Ducks to fight locusts, article in chinese which I cannot find.

Hi there,

I came across the following chinese reference several times.
Li , J.H. ( 2010 ) Experiments of locust control by raising chicken and ducks . Xingjiang Technology of Farms and Land Reclamation , 2 , 56

As around here farmers spray really toxic chemicals against locusts, having access to this article, even if in chinese and sent through an automatic translation, would help get an idea on the amount of animals needed per acre.

Does anyone know where I can download this article?

Thanks

I can't cite the article you found but I did read that the ratio is 1 duck to 4 sq/meters of land.

Thanks a lot for your reply Mercy!
Do you remember where you found this information? And for how much time 1 duck per square meter is needed?

Here is one article: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1179867.shtml
There was a large discussion on sending ducks to Pakistan which was shelved due to the climate being inappropriate to support ducks. I also read that a duck can eat 200 per day (as opposed to a chicken at 70 per day)

Edit: I'm not endorsing that site or generally directing to it but that particular article was interesting and gibed with others I had seen elsewhere.

I found the article and got it translated by Google:

"Biological Locust Control Experiment of Raising Chickens and Ducks in High Altitude Grasslands"

Author: Li Jianhui

Unit: Animal Husbandry Company of the Eighty-sixth Regiment of the Fifth Agricultural Division

Test location: Sailimu lakeside grassland, 2,300 meters above sea level, has long been the hardest hit area of ​​locust plagues.

Experimental objects: 1,000 50-day-old Hailan male chickens, with an average weight of 0.6 kg/piece, and 700 70-day-old Beijing ducklings, with an average weight of 0.9 kg/piece, all healthy.

Experimental procedure: put chickens and ducks in a pasture with a density of locusts of 75 locusts/square meter. After 3 to 5 days, the density of locusts on the pasture dropped to 10 heads/square meter. The raising of chickens and ducks started on June 20th and ended on August 20th.

According to calculations, after the chickens and ducks are stocked for 40 days, the number of locusts eliminated is equivalent to an increase of 48 tons of fresh grass. Calculated at 0.2 yuan/kg of fresh grass, this part creates economic benefits of 9,800 yuan.

At the end of the test, 850 chickens were slaughtered, with an average feed consumption of 4 kg per chicken, an average weight of 1.6 kg per chicken, and a loss of 0.5 yuan per chicken. 687 ducks were slaughtered, with an average feed consumption of 4.5 kg, an average weight of 2.9 kg, and a profit of 1.5 yuan per duck.

The results of the experiment: the profit of locust control and pasture is 9,800 yuan, the profit of duck raising is 1,050 yuan, the loss of chicken raising is 500 yuan, and the total benefit of herding chickens and ducks for locust control is 10,350 yuan.

Summary of the experiment: Raising ducks in high-altitude pastures has obvious advantages over grazing chickens in controlling locusts. Ducks have good adaptability in high-altitude mountainous areas, are easy to manage, and have a high survival rate.

Mercy Pergande wrote:I can't cite the article you found but I did read that the ratio is 1 duck to 4 sq/meters of land.

In the article cited below, it said:

Due to the dry weather, locusts plagued around 100,000 mu of farmland of the division in June 2018. The farmland released 1,000 ducks to eat the locusts.

One duckling can "control" a 4-square-meter of land and eat the locusts.

There seems to be some miscalculation there. One "mu" equals to 666.5 square meters so 666.5×100,000 divided by 1000 equals to 66650 m2 per duck.

In another source I read about one duck can control up to 15 mu or 10000 square meters in a season for locusts control (usually in the months of June to August).

Thanks a lot for your help, Mercy and May! Do you also have a link?

1 duck per hectare (2 acres) seems not that realistic for my conditions, and one duck for 4 m2 (=2500 ducks per ha) seems neither.

May, do you know if the 4 m2 per duck was per day? That would mean, taking a locust reproduction time of 2 months, I would need 42 ducks per ha. But taking a duck eating 200 locusts a day, they would only eat 8400 locusts in this time. Just thinking out loud

This web page is the compilation of stories and reports on using ducks and chickens for locust control. It's very long and I only excerpted the part on the article you asked about. Itin Chinese but it's easy to use the translate function of Chrome to read.

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/107434531?utm_id=0

I feel the numbers are either too low or too high. In one documentary, people used a herd of 1000 chickens ro control an area of 666, 500 square meters of grassland every three to five days. It came down to 130 to 200 square meters per day per chicken. They relocated 10 times in the season and reduced the locust density from over 30 per square meter to less than 15, a number considered healthy for the local ecosystem.

Do you want to decide how many ducks to keep for your acreage? What's the density of locusts on your land? Given a duck eats 200 locusts per day, you'd be able to figure out the number theoretically.

Thanks a lot May, I just read the whole page (thanks deepl...)

Some interesting statements from these articles: never use herds of more than 1000 ducks, as the weaker might starve.
Adult ducks can eat up to 200 locusts, or about half a kg, a day.