Grasshoppers a problem in Lake County
Berl Tiskus
Grasshoppers can eat half their body weight per day, and they are herbivores. In large groups they can decimate every plant in their path..
Berl Tiskus
Amelia Jordan, entomologist at Westland Seed, holds a handfull of Sevin-5 grasshopper bait, which kills grasshoppers.
Berl Tiskus
Grasshoppers eat the Nash’s pasture down to the stem, leaving nothing for cattle to graze.
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
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Drifts of dead grasshoppers lay under a couple of pickups at David and Sue Nash’s ranch in Irvine Flats, remnants of horrific grasshopper hatches in the area. They have to shovel them up and burn them or they decay and smell.
“It’s just staggering how many grasshoppers there are this year,” David said.
The United States Department of Agriculture APHIS program sprayed the Nash place and surrounding ranches for three days in early June using Dimilin.
The spray prevents grasshoppers from growing another exoskeleton when they molt, or shed their skin, according to Gary Adams, Montana State Plant Health Department. Growing grasshoppers need a new exoskeleton about every week.
David said APHIS scientists fenced a square-foot plot of ground and then scooped the grasshoppers out of that plot and counted them.
“Thirty grasshoppers was dangerous. It was 90 and counting all over the ranch,” David said.
“They said the ranch was ground zero,” Sue added.
USDA spray planes can’t spray within 500 feet of any water, must remain a mile away from a river and can’t spray any houses, barns or sheds. So the Nashs used grasshopper bait, or pellets, around buildings.
“When they bite on it, it kills them,” Sue said.
They cannibalize each other, so when one dies and another eats it, it will die also, according to David.
In addition to spray, natural grasshopper predators flew in from Flathead Lake — sea gulls.
“We’ve got sea gulls as big as turkeys,” David said.
He and Sue are amazed that the birds knew there were grasshoppers in the area and flew out to munch on the crunchy insects.
She keeps a diary and was looking at other grasshopper infestations. In 2003, the insects chewed the needles on the pine trees and stripped their yard.
“We had nothing green,” Sue said.
This year is a bad hopper year, but the Nashs protected their yard with early spraying to prevent a repeat of 2003.
They also scattered grasshopper bait around the buildings.
It didn’t help much, because about 70 percent of their grazing is gone, eaten to the stems by the grasshoppers.
“The grazing disappeared so fast,” David said, looking out his vehicle’s window at the pastures.
The grasshoppers ate all the leaves. All that remains is stalks sticking up out of the brown earth.
What that means is the Nash cattle will be getting fed hay when all the grass is gone, as early as late July. That also means that hay for the winter will be used earlier. David said he was glad they had decided to grow more hay at their Moiese place.
Irvine Flats still has grasshoppers, maybe not as many, but the insects are searching for new food. They are also a problem in the Hot Springs area and are munching their way along the Flathead River in Valley View.
Rancher Glen Magera lives in the Hot Springs area. He said the grasshoppers have stripped one apple tree completely, are moving on to the plums, and the lilac bushes are gone.
With the hay put up on one place, he’s haying on another place and said the grasshoppers weren’t doing too much damage in the hayfields.
“It’s mostly the pasture land they are really working over,” Magera said.
APHIS put out bran, or grasshopper bait, on Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal land next to Magera’s place, and he thinks that helped. He’s also getting a machine to spread Sevin-5 on his place next week and might have to intensify later on if the hoppers continue to prosper.
Magera’s ranch had lots of grasshoppers in 2010, although he said his mother’s place in the Big Bend country, near Sloan’s Bridge, had more. This year he has more.
“The grasshoppers are in epic, biblical proportions,” said Amelia Jordan, entomologist with Westland Seed.
People have been coming in to find out what to do about them. She said Sevin-5 is pelletized bait and kills the hoppers right away. Westland Seed is prepared. They ordered in three tons of Sevin-5.
Grasshoppers like hot dry weather, but they aren’t the only pests that do, Jordan said. Another is the spotted wing drosophila, a pest that attacks cherries.
Statewide, Adams said Western Montana is drier than other places. Hardin, Busby and Lame Deer have lots of grasshoppers. Those areas are on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations, where USDA APHIS focuses, since the United States government has a trust duty to Indian reservations.
“We work with private guys on a cost share basis,” Adams said.
They spray only rangeland, not cropland.
The best-case scenario for weather to put the kibosh on ‘hoppers would be rain and heat, which encourages fungal growth, Adams said.
“Fungus are natural pathogens; they are in the soil. What the moisture does is allow the fungus to grow and populate,” he explained.
Grasshoppers appear in five to 10 year cycles, Adams said, adding that they treated for grasshoppers in Irvine Flats in 2008.
“What is really good is when the grasshoppers hatch in the spring, the weather turns cold and they starve,” Adams said.
The weather this year was perfect for grasshoppers since winter was warm, spring was early with not much moisture and now the weather is hot.
“The only good part is if the grasshoppers have eaten the whitetop (a noxious weed), too. I hope they got it before it went to seed,” David said.
