Well, they have struck! The army worms are here and it feels like a biblical plague! Thankful for friends who stepped in while we were out of the country to start spraying and hold off the nasty little critters! Surveying the pastures this past weekend, showed that more spraying was needed. The ground was literally crawling!
Army worms are a moth larvae and one female can lay up to 1000 eggs. These worms can eat and destroy a football field size area in 2-3 days! All of the hard work put into fields, to grow nutritional grass for the cows and hay for the future, can be gone so quickly. Noticing a unusual flock of cow birds in a field is a tell-tale sign.
Husband asked me to ride with him to check pastures this weekend and to be honest, I didn’t want to. I had a few things I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to go ride in the muggy heat on my Saturday morning. But I did. I was shocked! I was so saddened to see completely bare patches of ground where worms had eaten the grass to the dirt in just a few days. It was disturbing to see all of the hard work of planting grass, stripped of its leaves and just stalks standing.
Continue reading “Army Worms and Restoration”
