Market Farming

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer AT gmail.com>]

Pam,

When we had two acres, we put out Nolo bait, by spreading bran infested with the grasshopper parasite 'Nosema'.  Semaspore appears to be another brand of same.

Worked very well, beginning the next year, for multiple years.  From a single treatment.  Am still impressed by the level of control.

Now with 70 acres, our flock of bourbon red turkeys are the best grasshopper hunters of our various poultry.

When very young, we have hens who will take their poults each morning (10-15 or so each) and patrol those areas with higher infestations. Some hens can handle 20 or more, adopting from delinquent mothers.   We tend to herd them to those areas with the most grasshoppers.  Grasshoppers tend to come from grassy field (pasture, hayfield) edges into row crops, so one management strategy is to keep grass strips of sufficient width very short that surround row crops, and allow taller grass farther away, which is grasshopper preferred habitat.  But if the only moist soil and tender young plants is your baby fall veggies, they can migrate over.  May make sense then to irrigate where you want them to stay, if rains are lacking.  Also, mowing, haying and/or rotational grazing in the preferred grasshopper habitat and poultry feeding area keeps young foliage coming on, hence attractive to multiple critters in the farm ecosystem.

Not by design, but by sheer dumb luck our set up has the most turkeys patrolling in the grassy strips and taller pasture/hayfield beside the row crop areas, separated by a good fence that keeps turkeys out of crops once they are juveniles.  We still need to train the turkeys to stay out of crop areas once older, which requires someone on the farm all the time, during that transition, someone with sharp ears and eyes.  (Yes, heritage turkeys can be trained, at least in our flock.) 

When and how we feed commercial mix also needs to be timed to maximize grasshopper feeding.  That is, train turkeys to forage before filling up on purchased feed.  We often feed just before they roost. Esp. as days get shorter and nights longer and cooler.

In our breeding program, my daughter selects for those hens who stay with their poults the longest, and are the best teachers of foraging for grasshoppers, green matter and grass seed.  This helps entrain positive behaviors and means if we steer the mothers in the right area, their young follow.

Once the young leave their mothers, they become unruly teenagers with a social order all their own.  (Stay out late, refuse to be seen with parents, have no regard for their messes, trash the best vehicles, play in the road, etc.)  But by this phase (closer to Thanksgiving), we've often had a good killing frost, the crops are more established, so the grasshoppers not so bad.

During critical points of grasshopper control, you could possibly import some turkeys or other birds, to set grasshopper numbers back.  Helps to have their owner around, or a turkey whisperer onsite to know how to manage flock behavior.

Peacocks also work well as insect hunters; but they are so light as juveniles and adults they tend to fly over any fence, any time and can be a problem with tomatoes.

Don't know how well guineas would work, but they also are very mobile.  

In summary, Nosema bait if no poultry, possibly both, or just poultry if you are trying to raise poultry food onsite.  

Richard Moyer

SW VA

Where the rains mean fall crop germination and many stunted weeds now going to seed.