This story was originally published byGrist.
This story was produced in collaboration with theFood & Environment Reporting online grid, a nonprofit news organization.
But the fescue these cows are eating is toxic.
Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)
The animals lose hooves.
Parts of their tails and the tips of their ears slough off.
They breathe heavily, fail to put on weight, and produce less milk.
Some fail to conceive, and some of the calves they do conceive die.
The disorder, fescue toxicosis, costs the livestock industryup to $2 billion a year in lost production.
Unlike most native grasses, Kentucky-31, as it was called, stayed green and hearty through the winter.
Ranchers found the species remarkably resilient and, if not beloved by cattle, edible enough to plant.
Between the cells in fescue grows an endophyte, a fungus living symbiotically inside the grass.
Its a longstanding problem, and its spreading.
Friendly fescue hit the market in 2000, developed by Pennington Seed Inc.
It would seem an ideal fit for an industry focused on maintaining the status quo amid climate challenges.
But ranchers have been slow to embrace it.
The fear of failure is a big deal, he said.
Youre sticking your neck out there when you go to kill something that looks really good.
Many farmers would like to avoid the risk of total pasture makeovers, if they can.
Poore counts over 100 such remedies.
Meanwhile, the lush ground cover that fescue displays in winter is seductive.
A lack of trust, too, is a problem.
Ranchers trusted the scientists, and they lost a lot of money when that version withered in the fields.
The sting of that debacle persists as researchers make a run at convince ranchers to trust friendly fescue.
The sins of the past have come back to haunt us, MUs Roberts said.
Its going to take a while to overcome that screwup.
He tries to assuage farmers who are worried about the expense and labor of pasture conversion.
There arent good numbers on adoption rates, because seed companies are guarded about how much they sell.
But Robert says he knows its rising.
It doesnt help that endophyte-free fescue the one that fails in the winter remains on the market.
The state of Kentucky even provides cost-share funding for ranchers who switch from toxic fescue to endophyte-free fescue.
Farm supply stores often dont even stock friendly fescue seed, as its less shelf stable.
A 2014 study showed thatclimate change could increase the endophytes toxicity.
Friendly fescue soil, by contrast, has more microbes than toxic fescue soil.
And he can point to some wins.
He loves the results.
What were promoting is environmentally friendly as well as economically sound, he said.
It may take another 20 years for it to catch on, but its not going away.
Finally, theyd had enough.
But the Hamiltons didnt reach for an artificially modified version of an exotic grass.
Since then, theyve converted another 75 acres.
I visited Hamiltons ranch in November 2022.
She and her family run about 45 cows and 150 bison.
Quail have returned for the first time in decades.
This is what would have been here pre-settlement, said Steele, referring to the land before Europeans arrived.
A functioning grassland with different plants serving different functions.
Natures design is not for monocultures.
To understand the fescue-native debate requires an understanding of the ecological tradeoff between warm- and cool-season grasses.
Cool-season grasses do the opposite, putting their evolutionary resources into frost-tolerance.
Hamilton and Steele have decided to bet on biodiversity.
The result was pastureland that holds up to a half gallon more water than a typical fescue field.
Grasslands are uniquely good at carbon sequestration.
Whats more, intensive grazing of monocultures makes it hard to sequester carbon.
The Missouri Department of Conservation conducts workshops to familiarize ranchers with NWSGs.
Research by the center found thatpastures of native switchgrass financially outperform fescue pastures.
And Patrick D. Keyser, the centers director, says native grasses significantly outperform fescue in climate resiliency.
Fescue, he says, wants it to be 73 degrees and rainy every other day.
Think Oregon or Scotland, he said.
To them, the worst climate projections that were getting really arent a big deal.
From a resiliency standpoint, they absolutely win.
As with friendly fescue, cost is partly to blame.
Proponents of native conversion also face a more complicated obstacle than cost as they seek buy-in from ranchers.
The debate over how beef cattle are raised is caught up in the culture war over climate change.
Ranchers like Amy Hamilton risk being marginalized as progressives.
She also tells them that native conversion pencils out.
That extra forage also allows ranchers to feed more cows.
Saving money matters in the fescue belt.
I dont want to do that, Hamilton said.
Freeman has converted 80 acres of fescue to natives, with plans to convert 180 more in three years.
In total, that will make a third of his pasture diverse native grasslands.
I realized were not going to get there with the grasses we have.
Theres no money that backs this, he said of native restoration.
The novel endophytes and those kinds of things, theres a lot of money to be made.
Theyve helped the universities.
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Who is it for?
For his part, MUs Roberts hears the subtle dig at his work.
Friends of mine in conservation groups think the university professors are hooked on fescue, he said.
What theyre hooked on is a long grazing season, good yield, and good quality.
Theyre hooked on criteria, not on a species.
Either way, change on this scale takes time.
Im sure there are ranchers out there that think were absolutely nuts, Hamilton said.
But some of them are interested in thinking about new ways of doing things.
As we drove out to visit her cows, we passed some of her neighbors fields.
In one, a herd of emaciated cattle had grazed a fescue field down to stubble.
These are good people, Hamilton said.
Theyre just trying to make a living.
This article originally appeared inGristathttps://grist.org/agriculture/this-grass-has-toxic-effects-on-us-livestock-and-its-spreading-fescue/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
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