Overrun with Grasshoppers

[kwale86]

We have grasshoppers worse than I have ever seen them this year. They have destroyed our fruitrees and mos tof the other shade trees as well. Now that there are no more leaves on the trees they are stripping the bark from the branches. My chickens absolutely love to eat the grasshoppers but there are simply too many hoppers for my chickens to even make a dent in the population.
I read about the NoLo bait http://www.biconet.com/biocontrol/nolo.html but am a little worried about the bacteria that might get into the chickens.

Here is a thread on gardenweb that talks about it and guineas as well to control grasshoppers. I think I will try both next year and hopefully my trees will survive.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/okgard/msg0522004719769.html

Any suggestions on this matter are welcome.

 

[Memphisjourney2seramas]

We had the same issue here and we just let the chickens out and they had a blast. We didn't have a single one left on our property. There were tons. Give them time to get to them. None of our chickens got sick.

 

[kwale86]

I'm not worried about the birds getting sick from grasshoppers. I am just worried about putting out the NoLo, which infects the grasshoppers with a bacteria which kills off some of the grasshopper population, then the chickens eating the infected grasshoppers and possibly taking on the bacteria and passing it along to us in the form of meat or eggs.

 

[bobbi-j]

This is an easy one - get more chickens!

Seriously, just keep letting your birds out and they'll continue to work on the grasshopper infestation.

 

[kwale86]

The chickens do love the treats but they can only eat so much and I'm afraid that the ones that they don't eat will completely destroy my fruit trees that I have been planting over the last 10 years.

 

[bandbaustin]

Get some guineas. Mine love eating grasshoppers