 Today, I'd like to go over summer pasture and hayfield pests, notably some of the major pests we're starting to encounter this year and that we'll likely see over the next several months. So before I get started, I just want to direct everyone to our pasture and forage crop IPM guide. Just about everything I'm discussing here today can be found in this guide along with insecticide recommendations, rates, names, that sort of stuff, and you can find this at the link at the top of this slide here along with all the other IPM guides if you have any other questions on different crops, along with a lot more information on aces.edu. So when we're talking about insect control, good quality insect control really starts with a solid integrated pest management strategy. And many of you probably already practice IPM without even realizing it, but just to quickly recap, the best thing you can really do is monitor and scout your fields regularly. While it seems like it a lot of the times, insects just don't appear out of nowhere or show up overnight, but they can reproduce very quickly and get out of hand before you know it. That's why regular monitoring is so important in addition to checking your fields for insects. Just keep an eye out for things that may not look normal, and so this could be in the form of feeding damage. So are you seeing jagged leaves or holes in your leaves in your grass? Any areas of discoloration? So parts of your field that failed to green up early in the springtime or areas of poor growth. And this could be not just insects, but due to drought or disease or a number of other factors, but they do warrant further investigation. So just keep an eye on and you'll notice that when you're out in your fields, monitoring regularly. And finally, it's important to understand the biology of these insect pests. We're going to have ones that have life stages that are above ground and below ground, and the key to controlling them is really understanding where they are, how long they are going to be in those places. And so understanding those basic ins and outs of insect biology is going to be really crucial. So I'll cover those today with some major pests. And so the bottom line with IPM is we must detect infestations early if we're going to get a control on them before we start losing any yield. So the major pests that we'll be covering today and that we're starting to see this summer include fall arbyworms, bermudagrass, stem maggots, billbugs, and fire ants. And so I'm going to go ahead and get started with fall arbyworms. And this one's actually quite timely because we just got notification not two weeks ago from Dr. Kelly Palmer that she started seeing treedle populations in Washington County in southern Alabama. So you can see a picture of fall arbyworm damage on the left hand part of the slide and then a fall arbyworm caterpillar, a larvae on the right hand side. And so just a note about the way this pest kind of shows up into Alabama. They don't overwinter here. We get the adult moths flying northward and reaching Alabama each spring. And the timing and severity of infestations is kind of dependent on a number of different factors like weather, how many predators are available to eat and lower the population of fall arbyworms. Not available crops are there for them to feed on, but when several of these factors end up being favorable for fall arbyworms, the infestation can end up being really severe and almost appear like it came out of nowhere. And so this is kind of where they get their names. They're said to move in armies when they're hungry. And one of the biggest factors that can influence an outbreak is hot, dry weather. And so the second half of May into early June this year, we had a really bad drought in most of the state. And this ends up being really favorable for fall arbyworms because a lot of the time their populations are kept in check by natural enemies, whether it's other insects, small animals like birds that are feeding on their eggs or the small caterpillars. And so we keep the populations at low levels. But when we have dry, hot weather, the natural enemies kind of slow down their activity and they can't keep up with this rapid reproduction of the fall arbyworm. And then you throw in the recent rains and those small caterpillars and eggs that relate really respond well to moisture. And so we kind of have a perfect storm right now of hot, dry weather paired with recent rains. And so right now we're really primed for an outbreak of fall arbyworms. And so as they're flying up north from the south, from South Florida, Mexico, Texas, we're going to start seeing large numbers of arbyworms in our fields. And so fall arbyworms are notorious for having a broad host range. You'll see them in home lawns, field crops and pastures, but they really do prefer but mutagrass. Fills that are laying eggs, the moths flying around, they're really looking for lush, irrigated, well-ferlized green grass. And so that's the kind of fields that they'll go to first. They'll eat other types of grass like pehea grass but not as commonly as bermuda grass. There are lots of caterpillars that look alike, but the easiest way to identify a fall arbyworm is you'll see this inverted Y. It's upside down Y on the back of its head. And then you'll see four raised bumps on its backside. There's also some color variation in fall arbyworms in this one species. And so using those two characters is a really good way to identify this caterpillar. And then when they get to be full grown, you'll see the full grown larvae about one inch in length. And so I mentioned that we have these adult moths migrating up through Alabama. And so once they get here and they find a place that they think is suitable, so like a lush green bermuda grass field, they'll start laying eggs. And you'll see in this picture in the top left, those are fall arbyworm eggs. And they're covered in like a white fuzz. And that's what the female does. She covers it with scales to protect them. And then just takes a couple days before they start hatching and turns into caterpillars. And then about two weeks they'll feed, cause a bunch of damage, and then head down into the soil to pupate. And this caterpillar pupation stage, that's their non-feeding resting changing stage, where they're about two to eight centimeters down in the soil. And this could take anywhere from a week, week and a half, before they're ready to emerge as moths again. And then they come out and they'll live for about two weeks. But it takes a couple days before they're ready to start laying eggs again. But it's important to note that females can lay over 1,000 eggs in a lifetime. And so that's why we often see giant outbreaks of this pest because they're just so reproductively fit and can have lots and lots of eggs in offspring. And you'll also note that I have kind of approximate times on this chart. And that's because insects, unlike us, they're cold-blooded. And so their activity, their reproduction, their feeding, almost everything they do is dictated by outside temperature and environmental conditions. And so in times where it's really warm, it's really hot outside, you may see this timeline on the shorter end. But when it starts getting cool, cooler nights, cooler days as we move into the fall, this may slow down a little bit because they're not as warm. They're gonna be a little bit more sluggish. But generally, we see about five or more generations per year. And sometimes in bad years, we do end up with overlapping generations, which can complicate control issues. So some of the questions we get a lot is, well, this just happened overnight. They came out of nowhere. What do we do? And that's because these worms are really tiny. When they first hatch, you saw how small those egg masses were. And they're not actually eating much for the first 10 days. I equate it to, they're really small, but then they grow up and you have a bunch of teenage boys in your house and they're just eating a lot once they get older. And so that's because those small worms, they first hatch, they're kind of hiding, and so they're not really easy to see if you're not actively scouting with a sweep net. And this graphic down here really shows how much they're eating relative to each life state. So that first week, week and a half, they're not causing a lot of damage because they're not doing a lot of feeding. But as they get to that last fifth and sixth instar before they go into that non-feeding, resting, changing stage, they really need to eat a lot to store up some food before they're not eating for another week or so. And so that's where they're gonna do the most damage. They're bigger, they're eating more, and this is where most people end up seeing all the damage. And this is where control ends up being the hardest, is when you have these big caterpillars, you see all the damage, but really we wanna do something early on before we get to that point. And so this is why scouting is so important. We really wanna find those caterpillars in that first ten days using a sweep net. Do several sweeps in multiple areas of your fields and look in your sweep to see what you have, to see if you have those tiny caterpillars, if we're not vigilant and we're not looking, we're not gonna notice until they get big and they are doing all that damage. Some insecticides don't work well or at all on larger caterpillars, I'll cover that in a minute. But at that time, we've seen a lot of substantial damage and it's gonna be hard to recover from that yield loss. And so when we're sweeping, we're looking for those really, really tiny caterpillars. You can see circled here, that's the life stage we're looking for. At this point in this picture, we've kind of missed the boat. We have a lot of big caterpillars and they're almost hard to see. You can note with their hardened head capsule, it looks almost like a black dot and you might miss the body, but you'll see that tiny black dot from their head capsule. It's only a couple millimeters long and that's really the goal of what we're looking for when we're scouting. Also, timing of day is important when you're scouting. Just like us, armyworms don't want to be out in the heat of the day. With the sun beating down on us, they're gonna crawl down into that thatch layer in the grass. And so you might have a hard time getting accurate counts of armyworms when you're sweeping. And so take your sweep net, go out first thing in the morning before it gets too hot or in the early evening as it cools down a little bit. And that's when they're gonna be out kind of in the top of the grass blades feeding and you'll have a better time finding them and seeing the worms that are there. So if you start sweeping and find a bunch of worms, what do you do? If it's close to harvest, you can go ahead and harvest. This may be your best option so you can avoid having to use a chemical and spray. If you're grazing it, you can use cattle to intensively graze that field and have the cattle eat all the grass before the caterpillars do. But if you're finding, if those are options for you in your field, if you're finding two to three caterpillars per square feet. So if you sweep and you find a lot of caterpillars, start looking at a square foot area. And if you're finding at least two to three, treating with insecticide is probably your best option at that point. And I say beware of revenge spraying because we really want to make sure that we're treating fields that have these smaller, younger worms rather than trying to salvage a field that is full of these older, harder to kill worms. So if you have to spray, there's a few things to keep in mind, including residual of the product. So how long it can effectively kill worms after you treat the cost of the product and its pre-harvest and pre-grazing interval. A lot of this information you can find on products and rates and that sort of stuff in this ACES publication on fall army worms and pastures and hayfields. But just one quick note about residuals. If you have a lot of small worms and they're all the same size, you can probably just go out with a cheap short residual product. So a pyrethroid would work just fine. However, if you have worms of a lot of different sizes in your sweep net, so big ones, small ones, medium-sized ones, that might be indicative of we have overlapping generations. And so a couple different moth flights came through at maybe a week or two apart. And so we have these different generations, and so it's going to be more difficult to control and we want something with a longer residual, so about two weeks or more. So some of those products are listed here. They are going to be a little bit more expensive than the cheaper pyrethroids, but they will provide longer control and this also would be a good option if you have a long way to go before harvest. Okay, so that's it on fall army worms. I want to transition to Bermuda grass stem maggot. This is a fairly new pest that has really taken over the southeast over the last five to six, seven years. The stem maggot is a fly. It's in the same family as the house fly, but since it's arrived in Alabama, it's been a giant headache for Bermuda grass growers. This picture shows just the really typical damage, those frosted tips throughout the field as the maggot, the larvae of the fly is in there in the grass blades cutting off nutrients to the top. And so it has no nutrients, no water, no sap in there, and so it just dies and gets that yellow golden color to make that frosted tip appearance. I said it's related to the house fly, but in all honesty, it's really just a tiny fly that can easily be mistaken for a bunch of other flies. They're really small adults. They're only about an eighth of an inch long. They have these big dark eyes and a two colored stripe between those eyes. And you can see some dots, dark dots on the back of their abdomen. And you're going to find the adults easier than you are the larvae, because the larvae are also tiny, but they're hidden inside the plant stem. So it's easier to find the adults when you're out in your field. You might see them flying around. Or another way is to monitor via sweep net or sticky trap. And so research that one of our agents landed markets did showed that they prefer blue sticky traps. And so one option is to monitor with blue sticky traps in the field. You can use sweep nets, but since the adults are so small and hard to identify, or you're likely going to get a bunch of other flies in your sweep net, the best way is really with sticky traps and then leave them out for a little bit and then just throw them in a Ziploc bag and you can bring them to your local extension office. Send them to me, whatever you need, and we can get them identified and see if they are in fact for me to grasp the stem maggots. This is a close-up of those frosted tips that I mentioned that you'll see in an infested field. The larvae are in here feeding at the base of the plant. And so they're feeding on the nutrients, the sap, the water, so the shoot stops elongating and then the plant may try and put out side shoots. But then you have another generation of flies coming in that will start feeding on and damage those side shoots. And so it ends up being really, really difficult to outgrow damage in a really infested field. And these pictures show the area that's also been damaged by the larvae and this one actually has a larvae in the stem. And so sometimes you can just cut open the leaf sheets and find the larvae in there before it's left to go pupate in the soil. And so understanding the life cycle of this pest is key to controlling it. So when adults come to the field the first thing they do is flies is that they start depositing eggs on the leaf or the stem. And similar to armyworms a lot of these timings are approximate and can depend on the weather. If it's really cold, it may take a little bit. If it's really warm it may be sped up. And so the eggs hatch within a couple days. And then what the maggot does is it chews into the stem at the top node and tunnels down into the stem. And it takes about a day or two, but if you're really observant you can start seeing damage about one to two days after that feeding starts. And then once the larvae is done feeding it will drop to the soil, go in the ground and pupate. And it spends about a week, week and a half down in there. And then comes back out and is an adult and does the whole thing again. And adults can live for about two to three weeks and we see multiple generations per year. So the tricky thing about this pest is that for a majority of its life cycle it's protected from insecticides. And so the larvae are in the leaf. And so spraying them with a contact insecticide is not going to do anything. The goal is to really find when the adults are active in the field and treat them to prevent them from laying another round of eggs that are going to hatch and cause more damage. And so this is why scouting and monitoring is crucial with this pest as well. So managing for community grass stem maggot if you start to find flies and damage if you're close to harvest time you can go ahead and cut and remove your hay. However, you'll still have stem maggots that were in the field. So you'll have some adults that now need a home larvae that were in those stems you just cut. And so some of them may be too young and not ready to pupate and so they can't go into the soil until they'll just die. The ones that were a little bit older and may be close to pupation they will go into the soil and be ready to complete their life cycle in about a week or so. The adults now you cut the grass and they need a new home. They're looking for fresh Bermuda grass to feed, lay their eggs, mate, that sort of stuff. And so they may go to neighboring fields. They may just go to the edge of the field and wait for the grass to grow and come back in. And so this is why we need to do something in another week or so when we have these adults coming up from the soil that just pupated after you cut. And so since you'll have those adults emerging we recommend going out with pyrethroid spray to kill those newly emerging adults about seven to ten days after cutting. And so some folks that I've spoken to say that as soon as they finish cutting, bailing and removing hay, they go out and treat right after that which usually takes about seven days anyway. And so that timeline usually matches up. And it may also be necessary to spray a second time seven to ten days after that. This is not always the case, but it might be the case if the field is experiencing slow regrowth because of drought. Or I mentioned that if you cut the field, the adults now need to go somewhere. If there's an adjacent field that was mowed and flies moved into your field, you may want to go with that second application of a pyrethroid to treat. So I mentioned pyrethroids. These are a contact insecticides that do have fast kill. And so that's why we're targeting the adults. And one important note is that these are all restricted use insecticides and so you have to have your pesticide applicator licensed to apply any of these. But you have several options that have a couple of different actives and trade names that are listed here. All the information I just covered as well as lots more can be found in this joint publication between ACES, Auburn and University of Georgia, the Biology and Management of Bermuda grass stem maggots. Okay, and so I just want to spend a few minutes discussing behemoth grass billbugs. This pest is not as commonly known as stem maggots or armyworms, but it can still be as destructive. The behemoth grass billbug is a beetle. And if left undetected, really can completely take out a behemoth grass field over the course of several years. And you might not even be aware that it's there. So this field is from Talladega County this year. And you'll notice here there's a discolored lighter green patch in the middle of the field. And that's really indicative of the way this pest works. Underneath that patch of yellow, you have billbug larvae feeding on the roots, preventing it from getting nutrients and greening up in the springtime. And so billbugs are weevils. So they're beetles that spend their immature or grub stage underground. They look very similar to a typical beetle white grub except they don't have any legs. And so they just kind of wiggle through the soil feeding on roots. The adults can also cause damage shown here. They'll feed on the tillers above the ground. And so you'll often find tillers that are killed by the adults in the summer. And they're kind of scattered throughout healthy tillers because they're a little bit more sporadic feeders compared to the larvae underground. So here's a close-up of the billbug larvae. And so you can see that they don't have any legs, but they have a very distinct hardened head capsule similar to white grubs. And so adults are above ground feeding on the grass, but a large amount of that damage comes from the underground feeding of these billbug grubs. An important note about this pest is that the adults do not fly. And so after they emerge above ground, they're just crawling. And so they're going to crawl on the ground towards green grass away from the most recent damage where they just destroyed it and caused some damage. And so that's why it's really hard to kind of notice some of this damage because it starts in small patches and gets bigger and bigger every year. And so producers might not even notice it until the following spring when your grass fails to green up. Or you might have a few small patches of damage from really small numbers of billbugs that may converge to form one big patch of damage. But the way this pest moves indicates how their damage looks in a field. And this is on the extreme end of what damage can look like. This is from Prattville this year. This field was sustaining billbug damage for several years. And so in many cases you can have just bare ground after the bag of grass has died. It can have weeds grow in. Either way, it's extremely detrimental. And if left unchecked, you can lose an entire field to billbugs and not quite understand what happened because a lot of the feeding is cryptic. Unfortunately, billbug management is really tricky. We don't have a lot of information on the life history and the timing of this pest. And so the best way to do it is to use pitfall traps to monitor for the adults. And the only way we have to control it is with an insecticide when the adults are active, similar to stem-maggot adults. And so if you think you have billbugs, the best thing to do is to set up pitfall traps this time of year. End of May into June is when we think the adults are active. And then we don't have established thresholds, but once you start catching adults is the time to apply an insecticide. And your options would be a carburel or pyrethroid to kill the adults. We're currently doing research right now in a couple fields to find more effective ways to kill the grubs in the soil. So we don't have to find this tricky timing of getting the adults. And so hopefully in the near future we'll have some better control options to share with y'all. So all this information as well as some more can be found here on Aces timely information on scouting for billbugs, adults and behiagrass on aces.edu. Lastly, I just want to briefly cover fire ants in the last couple of minutes here. Similar to fall army worms, this is another pest that producers just have to battle with every year. And I realize we could probably spend an entire series of webinars talking about fire ants. And so I'll just kind of cover the highlights and some management options that you have. And one thing to remember with fire ant control, 100% eradication of fire ants is probably not possible or even necessary. In fact, it might even be good to have a few fire ant mounds in your field. Fire ants are territorial. And so those ants aren't going to want other fire ants to come into their area. And so they're going to protect it and take out those fire ants. And so having a few mounds in your field is going to help reduce any other new infestations. And so keep that in mind as you're starting to look at the mounds in your fields. That being said, you do really want to keep fire ants out of certain priority areas. And these would include hay fields, calving pastures, livestock pens and around equipment sheds where they can get really be a real big nuisance. So fire ants kind of fall into that category too of pests that may seemingly appear overnight. They could be there and just underground slowly building their colony and their mounds. But it might not be visible for a couple months. And also during times of drought, like we've been having, they're still around, but you won't see their characteristic mounds above ground. And so you may think that they're gone, but they're in fact, they're still there. And then if the drought is broken by a rain, they're going to get real active and start building their new mounds. And so it may seem like the rain brought these ants or they just kind of appeared out of nowhere. But in fact, they were there all along and the moisture just kind of aided them, helped them to rebuild their mounds. So the best way to control fire ants in pastures, since they're such large areas, and I know people don't have a lot of time, just go around and do individual mound treatments, is with a bait. So fire ant baits consist of an insecticide and a food that the ants will pick up and bring back to their nest that will kill everyone in the nest, including the queen. And so these baits have the active ingredient, they have the insecticide, something to put it all in, like a corn grit, and then something that attracts the ants, usually like oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil, something like that. If you have problems with fire ants, you have a couple options based on how bad your problem is and how quickly you need control. In the springtime, we recommend going out with something that has a little bit quicker control, like a hydromethanon, but keep in mind that some of these, like endoxicarb, is for horse pastures only. And this will kill the ants in about two to three weeks. This is a quicker timeframe for killing them and you usually get good control for three to four months before a new infestation comes in. If you still have mounds present in the fall, going out with another bait treatment would be an option. Once it cools down in a little bit and they kind of move up from those deep soil locations a little bit higher. And so one of those options would be to go out with an insect growth regulator like Methaprene. And this takes a little bit longer to kill, so like six to 12 weeks, but you do have longer control. And you may have a few mounds left, but usually it's those mounds that are the territorial ones. They're going to keep out other fire ants from coming in. After you've done these spring and fall applications, depending on how bad reinfestation is, so if you don't have a lot of new fire ants coming into your field, you may be able to just be set with a yearly or every other year insect growth regulator, so like Methaprene in the fall. I also have listed here a combination product, Extinguish Plus, and that combines those quick ones like Amdo Pro with Methaprene, so you get the best of both worlds. You get a quick knockdown and then something that's going to have longer control. It's a little bit pricier, but you do get those both levels of control with that product. Just a few tips for when you're applying baits. Just because ants are eating it doesn't mean that they want their food to be rancid, and so make sure that you're storing it in a cool dry place. Don't let it sit somewhere like in your shed or your barn for longer than a year. All these products are dated, so just keep in mind if you go out with something that's been sitting around for a while, because if you have something that's gotten wet or it's been really old, and you put it out ants are picky and they're not going to want a rancid food to take back to their mound, and so if they don't want the food, they're not going to take the food with the insecticide on it. Don't disturb the ants right before applying, and so don't be out there messing with the mounds. Apply when the ants are actively searching for food, and so one way to do this is I mentioned that these baits have an attractant in it that's usually just oil, and so you can just take a bag of potato chips and put them out on the ground near some fire ant mounds, and within 10 minutes you'll start seeing ants on those potato chips, and that tells you that they're actively hunting for food. If you do not see that, it could be too cold, it could be too hot, it could be too wet, or something like that, and so that's a good test just to throw some potato chips out there and make sure that your ants are active and that they will pick up the bait you put down because you don't want to spend your time and money to apply a bait that's not going to be picked up by the ants. If it's wet or just about to rain, don't apply it because all your bait might not get picked up by the ants before the rain, and again they're not going to want some wet soggy food that's been sitting out there, and use the correct amount of bait. So the way you can do this is with a herd cedar. These are already pre-calibrated for amount and speed, and you don't even have to own your own herd cedar. ACE's extension has several scattered throughout the state and that you can borrow to apply. You can look at this map to see where the nearest one to you is, or click on this link to access this map and just contact the local extension office near that location and we'll work with you to make sure you have access to a broadcast bait spreader so you can apply your fire ant bait. And finally, this is one last resource that can help you with a management plan for fire ants. Typically, you don't really need to treat unless you have more than 20 mounds per acre, but this worksheet on aces.edu can help you make economically sound decisions on whether or not you want to treat your field for fire ants. So that's it. I hope that was helpful in giving you some information on major pasture pests. If you have any questions, there's my contact information, my office, my cell, my email and my Twitter handle. I try to keep up with insect pests as they come and tweet about them. So feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.