups; the past incidents were after foraging in a small area that I discovered was littered with them mixed in with the grass and this incident featured one that had definitely been nibbled through the HWC. I went on a plant identifying spree after the first two incidents and can't find anything else in the area that has the potential to cause such reactions. The reaction unfolds very similarly to what's described in some places for other livestock as well if one considers that it won't get crushed significantly until it hits the gizzard (although I do realize it's mostly described in mammals).

Unusual sensitivity or lack of ability to taste the plant was actually my original hypothesis since the first two birds who had trouble were mother and son - so inheriting something like that seemed plausible. However, the hen who got bombed this week is completely unrelated and not even the same breed. So that hypothesis goes out the window I think.

I'm leaning more towards it being a potent strain, the phase of growth, or to do with the part of the plant eaten.


Good idea - it can spread by runners as well so for the moment I'll do this in the area where I found it near the run (I don't think I have enough stuff to do the whole perimiter right now). I think I got the whole plant out but hard to tell since I have a HWC skirt that it was into, so I couldn't use the tool I normally do to ensure removal of the whole taproot. I might try with landscaping fabric since drainage can be an issue in the particular area; I think that would let the water through but stop sprouts.

Very little will get rid of buttercups. Horses won't eat them, but almost everything else will & they are toxic. You practically have to dig to the core of the earth to get them out. Horrible species!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Very little will get rid of buttercups. Horses won't eat them, but almost everything else will & they are toxic. You practically have to dig to the core of the earth to get them out. Horrible species!

So at this point I'm a bit confused by all the reports of difficulty of removal via digging. Species difference maybe? That's not the part I've had issues with for well-established plants. Compared to surrounding properties that are now carpeted in buttercup flowers, I've been pretty successful stopping already-grown plants with one of these even though it's an annoying process:

https://www.amazon.com/Grampas-Weeder-CW-01-Original-Remover/dp/B001D1FFZA

They don't seem to come back. I don't know whether meadow butter cups are somehow easier to remove than others. The tall ones are the main ones I find and what has taken over nearby fields.

My main battle right now is new seeds being deposited, sprouting, and getting big enough to be a nibbling hazard before I notice them. If I could control the new sprouts better, I'd be set. Because I'm on the war path with these things I found another fresh patch today in another brand new place (fresh unplanted soil from a construction area deposited right before winter...nothing was growing there until this spring) that had just reached barely noticable size because of how baren the area is. Some still had the seed shells attached and tiny roots not fully into the earth yet. Guessing a critter came through and "deposited" them out one end or the other.