Air April 23, 2003

Thank you Gary, and good morning everyone. For what it’s worth I’m still standing by my belief that you may want to refrain from burning this year. If you do burn and we don’t get much rain through May and early June, be ready to start reducing stocking rates or pulling cattle completely based on how well the grass is or isn’t growing. It’s going to be tough to have grazing business as usual if we are in the 4th year of a drought.

Well, it should be no surprise to anyone that this spring is shaping up to be a good one for chinch bugs. And a year that is good for chinch bugs poses threats for both corn and grain sorghum. We always think of chinch bugs causing problems on sorghum, but I’ve seen a fair amount of damage on corn in recent years as well. With the advent of Gaucho seed treatment, many producers just haven’t given chinch bugs a second thought. Well, as good as Gaucho or the newer Cruiser seed treatments are, they aren’t perfect and problems can occur especially if populations become very large or the milo is planted early enough that the protection wears off before the high populations hit. If you are planting next to wheat, especially thin wheat, lookout. Planting early so that the milo is up and larger before the wheat turns is one way to weather the storm, or else wait until the wheat has turned and the chinch bugs have moved out is another technique. One technique that can be helpful, but seldom used, is the utilization of a trap crop, planted early, adjacent to the wheat. Then as the chinch bugs move out you can hit this with a foliar spray and help reduce numbers that way. If you start to have heavy infestations throughout your field, foliar sprays are a possibility, but to be done right you need drop nozzles pointed at the base of the plants and then apply 20 to 30 gallons of water per acre along with your insecticide. The truth is that it is hard to justify the expense of foliar rescue sprays. By far the best approach is scouting to determine your risk, planting at a time to miss the heavy migration into small sorghum and then using a seed treatment. A later planting date will also allow for a longer window of protection when the plants truly are at risk. It’s been a while since we’ve had bad Chinch bug problems, let’s not forget all those lessons we learned!

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2003.

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