CAÑON CITY • Hundreds of locusts flutter through the air as Matt Koster wades through his neighbor’s decimated hay field.
He passes through the flattened grass and the fog of pests and reaches his own field. The clouds of voracious insects seem to dissolve and the rows of plants are in full bloom.
Soon we will know why.
Turkeys, their pink wattles drooping, run through the field. They are on the hunt, focused. They stalk their prey, and when spotted, they pounce with their beaks wide open, pecking and eating the grasshoppers with almost supernatural speed.
Koster drives the poultry through the rows of thickets, where it quickly pecks its six-legged delicacies out of the ground.
As the sun rises, the turkeys become tired and fed, huddle together and seek shade. Their morning is over, but later in the evening they head out hunting again.
Koster and his partner Ellen Kerchner run Ellen’s Flowers – the largest flower farm in the Pikes Peak region. The farm, whose fields are located just outside of Cañon City, was hit by locusts this year. Some farmers refer to this as the “hopperpocalypse.”
“You wouldn’t think that such a small virus could cause so many problems,” Koster said. “When they reach a critical mass, it almost seems like there’s no stopping them.”
The farm has 3.5 acres of farmland and 10,000 square feet of greenhouse space. Even outside the greenhouses, locusts sit on the metal walls as if waiting to get in.
Koster is jokingly known on the farm as the “turkey keeper.” He tends the flower farm’s 20 turkeys, which come in two varieties – the sturdy, broad-breasted black turkey (think Thanksgiving) and the smaller Midget White turkey.
The turkeys serve as a natural pest control for the farm. Koster came up with the idea of using turkeys to control the locust population this year because of his experience in dealing with the animals.
“When I worked with turkeys before, it was on a much larger scale, and so I got the proof of concept early on,” he said. “I saw that after the turkeys, when we scattered them around in different pastures, there were no more grasshoppers.”
A locust “explosion”
Last year’s moisture combined with a mild winter has led to a surge in locusts this year, said Beth Hayes, agriculture and natural resources specialist with Colorado State University’s Pueblo County Extension. Many of the eggs laid by locusts last year survived the mild winter and began hatching in February, even though they don’t normally hatch until April.
“This year we’ve seen an even bigger explosion in numbers of all locust species,” Hayes said. “The problem is that numbers have increased so much again this year. If we don’t take action in the fall, we’re going to see an even bigger increase next year.”
The herbivorous insects destroy plants, from grass to hay – even the bark of trees, Hayes said. She recalled a recent report from a farmer who watched the locusts tear the branches off trees and eat them after ravaging the fruit until only seeds remained.
“They cause long-term devastating damage, not just to the fruit but to trees, which are incredibly difficult to replace,” Hayes said. “It sets people back years and years of work. It’s not just a one-year devastation. You’re going to have impacts for several years.”
The pests not only harm fruit and vegetable farmers, but also affect the entire food production.
“There isn’t enough hay to buy right now, which is affecting all the animals we feed. That affects all our dairy cows, all our cattle, our sheep, our goats, everything we need for our meat supply,” Hayes said. “There’s nothing to feed them now, and we can’t release them because the locusts have eaten all the native grass.”
There are many methods to control the problem insect, from pesticides to bird barriers. Solutions vary depending on the size and goal of the operation. Smaller operations tend to rely more on natural techniques. Larger operations often resort to chemical solutions such as pesticides. But unfortunately, there is no silver bullet, Hayes said.
Various species of poultry eat locusts, including chickens, guinea fowl, ducks, geese and (of course) turkeys.
Chickens are probably the worst birds to use for grasshopper control because they “aren’t the pickiest animals,” Hayes said. The cackling fowl are equipped with sharp claws that they often use for digging, so they’re not a good choice for a garden or farm because they’ll uproot plants.
“If you release them in your garden, they will destroy your plants, not necessarily because they eat them or do it on purpose. It’s just the natural behavior of chickens. So up to a point, it works,” Hayes said. “They’ll eat anything they can get.”
Ducks and geese eat grasshoppers a little more often, Hayes says, and they don’t have the same claw structure, so they don’t do much damage. Many home gardeners rely on wild birds by placing feeders (with little food) on their property to attract them, and of course they go after the grasshoppers.
Turkeys are pretty good, Hayes said, but they can be a little picky. Ultimately, though, birds aren’t the cure-all for all pest problems, she said.
“If you really look at this as a cure and not just a tool in your toolbox, it’s not going to have a big enough impact to save your garden, your yard or anything like that,” she said.
“Managing the country”
Since the flower farm is committed to environmentally friendly and sustainable practices, turkeys seemed to be the best option to combat this year’s wave of hypocrites.
“It’s important to us. We’re farmers, but we see it as stewards of the land and we want to leave it in better shape than we found it,” Koster said. “Our livelihood depends on this land and the water we use, and so we want to do everything we can to protect this piece of land.”
A key part of Koster’s strategy for using turkeys for pest control is timing. Koster made sure the chicks reached puberty during the first round of locust hatching.
“They can’t fight chicks,” Koster said. “When they hatch from the egg, they’re still tiny and quite strange, so the turkeys are much more effective then than when the grasshoppers are so big that they’re easier to escape from.”
The turkeys are fairly easy to care for – Koster feeds them an organic supplement and keeps them behind an electric fence at night to protect them from predators. Other than that, they’re quite content to run around, hunting and eating grasshoppers.
As for the financial impact, Koster estimates that the flower farm lost about $20,000 last year due to the nervous pests. But this year, production has remained stable thanks to the feathered flock.
“We didn’t have them last year and that really hurt us and cost us a lot of money,” Koster said.
“It’s hard to quantify, but by this point in the season they’ve probably already saved maybe $20,000 in product.”
Next year, Koster wants to increase his flock to 50 turkeys, but he thinks he’ll stick with the smaller white variety because the larger birds can knock over plants if they’re too determined to grab a grasshopper.
When the season is over this year, Koster says he will have Thanksgiving dinner ready for several family members and friends.
