Hey all,
Sorry for the delay in getting rolling on blogging again. Unfortunately, after my last post, I had to have surgery. Something that has been weighing very heavily on my mind, even though we are now in the winter, is the topic of box elder.
The reason why box elder has been on my mind so much is because we had a horrible incident with it this last spring because we didn’t know any better. This past spring, we had to cut a bunch of branches off of a box elder tree near the house.
Now, we have a tradition when we cut branches on the farm. Usually, all cut branches get thrown over the fence to the animals. We learned a very hard lesson that day.
We threw box elder branches with leaves and seeds over the fence, and two of our goats started to compete for who could eat the most of it.
By morning, our best la mancha doe was dead, and our other milker was very ill. We learned the hard way that box elder is one of the lethal plants for any herbivore to get into.
We had fed it to every animal on the farm that was an herbivore. Thankfully, most of them had the sense not to eat it, choosing to go hungry instead.
When we discovered the dead doe, I called our veterinarian in a panic because the other doe was severely ill, and I knew that all the animals had been fed this plant. The vet told me that unfortunately, there is no antidote for box elder poisoning. They will live, or they will die, and you can’t do much about it. We spent most of the day agonizing over who else would we lose over the mistake.
Thankfully, as I said, we ended up losing only one doe. Our best milker.
The moral of the story is always double check that any trimmings you are about to feed livestock are not poisonous for the animals. It could very well save lives.
Until next time,
Emily
That Ozark Homesteader 