Is Yew Poisonous to Dogs, Cats, Horses, and Livestock?

Yew on This Page Means Japanese Yew First

This page retains the established plant title Yew but is centered on Japanese yew, Taxus cuspidata. The earlier scientific entry Taxus sp. identifies only the genus and does not distinguish Japanese yew from English, Chinese, Canadian, Pacific, Florida, Mexican, or hybrid ornamental yews.

That distinction matters botanically, but not as permission to treat an unidentified yew as safe. All true Taxus species and horticultural true-yew hybrids should be considered poisonous until definitively identified. Japanese yew is among the most dangerous ornamental species planted in North America.

Accepted Taxonomy

The accepted scientific name is Taxus cuspidata Siebold & Zucc. Philipp Franz von Siebold and Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini published the species in 1846.

Important homotypic synonyms include Taxus baccata subsp. cuspidata and Taxus baccata var. cuspidata. These names reflect periods when botanists treated Japanese yew as an eastern Asian subspecies or variety of English yew.

Two infraspecific varieties are accepted: Taxus cuspidata var. cuspidata and the lower-growing Taxus cuspidata var. nana. Both must be treated as poisonous.

Native Range

Japanese yew is native from the southern Russian Far East through northeastern Asia to northern China, Korea, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, and Japan. Wild plants grow in temperate forests, mountain woodlands, rocky slopes, shaded valleys, and cool forest margins.

The species has been introduced and cultivated far beyond that range because it tolerates shade, severe pruning, cold winters, and urban landscaping conditions. It is particularly common as an ornamental hedge in northern portions of the United States and Canada.

Landscape Exposure

Japanese yew is planted as a foundation shrub, privacy hedge, topiary, screen, cemetery planting, windbreak, specimen tree, clipped evergreen border, and commercial landscape shrub. Its ability to remain green through winter makes it attractive in landscapes but also leaves poisonous foliage available when other forage is dormant.

Dogs may chew branches during play, retrieve pruning sticks, eat red arils, crush seeds, or investigate clippings. Horses and livestock are commonly exposed when owners, neighbors, landscapers, cemetery crews, holiday decorators, or storm cleanup crews throw branches or hedge trimmings into a paddock, pasture, barnyard, feeder, compost area, or dry lot.

Yew poisoning is therefore often a disposal failure. A living hedge along a driveway is dangerous, but a pile of fresh clippings inside a pasture is worse because it concentrates the plant and removes the animal’s normal ability to browse around it.

Growth Form

Japanese yew is a slow-growing evergreen shrub or tree. Unpruned plants may become broad, dense trees, while landscape forms are commonly maintained as compact hedges, spreading shrubs, columns, rounded foundation plantings, dwarf mounds, bonsai, and formal clipped shapes.

The bark is reddish brown to gray brown and may become scaly or fibrous with age. Young twigs are green and flexible before turning brown. The wood, bark, and twig material remain part of the poisonous exposure, not harmless support tissue.

Needles

The leaves are flat, narrow needles, usually approximately one to two-and-one-half centimeters long and less than one-quarter centimeter wide. They are attached spirally around the twig, but their bases twist so the needles often appear arranged in two flattened rows.

The upper surface is dark green, while the underside is lighter and bears two pale stomatal bands. Needle tips are pointed or abruptly sharp, contributing to the species name cuspidata, meaning pointed or cuspidate.

Chewed needles retain their recognizable linear shape in vomit, stomach contents, rumen contents, manure, and feed. Even a small amount should be preserved for identification because many fatal cases have few distinctive gross lesions.

Male and Female Plants

Yews are generally dioecious, meaning that male and female reproductive structures occur on separate plants. Male shrubs produce small pollen-bearing structures, while pollinated female plants produce exposed seeds surrounded by fleshy red arils.

A yew without red fruit is not safe. Male plants and nonfruiting female plants still contain taxines in their needles, twigs, bark, wood, roots, and pollen.

The Red Structure Is an Aril, Not a True Berry

The bright red fleshy cup surrounding the seed is called an aril. Unlike a conventional fruit, it remains open at the end and leaves the seed visibly exposed.

The ripe red aril is the one part of a true yew considered essentially free of taxines. The seed inside it is poisonous. Dogs, cats, horses, livestock, poultry, pet birds, zoo animals, or children should never be encouraged to eat arils because chewing can crush the seed and release its toxins.

Swallowing an intact seed may release less toxin than crushing it, but seed coats can be damaged by chewing or digestion. No seed exposure should be dismissed as harmless.

Japanese Yew and Anglo-Japanese Yew

Taxus × media, commonly called Anglo-Japanese yew, is a hybrid between English yew, Taxus baccata, and Japanese yew, Taxus cuspidata.

Popular landscape cultivars such as ‘Hicksii,’ ‘Densiformis,’ ‘Brownii,’ ‘Wardii,’ ‘Tauntonii,’ and several spreading or columnar forms may be hybrids rather than pure Japanese yew. They retain taxine-type toxicity and require the same emergency response.

Japanese Yew and English Yew

English yew, Taxus baccata, is native to Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. Japanese yew is native to northeastern Asia and generally possesses greater winter hardiness.

The two species are closely related and have been hybridized extensively. Both contain potent taxine alkaloids and are associated with sudden animal deaths. English-yew toxicology cannot be ignored simply because the shrub in a North American landscape may be Japanese yew or a hybrid.

Pacific, Canadian, Chinese, Florida, and Other True Yews

Pacific or western yew is Taxus brevifolia, a native western North American forest tree. Canadian or American yew is Taxus canadensis. Chinese yew, Florida yew, Mexican yew, and Himalayan or Asian yews are additional true-yew taxa or taxonomic complexes.

Species may differ in taxine concentration, growth habit, range, conservation status, and horticultural use. Those differences are not owner-level permission to allow chewing. Any true-yew exposure should be treated as dangerous until a veterinarian or poison-control specialist determines otherwise.

Japanese Plum Yew Is Not a True Yew

Japanese plum yew belongs to the genus Cephalotaxus, most commonly Cephalotaxus harringtonia. It resembles a yew but is botanically distinct and produces plum-like seed structures rather than open red arils.

Yew pine or Buddhist pine belongs to Podocarpus. New Zealand yews belong to genera such as Prumnopitys. These common-name overlaps make photographs of the complete plant, needles, twigs, bark, and reproductive structures important during a suspected poisoning.

Taxine Is a Mixture

Taxine was once discussed as though it were one purified alkaloid. Chemical work demonstrated that the toxic fraction is a complex mixture containing taxine A, taxine B, and related compounds.

Taxine B is normally the most abundant and potent cardiotoxic component. Taxine A is also cardioactive, and cinnamate metabolites derived from both compounds can further disrupt cardiac function, cardiac conduction, and coronary blood flow.

Taxine A and Taxine B

Christina R. Wilson, John-Michael Sauer, and Stephen B. Hooser published a major review of the mechanism and toxicity of yew alkaloids. That review brought together chemistry, animal experiments, clinical reports, and electrophysiological evidence showing that taxines act primarily on cardiac myocytes.

Taxine B has stronger negative inotropic and atrioventricular-conduction effects than taxine A. It slows depolarization, suppresses impulse conduction, widens the QRS complex, and reduces the heart’s ability to contract effectively. Taxine A and other related compounds still matter because the plant delivers a mixture.

Alloatti and Colleagues’ Isolated-Heart Study

Giuseppe Alloatti, Cristina Penna, Riccardo C. Levi, Maria P. Gallo, Giovanni Appendino, and colleagues studied yew alkaloids and related compounds in guinea-pig isolated perfused heart and papillary muscle preparations.

Both taxine A and taxine B produced cardiotoxic effects, but taxine B was substantially more potent. The experiments documented reduced contractility and delayed atrioventricular conduction consistent with the electrocardiographic abnormalities observed in naturally poisoned animals.

Cardiac Sodium-Channel Blockade

Fast sodium channels permit the rapid electrical depolarization that carries an impulse through atrial and ventricular myocardium. Taxine inhibition slows that electrical wave.

Progressive blockade produces QRS widening, slowed conduction, loss of coordinated contraction, ventricular ectopy, and the possibility of ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. This mechanism explains why sodium bicarbonate has been considered in severe poisoning, although the clinical evidence remains inconsistent and species-dependent.

Cardiac Calcium-Channel Blockade

Calcium movement is essential for cardiac contraction, sinoatrial-node automaticity, and atrioventricular-node conduction. Taxines inhibit these currents in a manner often compared with calcium-channel blocker drugs such as verapamil.

The result may include reduced heart rate, weak contraction, conduction block, vasodilation, low blood pressure, and poor coronary perfusion. Unlike one pharmaceutical calcium-channel blocker, yew delivers a variable mixture of alkaloids and metabolites.

Why Sudden Death Can Occur

The combination of conduction failure, weak contraction, vasodilation, and ventricular electrical instability can terminate effective circulation abruptly. An animal may die in diastolic cardiac standstill, ventricular fibrillation, asystole, pulseless electrical activity, or profound shock.

There may be no prolonged period of visible illness before collapse. A normal appetite, a normal walk across the pasture, or a few minutes of apparently normal behavior after access does not clear the animal.

Volatile Oils and Gastrointestinal Irritation

Yew also contains volatile irritant oils. These can produce nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, salivation, ruminal dysfunction, and gastrointestinal inflammation.

Gastrointestinal illness does not neutralize the cardiac danger. An animal that vomits yew material may still have absorbed enough taxine to develop fatal arrhythmias.

Paclitaxel Is Not the Primary Acute Toxin

Paclitaxel, historically called Taxol, is a taxane compound developed as an anticancer medication. It interferes with cell division by stabilizing microtubules.

Paclitaxel can affect cardiac rhythm in some treated patients, but it does not account for the rapid yew-poisoning syndrome as directly as taxine A, taxine B, and their metabolites. A plant-poisoning page should keep taxines at the center of the acute emergency.

Taxicatine and 3,5-Dimethoxyphenol

Taxicatine is a yew glycoside whose aglycone-related breakdown marker, 3,5-dimethoxyphenol, can be detected analytically.

Veterinary and forensic laboratories have used 3,5-dimethoxyphenol as evidence of yew exposure in gastrointestinal contents, blood, urine, liver, and other specimens. The marker helps confirm exposure but does not provide a simple calculation of the original dose or predict survival by itself.

Toxicity Persists Through Winter and Drying

Taxines remain in the plant throughout the year. Veterinary sources report that concentrations are often highest during winter and in older plants, particularly in highly toxic species such as Japanese and English yew.

Dried yew retains its toxicity for months. Wreaths, hedge clippings, holiday greenery, dead branches, dried needles, hay contamination, compost, and partially burned debris remain hazardous.

The Reported Dog Lethal Dose

R. B. Cope summarized a reported minimum lethal dose in dogs of approximately 2.3 grams of yew leaves per kilogram of body weight, corresponding to approximately 11.5 milligrams of taxine alkaloids per kilogram.

This does not mean that 2 or 3 grams is a universal lethal amount for every dog. A 10-kilogram dog would reach that historical plant-material estimate at roughly 23 grams, while a 30-kilogram dog would reach it at roughly 69 grams.

The value is an approximate historical minimum rather than a safe-versus-lethal dividing line. Species, season, individual shrub, leaf age, chewing, stomach contents, body condition, and toxin measurement all create uncertainty.

A Dog Can Receive a Fatal Dose from a Branch

A branch or pruning stick can carry many grams of needles and bark. A dog playing with it may strip and swallow plant material without appearing to eat a meal.

Yew branches should never be used as fetch toys, chew sticks, decorative kennel material, bird perches, reptile cage branches, rabbit chews, goat browse, or livestock enrichment.

Evans and Cook’s Japanese-Yew Dog Case

K. L. Evans and J. R. Cook reported Japanese-yew poisoning in a dog in the Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association in 1991. The dog survived but developed marked central nervous system effects, particularly dilated pupils, tetanic seizures, and increased aggression. Gastroenteritis persisted for approximately one week.

The case demonstrates that nonfatal Japanese-yew poisoning can produce prolonged neurologic and gastrointestinal illness rather than only immediate cardiac arrest. Survival does not mean the exposure was minor or safe.

Thomson and Barker’s 1978 Cattle Report

G. W. Thomson and I. K. Barker reported Japanese-yew poisoning in cattle in the Canadian Veterinary Journal in 1978. In one group of Angus cows, one became recumbent, gasped several times, rolled onto her side, and died. Another cow that had been eating hay suddenly became recumbent and died within minutes.

In another herd, four of thirty-five Holstein heifers and cows were found dead after appearing normal the previous evening. The report emphasized that Japanese yew can cause sudden livestock death with little warning and that the plant remains poisonous after storage and drying.

The 2024 New England Cattle Deaths

In January 2024, Cornell University’s Animal Health Diagnostic Center investigated the sudden deaths of four New England beef cattle following accidental access to Japanese yew.

One cow was reportedly eating and behaving normally before collapsing and dying moments later. Three others were found dead over a three-day period. Field necropsies found no distinctive gross lesions. Branch and fruit material recovered from the rumen was identified as Japanese yew, and nearby shrubs showed evidence of browsing.

This recent diagnostic case reinforces the older literature: yew poisoning can be sudden, lethal, and grossly subtle at necropsy unless plant material is found and identified.

Japanese-Yew Poisoning in Horses

J. E. Lowe, H. F. Hintz, H. F. Schryver, and J. M. Kingsbury published Japanese-yew poisoning in horses in Cornell Veterinarian in 1970. P. A. Karns later reported equine intoxication due to Japanese-yew ingestion in Equine Practice in 1983.

Equine yew poisoning commonly presents as sudden collapse or death. Horses surviving long enough to show signs may develop trembling, weakness, dyspnea, colic, diarrhea, dilated pupils, abnormal cardiac rhythm, convulsions, and terminal recumbency.

Rapid Absorption in Monogastric Animals

Dogs, horses, pigs, and other animals with a single-chambered stomach may absorb taxines rapidly. Recorded horses have collapsed within approximately fifteen minutes of ingestion.

The speed of absorption sharply limits the usefulness of home first aid and makes immediate veterinary transportation more important than attempting household decontamination.

Sula and Colleagues’ Calf Investigation

Mee Ja M. Sula, Sandra Morgan, Keith L. Bailey, Mark Schumpert, and Bradley L. Njaa described cardiac lesions in calves after ingestion of Japanese-yew clippings. In two related outbreaks, seven of thirty calves died after confirmed exposure.

Acute deaths were consistent with the usual peracute yew syndrome, but calves surviving longer developed important cardiac lesions. Findings included cardiomyocyte loss, necrosis, inflammation, and fibrosis consistent with previous myocardial injury.

The study demonstrates that survival of the initial exposure does not guarantee that the heart escaped injury. Subacute or chronic cardiac damage may remain after the foliage has passed from the digestive tract.

Gross Lesions May Be Absent

Many yew-poisoned animals have no distinctive lesions at necropsy. Nonspecific pulmonary edema, congestion, hemorrhage, or gastrointestinal inflammation may be present, but a completely unremarkable gross examination does not exclude yew.

The stomach or rumen must be examined carefully for small linear needles, seeds, red aril material, twigs, or bark. Because a lethal dose may contain relatively little foliage, a casual inspection can miss the diagnostic material.

Chronic and Subacute Injury

Most yew poisonings are acute or peracute, but lower or repeated exposure may produce gastroenteritis, weakness, intermittent rhythm changes, myocarditis, myocardial necrosis, or fibrosis.

A surviving animal may require follow-up electrocardiography, cardiac biomarkers, echocardiography, or activity restriction depending on the exposure and clinical course.

Wildlife Consumption Does Not Establish Safety

Deer and some other wildlife browse yew or consume arils with fewer apparent effects than domestic livestock. Rumen microorganisms, feeding behavior, gradual adaptation, seed passage, and species-specific metabolism may reduce exposure or detoxify part of the alkaloid mixture.

Wildlife resistance is incomplete and cannot be transferred to dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, captive wildlife, pet birds, rabbits, reptiles, or exotic pets.

Dogs

Dogs may be exposed through branches, landscape pruning, red arils, sticks, mulch, wreaths, holiday decorations, cemetery greenery, compost, or garden waste. Chewing rather than deliberate feeding is sufficient to release a dangerous amount of needles and bark.

Possible signs include vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, dilated pupils, aggression, weakness, bradycardia, wide QRS complexes, seizures, respiratory distress, collapse, and sudden death.

Cats

Published feline cases are less common, but yew is classified as toxic to cats and should be treated as a true emergency. Cats may chew indoor holiday greenery, investigate cut branches, bite arils, or ingest needles while grooming contaminated paws or fur.

The expected danger is the same taxine-mediated cardiovascular collapse. Any credible feline ingestion requires immediate veterinary consultation rather than observation at home.

Horses

Horses are highly vulnerable and may collapse within minutes. Common exposure routes include hedge clippings, storm-damaged branches, wreaths, cemetery greenery, shrubs growing along a paddock fence, and landscape waste dumped where horses can reach it.

Because horses cannot vomit, plant material remains available for absorption unless it is removed professionally. A small-looking pile can still contain a dangerous amount of needles and bark. No field estimate should be used to delay treatment.

Cattle, Sheep, and Goats

Ruminants are commonly poisoned when branches are discarded into a pasture or mixed with hay. Yew may appear unusually attractive when green foliage is scarce during winter.

The first sign may be one or more animals found dead. Survivors may exhibit salivation, abdominal distress, diarrhea, trembling, breathing difficulty, weakness, arrhythmias, recumbency, or seizures.

Plant material can remain within the rumen and continue releasing toxin. The remaining herd must be removed from the source immediately, and the full ration, pasture perimeter, compost, cemetery waste, landscape debris, and neighboring shrubs should be inspected.

Pigs, Birds, and Exotic Animals

Pigs, chinchillas, budgerigars, canaries, primates, zoo animals, and other species have been poisoned by yew or are considered vulnerable. Experimental birds developed vomiting or regurgitation, breathing difficulty, depression, weakness, ataxia, cyanosis, and death after yew exposure.

Species susceptibility varies, but an ornamental branch should never be used as browse, cage enrichment, or a perch unless it has been identified as a safe non-toxic plant by scientific name.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis relies on exposure history, rapid cardiovascular collapse, electrocardiographic abnormalities, and identification of yew needles or seeds in vomit, stomach contents, rumen contents, feed, manure, or the environment.

Continuous electrocardiography may reveal bradycardia, absent P waves, atrioventricular block, QRS widening, ventricular ectopy, ventricular tachycardia, or fibrillation. Blood pressure, pulse quality, mucous membrane color, respiratory effort, and neurologic status can change rapidly.

Laboratory testing may include electrolytes, blood gases, glucose, kidney and liver values, cardiac troponin, lactate, acid-base status, complete blood count, and urinalysis. Results can be nonspecific, particularly when death occurs rapidly.

Specialized laboratories can detect taxine derivatives or 3,5-dimethoxyphenol by gas or liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. Samples should be collected and stored according to laboratory instructions.

Important Differential Diagnoses

Other rapidly cardiotoxic plants include oleander, Yellow Oleander, foxglove, lily of the valley, milkweed, dogbane, kalanchoe, monkshood, and several species containing sodium-channel, calcium-channel, or cardiac-glycoside toxins.

Sudden livestock death also requires consideration of lightning, electrocution, cyanide, nitrate or nitrite, ionophore-contaminated feed, acute bloat, anaphylaxis, toxic algae, severe electrolyte disorders, traumatic injury, and infectious disease.

Tremors and seizures in dogs additionally require consideration of metaldehyde, tremorgenic mold toxins, methylxanthines, amphetamines, nicotine, pyrethroids, organochlorines, strychnine, and primary neurologic disease.

There Is No Proven Specific Antidote

No treatment has been demonstrated consistently to neutralize taxines in animals. Management centers on removing unabsorbed plant material when safely possible and supporting circulation, ventilation, rhythm, blood pressure, temperature, and neurologic function until the toxin is eliminated.

The absence of an antidote does not make treatment pointless. Some exposed animals survive after rapid decontamination and intensive cardiovascular support, particularly when the ingested dose was below the lethal threshold or when care begins before collapse.

Professional Gastrointestinal Decontamination

A veterinarian may induce vomiting after a very recent ingestion only when a dog or cat remains completely asymptomatic, has no electrocardiographic abnormality, and can protect its airway.

Once weakness, vomiting, tremors, altered behavior, breathing difficulty, or rhythm changes begin, induced vomiting can trigger collapse or aspiration. Gastric lavage under anesthesia with a protected airway may be considered instead.

Activated charcoal may be administered professionally to bind material remaining in the gastrointestinal tract. It should never be forced into a weak, vomiting, seizuring, tremoring, collapsed, or poorly swallowing animal.

Rumen Evacuation

Veterinarians may consider rumen lavage, evacuation, rumenotomy, or other methods of removing foliage after a substantial recent ruminant exposure.

Handling, restraint, sedation, surgery, and transport can increase cardiac demand and precipitate collapse. The procedure must be weighed against cardiovascular instability and the amount of material likely to remain.

Electrocardiographic Monitoring

Continuous monitoring is essential because rhythm changes can appear suddenly and progress rapidly. QRS duration, atrioventricular conduction, heart rate, blood pressure, ventricular ectopy, and pulse quality require repeated assessment.

Apparently normal animals may require monitoring after a credible substantial exposure because taxine absorption and clinical onset are not perfectly predictable.

Atropine

Atropine has been suggested for clinically important bradycardia or atrioventricular block. It may improve heart rate when vagal influence contributes to bradycardia.

Response is inconsistent because taxines directly damage conduction and contractility. Raising the heart rate can also increase myocardial oxygen demand or expose ventricular instability. Atropine must be used only under electrocardiographic supervision.

Lidocaine and Other Antiarrhythmics

Intravenous lidocaine has been used successfully in individual human yew cases involving ventricular arrhythmias and may be considered professionally in selected veterinary rhythms.

Other antiarrhythmics can worsen conduction block, hypotension, or myocardial depression. Treatment must be based on the actual rhythm rather than an assumption that every yew patient has the same arrhythmia.

Sodium Bicarbonate

Hypertonic sodium bicarbonate has been considered because taxines block cardiac sodium channels and can produce marked QRS widening.

An experimental swine study involving Taxus × media did not demonstrate dependable reversal of QRS widening. A separate human Taxus cuspidata berry case improved after sodium bicarbonate when amiodarone had not corrected the electrocardiographic abnormalities.

These conflicting findings support veterinarian-selected use in particular sodium-channel-blocking patterns, not routine owner administration or a claim that bicarbonate is an antidote.

Digoxin Immune Fab

Digoxin-specific antibody fragments are highly effective for cardiac-glycoside plants such as oleander, but taxines are alkaloid sodium- and calcium-channel blockers rather than digoxin-like cardenolides.

Fab has been attempted in human yew poisoning with inconsistent or uncertain benefit. It should not be presented as a proven yew antidote.

Fluids, Vasopressors, Inotropes, and Ventilation

Intravenous fluids may support blood pressure and kidney perfusion but must be adjusted carefully in an animal with weak cardiac contraction, pulmonary edema, or arrhythmia.

Vasopressors and inotropes may be required for severe hypotension, although response can be poor while cardiac channels remain blocked. Oxygen, endotracheal intubation, and positive-pressure ventilation may be necessary when respiratory function fails.

Seizure Control

Tremors, aggression, and seizures require veterinarian-selected sedatives or anticonvulsants. Severe recurrent seizures may require anesthesia and mechanical ventilation.

Quiet handling is essential. Exercise, transportation stress, noise, restraint, crowding, and excitement increase cardiac demand and may worsen arrhythmias or precipitate collapse.

Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Support

Human case reports describe survival after extracorporeal life support maintained circulation while taxines were metabolized and eliminated.

This treatment is available only in highly specialized centers and is rarely practical in veterinary patients. It demonstrates, however, that prolonged mechanical circulatory support may bridge an otherwise fatal but potentially reversible channel-blocking toxicosis.

Prognosis

The prognosis is guarded to grave after a confirmed substantial ingestion. Sudden collapse, marked QRS widening, severe hypotension, ventricular arrhythmia, seizures, respiratory failure, or inability to remove continuing gastrointestinal plant material substantially worsens the outlook.

Animals that remain stable through the initial period and receive prompt decontamination and monitoring may recover. Survivors of substantial exposure may require follow-up evaluation for persistent myocardial injury.

Prevention

Do not plant Japanese yew within reach of dogs, horses, livestock, pet birds, rabbits, zoo animals, or exotic pets. Remember that animals can reach through or over fences and that snow, wind, pruning, or storm damage may drop branches into an enclosure.

Never throw hedge clippings, wreaths, cemetery greenery, holiday decorations, or landscape waste into a pasture, paddock, kennel, compost area, feed bin, poultry run, rabbit pen, tortoise enclosure, or zoo habitat.

Do not use yew branches as fetch sticks, chew toys, bird perches, firewood, bedding, browse, livestock treats, or enrichment. Dry material remains poisonous.

Label landscape plants with the scientific name and train landscapers, neighbors, barn visitors, cemetery crews, holiday decorators, and cleanup crews to recognize yew before disposing of branches around animals.