Grasshoppers are wreaking havoc on western South Dakota rangelands and hayfields this growing season. Many life-long ranchers say they have never seen an infestation this bad.
Mid-June SDPB’s Lura Roti traveled to Meade County to visit with cattle producers impacted.
“You can see where they have been eating on these plants. In a week or so they will have the leaves stripped off the alfalfa and it won’t make very good hay anymore. It will just be stems. It’s blooming right now and it has leaves on it, but after a week or two they will have the leaves stripped off and it will just be stems – you can just see them moving out there. Look at that one right there, you can just see them eating on the leaf. They are just all over doing that – eating on the alfalfa,” Terry Hammerstrom said.
Grasshoppers. Cattle rancher Terry Hammerstrom is describing the damage hundreds of thousands of grasshoppers are inflicting on his first-cutting of alfalfa.
It’s a perfect mid-June evening. Warm but not hot and the air is still - except for the grasshoppers.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them quite this bad. We’ve seen them over the years similar to this, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them quite this thick, this early,” Hammerstrom said.
Terry and his wife, Cheryl, raise cattle on a ranch near Union Center. The couple rely on the alfalfa hay the grasshoppers are eating this summer to feed their cattle this winter.
The Hammerstroms are not alone explained Reed Cammack. Cammack talks to many area ranchers each day because together with his wife, Amber, he is the new owner of Cammack Ranch Supply.
“A lot of guys are saying it’s as bad as we have ever seen it. Definitely on everybody’s mind as we see them start to take impact on crops and rangeland and things. A lot of guys are wanting to get hay put up in a hurry - treating some crop ground and things like that. We have a year with some grass, working off multiple years of drought. Everybody’s hay yards are empty, they’ve been struggling. Herd sizes are down because of it. To watch these insects eat their forage is pretty painful,” Cammack said.
So why are the grasshoppers so bad this year? Patrick Wagner said weather conditions are to blame. Wagner works in western South Dakota as the SDSU Extension Entomology Field Specialist.
“So, you're just seeing kind of a perfect scenario here…
The last two to three years we've been in pretty widespread drought conditions, and that's ideal for grasshoppers. When it's more cool and wet, they, there's a fungus that will, just naturally infect the grasshoppers and kind of keep their populations down. But when it's dry then that has, you know, not enough of an effect and they kind of go nuts. And also with drought, you have more patches of dry ground and that is where they like to lay their eggs,” Wagner said.
And Wagner said a winter like this last one with plenty of snow cover is also ideal for grasshoppers because the snow insulates their eggs protecting them from freeze and thaw conditions.
