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We’ve got a few issues today. Normally we wouldn’t be loading the sprayer in the back of my side by side towards the end of September. Yesterday I was checking some food plots and changing some batteries on a camera. I had the right wind to slip in because were so close to season that right now I just tiptoe around, but I noticed the food plot didn’t look quite right. I walked over there and looked at it and we’ve got army worms. They’ve totally destroyed one of my plots, so it got me worried. I came over here to grandpa’s to look at our plot and we’ve got them in there but they’re not terrible yet. They’ve just started stripping some plants down. Were loading the sprayer, we’re going to put some chemicals in and take care of them real quick today.

This is the plot that we came in and looked at yesterday. It looks really good. We’ve got a great stand of Pennington’s Feeding Frenzy, but we’ve got a small issue that if we left it alone it would turn into a big issue in the next few days or maybe even overnight. We came in here last night and you can actually see these plants, if you look on this rye and this wheat, these army worms are in their first stage of life. Basically, what they do is they eat the under sides of these leaves and they don’t eat all the way through it. That’s their first stage of life and you can see those little translucent membranes that is left. Right now, it’s not a big issue, but they’re definitely eating forage.

When those worms hit the second stage of their lives, they consume 90 percent of the plants. If we left this alone and didn’t touch it, we’d come back and it would be nothing but a dirt field in a couple days and maybe even less. What I recommend you do if you’ve got army worms or if you see an infestation, go to your local coop and tell them that you have army worms and let a professional tell you exactly what chemical you need. You definitely want to take care of these before they totally wipe you out.

Now we’re back in the plot that I initially found the army worms in yesterday and we looked at this about 10 days ago. I’ve got a camera right over here and these deer come out and they walk right by the camera and out into these big ag fields. I walked over here, and it looked weird, got down on my hands and knees and started looking and these little worms are everywhere.

I don’t have a lot of experience with army worms. I did a little research last night and these seem to be army worms. They’ve got a little inverted “Y” on their heads. You can see those two little stripes that make the inverted “Y” and they’ve got green and white and grey stripes down their back. They move really quickly, and these are our culprits. You can look at all these plants here and its just riddled with them. We’re going to get this sprayed, so I’m hoping we can salvage some of this plot.