CHIMACUM — A state report says an inability to recognize noxious weeds in hay is at fault for the death of 14 head of cattle at a Beaver Valley dairy farm earlier this year.
Department of Agriculture investigators traced the source of the hay to a Pasco farm.
There they found more of the common groundsel that poisoned Gerald Bishop’s cows, the report says.
As a result, farmer Edmon J. Hummel of Pasco and hay haulers Robert Leitz Sr. of Selah and Robert Leitz Jr. of Sequim were ordered to stop delivering adulterated commercial feed.
But as the report points out, the farmer, distributors and Bishop did not know what they were looking for: Senecio vulgaris, a noxious weed known as common groundsel.
The plant contains alkaloids toxic to cattle.
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The rest of the story appears in Friday’s Peninsula Daily News.
