What About Tall Fescue?

I sometimes get in a hurry when I sit down to write.  That sometimes causes me to have a bit of tunnel vision and I don’t get in enough detail due to lack of time or space in the article.  That happened in August when I wrote about tall fescue and I heard about it, and I still have some tire tracks from a couple buses.  I guess I should have said more. I may have been a little hard on tall fescue last month, but Kentucky 31 endophyte infected tall fescue does have issues.  Much of the tall fescue is infected with the endophyte, a fungus that produces a toxic substance known as ergovaline. The endophyte and ergovaline are responsible for reduced palatability of tall fescue especially when it is under stress. Fescue toxicosis is responsible for elevated body temperatures, restricted blood flow to extremities and poor animal performance. Most people think that ergovaline doesn't pose a problem in stockpiled fescue because the ergovaline appears to concentrate in seed heads and stockpiled fescue is generally vegetative. Livestock eat stockpiled fescue better after a couple of hard frosts or freezing conditions.  This suggests that there is still ergovaline present in infected fescue, reducing intake until after freezing conditions. Most studies have found that ergovaline content drops fairly fast after mid-December. Sadly, as long as endophyte infected tall fescue is