Thunder
Active member
We have tons of grasshoppers here in the summer. Do they eat the grass or just weeds and trees? I'm wondering if they damage the pasture.
Even the paint on the house. Hate 'em!The ones we have eat everything!
The real small ones are the biggest problem here in Wyoming. The great big ones don't do much damage, but the little ones can be as many as 100 or more in one square foot. I sprayed a couple of pastures last year, after talking to the County Weed and Pest. It helped quite a bit, although this was just rangeland, and cost me about $1500. Definitely worth it, or I wouldn't have had grass left in the pasture I do my calving in. About 10 years ago, the Weed and Pest sprayed the entire county, which meant everyone had signed up for it. It helped for several years. To answer your question directly, like the other people posting, Yes--they eat everything and are terribly destructive.We have tons of grasshoppers here in the summer. Do they eat the grass or just weeds and trees? I'm wondering if they damage the pasture.
Thank you. I suppose they can eat a lot of grass, then. Luckily, we had some rain this summer and they have left my jujube tree alone. Poor thing usually gets butchered by the grasshoppers.Been at war all summer. It's futile and expensive to do anything to get rid of them if mother nature wants them there, except to knock them back while a crop establishes..
To answer the original questions yes they eat grass, they're grasshoppers not weedhoppers or crophoppers. If I remember correctly I think in a bad infestation they'll eat between 30 & 40 percent of the available forage.
Turkeys are what is standing between my pasture and the grasshoppers. So far so good.
Rotational grazing keeps the cows in grass and the 'turks' in bugs.
"Praise God from Whom all blessing flow!)
Then you'll be like that free ranger in Georgia where the Bald Eagles wipe out his chicken flock to the point of unprofitability.Free range chickens...You might be on to something.
I was always told that grasshoppers are at their worst during dry weather and that wet weather gives them a virus and kills most of them.They do like dry weather...
Up until recently we haven't had any.I was always told that grasshoppers are at their worst during dry weather and that wet weather gives them a virus and kills most of them.
We have had one of the wettest summers that I can remember and the hoppers are as bad as ever so this has to be false.