Endophytes in grasses

[acrantophis]

What's the deal with endophytes?! I read that "they" add this "organism?", To certain commercially available grass seeds like tall fescue. They do this as a fungus preventer. I have also read that it can be problematic in grazing livestock ruminant digestion. I'm wondering whether Wasting diseases and other metabolic conditions affecting mammals also impact grazing tortoises.

 

[Tom]

We had a thread on this a while back. It seems pretty scary, but I have not heard of anyone having any issues with it. I have been feeding yard grass for decades with no issues that I know of. Nowadays, I feed more grasses that I grow myself from seeds that are bought from an organic seed place that makes seed mixes for grazing animals, so I think this issue will never be an issue for me. I would not recommend that anyone buy grass seeds from the hardware store, or feed their tortoise grass that was started as sod.

 

[wellington]

I would assume most or a lot of us are grazing our torts in the yards we already had before the tort came and just adding different grasses and or weeds to it. So, is there any kind of time limit that it would still be active or not in the sod or seeds we may have already used or had planted? My sod was only a month old when I got Tatum. However, more then a year later he isn't eating the grass, but he is eating the tort safe seeds I planted in the sod.

 

[acrantophis]

Thanks for the input. I am over seeding a strip of my yard for grazing. I found Timothy and fescue have added endophytes more so than Bermuda. I'm sure I'm safe since most of my yard is crabgrass anyway! ;-)