The dark side of clover

I wanted to expand a little on my clover/drooling situation. Rusty was (finally) moved to another paddock and the drooling stopped right away. Phew! I’m glad the barn owner finally believed me. I was hoping that they would bush hog the paddock with the clover in it, but that hasn’t seemed to happen yet. I guess everyone has different priorities…

There are many types/varieties of clover – just do a google search if you are curious. The main ones that most of us see are red clover, white clover and alsike clover. Here is a good resource to help you identify which plant is which.

I’ll start with alsike – it seems to be the worst offender for horses. It doesn’t need a mould/fungus on it to make it dangerous. It can cause severe symptoms such as photosensitivity and liver damage. If alsike clover poisoning is suspected and caught in time, the horse often recovers with no problem.

The main way (that I could find) to differentiate between white clover and alsike is the leave and flowers on white clover grow on separate stems from the ground. The flowers on alsike clover grow as “branches” of the main stem. White clover also has a faint white line in a “V” around the leaves. Red clover is pretty straightforward – it tends to be larger and has reddish-purple flowers, as well as having the “V” on the leaves.

White clover:

                   

Red clover:

Alsike clover:

      

Red and white clover and alfalfa (and probably other varieties as well) are susceptible to fungus. “Black patch” fungus seems to be the most common, with some plants exhibiting white spots. Most of the clover I found had the white/beige spots that the vet described. A few plants had black spots as well.

Here are the pictures I took of the very sad clover - note that alot of it has white spots, as well as black. Most of it is dead, or dying. Kinda nasty...

Most web sites say that the fungus tends to occur when you have a cool, wet spring. Our spring was hot and humid, with some rain in June, but I guess that was enough to cause a problem. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information on how to get rid of the fungus without heavy herbicide use. I know most of us horse people don’t like using chemicals of any sort around ourselves and our animals. Cutting the affected areas might help, I suppose. I have to admit though, if it was my paddock, I would have harrowed the whole field (maybe ½ an acre, tops) and re-seeded it. But, alas, it isn’t my farm…

Here are a few links if anyone is interested in reading further:

• Info from farmseeds.com – explanations on varieties of clover

• Wikipedia

• Plant identification – scroll down to “legumes”

• Different types of disease on clover (sadly no pictures)

So, there is clover, in a nutshell. Anyone have any other info to add? Corrections to make? Please remember that this post is based on some information from my vet and some google searching.