Buttercups -any advice?
 

What do you do if suddenly in your enclosure there seems to be a huge amount of creeping buttercups? Last year I saw only one or two and wasn't much worried, and that may have been mistake. They somehow spread and I don't know what to do with them. I am aware that they are toxic, but unsure whether the tortoises knows that. What do tortoises do in the nature? Surely they are not at daily risk from poisoning? Do they have some sixth sense about what to eat and what not to?

How would you get rid of it? It is really everywhere, so apart of taking the lawn off and lay another one, I can't see how to get rid of them without using chemicals... or is it safe to leave and hope that tortoises know that they shouldn't eat that?

How long after using chemicals on the lawn can tortoises get into their enclosure?

How badly toxic is the buttercup? How much of it they have to eat to be harmful? Can even one leaf be enough to make them unwell, or would it have to be bigger amount? (just wondering what happens if I get rid of the majority and miss somewhere one tiny leaf and they will find it and eat it).

Link attached from TT - the odd nibble should be OK :grin:

http://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/s...9.asp?catID=71

We get a lot of buttercup and do be honest the only way of dealing with it seems to be to dig it up :( we don't get it on the lawn so I just have to deal with it in the tort pens. No idea about chemicals, imagine it would depend on how long it took the chemical to "degrade" in the soil :smile:

TT says "As a lawn invader this plant is mildly toxic. Many tortoises nibble it occasionally with no ill effects but try and remove as much as possible as it contains the mild toxin protoanemonine and there is a reference to a tortoise dying after ingesting large quantities of Buttercup."

However, reading wikipedia is a bit more scary:
"All Ranunculus species are poisonous when eaten fresh by cattle, horses, and other livestock, but their acrid taste and the blistering of the mouth caused by their poison means they are usually left uneaten. Poisoning can occur where buttercups are abundant in overgrazed fields where little other edible plant growth is left, and the animals eat them out of desperation. Symptoms include bloody diarrhea, excessive salivation, colic, and severe blistering of the mucous membranes and gastrointestinal tract. " That sounds awful!!! And if it can kill cattle, what chances a poor little tortoise has?

I grew up on farms... cant say the farmers ever worried about buttercup, Ragwort is the only plant I know they will put a lot of effort into getting rid of...

I would try and get rid of what you can, but the odd bite wont really do much harm so as long as you keep on top of it it should be ok...

Toxins can linger in the soil for quite a long time, I would read the instructions on anything you are thinking of getting and see what it says about pets, as different chemicals will breakdown at different rates

Eating some buttercups shouldn't be a problem :D Hermanns eat them in the wild and my Horsfields eat them whenever they find them. No body has died yet :lol: The odd mouthful won't bother the tortoises at all.

Danny

I always dig buttercups up when I see them, as they can spread very quickly.
I would never feed buttercups to any of my tortoises, but if the adults eat them, I don't worry. But smaller tortoises I think I would worry somewhat. As they are toxic to a certain extent.
It seems some tortoises can eat them without any problems, but others just don't touch them.

my torts used to ignore them in the enclosures just make sure there is plenty of other food growing and they should be ok, I'm sure they taste things and know what's good and bad if not they'd all be dead in the wild. The only time I'd worry if that was all they had in their runs.

You won't need to remove your lawn. Get a trowel (small hand spade) and dig deep down around the plant. You will then loosen it and should be able to remove the whole plant.

That would be possible if there were a few of individual plants/clusters. The trouble is that they is plenty of them and they are everywhere. From a few plants last year they somehow multiplied and we are talking about hundreds of them suddenly this year. (I can't see the flowers yet but I do recognise the leafs and they somehow took over the garden.) If I was going to dig out every cluster, I may as well redo the whole lawn because the total area of possibly a quarter of my lawn would have to be dug out.

Can you get some pictures up and then I (and others) can advise you further on the best way to deal with the problem?