Farmers brace for swarms of grasshoppers

[patandchickens]

I wasn't talking about those threatened farmers having a handful of birds out there. I was thinking about them ordering a hundred - or more (depending on the size of the farm) dual purpose straight run/ males to raise as free range meat birds.

Too many farmers go under when they rely on a crop that gets ruined. This would give another income source that might protect their crops. They would want to have shelter for the chickens at night and good fencing or livestock dogs to keep form having many chickens "disappear". Many farms already have that.

Perhaps you have different cash-crop farms where you are -- but the kind of places I'm familiar with, honestly I just can't see it working. I *seriously* can't see being able to have enough chickens to make a serious dent in the grasshopper problem, and many many would be lost to coyotes, hawks and dogs (cash-crop farmers do not generally have very predatorproof fencing, IME), and one would have to already be set up to brood and transport and market the things. Plus, you would have to be able to time your chickens to the grasshopper 'explosion' at your particular property.

Sorry, just trying to be realistic about this at a typical large-farm scale,

Pat

 

[lupinfarm]

You would need a whole load of chickens to control grasshoppers... Yikes... All those egg songs going off, can you imagine the racket? LOL My neighbour leered at me as I went up my driveway this afternoon as one of the Muffies was howling away doing her egg song by the front porch HAHA.

 

[lupinfarm]

I wasn't talking about those threatened farmers having a handful of birds out there. I was thinking about them ordering a hundred - or more (depending on the size of the farm) dual purpose straight run/ males to raise as free range meat birds.

Too many farmers go under when they rely on a crop that gets ruined. This would give another income source that might protect their crops. They would want to have shelter for the chickens at night and good fencing or livestock dogs to keep form having many chickens "disappear". Many farms already have that.

Perhaps you have different cash-crop farms where you are -- but the kind of places I'm familiar with, honestly I just can't see it working. I *seriously* can't see being able to have enough chickens to make a serious dent in the grasshopper problem, and many many would be lost to coyotes, hawks and dogs (cash-crop farmers do not generally have very predatorproof fencing, IME), and one would have to already be set up to brood and transport and market the things. Plus, you would have to be able to time your chickens to the grasshopper 'explosion' at your particular property.

Sorry, just trying to be realistic about this at a typical large-farm scale,

Pat

Plus I have to think that maybe my chickens at least would focus on the farmers crops and less on the bugs We're surrounded by corn fields and last year the chickens got into the corn field behind my house at least 8 times.

 

[Wifezilla]

Apparently you just need some sea gulls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_gulls

 

[patandchickens]

I wonder how hard it would be to, like, vacuum them up, or light-trap them, or heck *combine* them LOL or something like that, and use them as a protein supplement for livestock.

They'd be better than MOST of the high-protein ingredients in livestock feed these days, that's for sure!

Pat

 

[me&thegals]

I wasn't talking about those threatened farmers having a handful of birds out there. I was thinking about them ordering a hundred - or more (depending on the size of the farm) dual purpose straight run/ males to raise as free range meat birds.

Too many farmers go under when they rely on a crop that gets ruined. This would give another income source that might protect their crops. They would want to have shelter for the chickens at night and good fencing or livestock dogs to keep form having many chickens "disappear". Many farms already have that.

Perhaps you have different cash-crop farms where you are -- but the kind of places I'm familiar with, honestly I just can't see it working. I *seriously* can't see being able to have enough chickens to make a serious dent in the grasshopper problem, and many many would be lost to coyotes, hawks and dogs (cash-crop farmers do not generally have very predatorproof fencing, IME), and one would have to already be set up to brood and transport and market the things. Plus, you would have to be able to time your chickens to the grasshopper 'explosion' at your particular property.

Sorry, just trying to be realistic about this at a typical large-farm scale,

Pat

My thoughts exactly. So many really cool ideas just do not scale up very well. One reason I seriously hesitate about growing my CSA to a larger scale. I'd hate to give up some of the really fun ideas.

 

[ToLiveToLaugh]

You would need a whole load of chickens to control grasshoppers... Yikes... All those egg songs going off, can you imagine the racket? LOL My neighbour leered at me as I went up my driveway this afternoon as one of the Muffies was howling away doing her egg song by the front porch HAHA.

My family calls it the "egg out!" song. This is mainly due to one particularly hyper day where I (not thinking) imitated what I thought my hen was yelling ("what just happened? Oh man! Egg out! Eggggggg out!") my mom thoroughly enjoyed it, so they like to all tease me about it on a regular basis and ask "how does that go again?".

Anyway, sorry for the thread jack, I just love the egg out song that hens do