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Show USES CHICKENS TO SAVE SUGAR BEETS Farmer Allows Cockerels to Feast on Insects. A Colorado farmer saved his sugar beet crop last year by letting his 300 young cockerels run in the field and feast on juicy worms and webworma which infested it. At the same time neighbors around him lost practically all of their beets to these destructive insect pests. When he first noticed the worms moving in on his young beets, the ; World war veteran and former Colorado Colo-rado Aggie student pulled both brooders brood-ers in which the Leghorn cockere.s were housed to the edge of the field and turned them loose. The birds spread out all over the field and followed along the rows, gobbling gob-bling up the worms on one plant after another, the farmer told the extension poultryman for the agricultural college. col-lege. It was much cheaper than spraying to kill the worms, he says. At the same time the young roosters grew rapidly. Not a single beet was lost to the worms, he says, but a few plants were destroyed by being trampled by the chickens near the brooder houses. This could largely be prevented, it ia believed, by placing the brooder houses some distance apart, and perhaps not coo close to the beets. It is suggested that other sugar beet growers might try the plan in controlling con-trolling insect pests. It is recommended recommend-ed that cockerels used for this purpose pur-pose be fed a grain ration for two or three weeks to put them into condition for the market. Large flocks of young turkeys have been used to control alfalfa al-falfa webworms in many instances. |