The symptoms are somewhat like grass tetany, and this is often misdiagnosed, but they don't show the sudden death characteristic of grass tetany, and don't immediately respond to treatment for grass tetany. There is no treatment for the malady, except to get the cattle off the affected grass, and provide them with high quality forage. If possible they should be put in a field with no ponds, steep slopes, etc. as they commonly stumble around and end up injuring or drowning themselves. Usually cattle can completely recover from the poisoning. In late summer we often have reports of dallisgrass poisoning, and it seems to be getting more common now because there is more dallisgrass in pastures in North Carolina.
Toxicity usually is reported on farms with rank dallisgrass seedheads and the fungus present.
In many cases producers had stayed off the pastures hoping to let the grass get a little more growth on it, and as a result the seedheads got old. In other cases, there are only a few cattle in large pastures, so the Dallisgrass grew faster than the cattle could consume it. Rarely do we get a report of a case were there deaths of the affected cattle. Dallisgrass is becoming a more important part of many pastures in the piedmont and coastal plain. It is a very good quality warm season perennial, and provides great benefits to pasture systems, but the one drawback is the potential for Dallisgrass staggers.