A Kentucky Practitioner's Experience with Fescue Toxicity

Abstract

Kentucky 31 Tall Fescue even though it has been incriminated and now found guilty in various problems in animal health and production is still a very valuable forage crop for our beef and dairy farmers in South Central Kentucky. My practice is located in three counties in South Central Ky. (Monroe, Metcalfe, and Barren) in which we have a primary clinic at Tompkinsville in Monroe County and a branch clinic at Edmonton in Metcalfe County. Practice from both clinics extends into a large portion of Barren County which is the largest livestock county in Ky. (#1 in Dairy Cattle and #2 in Beef cattle). Monroe county is sixteenth and Metcalfe county is thirty-ninth in cattle numbers in Kentucky. Our practice is approximately 80% cattle practice with this being about 60% dairy cattle and 40% beef cattle. Our dairy clients average 60 cows in production with the majority of them on the increase in numbers. Most of our dairy clients are semi-drylot operations so we don't see the fescue problem in many dairy herds. Almost 100% of our beef cattle practice involves cow-calf herds which are mostly small herds of less than 40 mature cows. Most of the cow-calf herds are side-line operations that have no organized calving season or any planned marketing programs.