Slug and Bugs
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Join us as we discuss two fields that had some unusual munching activity. One ended up having a single little culprit, the other field had 2 culprits exacerbating the problem. What is the common pest? Slugs! We will discuss some of the factors that led to the issue and some ways to mitigate the risk.
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Video Transcript
Good morning, everybody. My name is Nicolle Ritchie. I am field crops educator in Southwest Michigan, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this session, slugs and bugs with Monica, Jean, and Jenna Falor. My name is Jenna Falor and I am a field crops educator. And what does that mean? It means I'm an agronomist. I'm an agronomist for MSU over here serving the Upper thumb region. And I'm Monica. I am also agronomist but I am in the Saginaw Bay area, so my main office would be out of Alma, and I cover the surrounding six counties, up and down 127. I'm also a PhD student for Christine Sprunger's lab, so We're going to get into it. This morning we have our presentation is called Slugs and Bugs. When we were out in the field, I will say I had this funny video from the first indication that something was off in the field. I got this video from a farmer and he was tilling and usually doesn't. He was like, what is going on in my field? Look at this, shown me on his phone in a panic, wondering what to do. Um, and that's that field one that you're looking at there. That was the damage you were seeing. We ended up the field you're going to see today is actually a different farm on a different field who chose not to till. But I just wanted you to kind of know how it got started because I probably had, I'd say eight different farms with issues like this field one picture, soybeans early June that you're seeing there. So both of these fields for this past year. So this past spring. The second field we had going on was the one over by my area. It was corn and it was planted mid June. So we had a lot of damage going on and I had a farmer call me out and say, I really need you to come look at it. I can see what the pests are, but we need help on a replant decision. So here's the damage that these pests are doing within the field. Just so you get an idea, we're going to walk through a bunch of different management points for each field. I want you to be thinking about what you think the best is because you are going to get asked. We hope you can participate and put it in the chat. So we're back to field one here, which is the farm in the Saginaw County that I was talking about. I thought this picture was pretty funny. I don't know if you can see the deer in the background there, but this farmer uses a pretty varietal mixture in his fields. He has a little bit longer rotation, he's got wheat included. Sometimes he'll do dry beans, and the diverse mixture is typically what's going into soybeans here, there would have been a lot of residue on this field. And I did not have a fun picture while it was growing. But the field next door, this one was over in Tuscola County, close to the Sanilac County border, and it had a rye cover crop on it that you can see left a heavy amount of residue out there as well, but that was a straight rye cover crop. The farm that in Saginaw County that I'm working on here, Field one, it is a long term no till. The field that we're specifically concentrating on is a newer field to him actually. He acquired it probably about three years ago, but typically his fields that he's had ownership of, they're like no till 15 years. And the field in Tuscola County is historically no till. Every now and then they'll do some light tillage in the field depending on what they're going into and their seedbed that they have. But they really tried to do a lot of no till when. In this case, the older farmer is more experienced with no till management. The younger farmer that he is bringing on who's working with him and this was the younger farmers crop, less familiar. I'm going to say I got the call from the older farmer asking questions, not the younger farmer. When you get into some of these situations, you need to be pretty on top of yourself when you go out and plant. Yeah. As we talked about, not only is there residue from the cover crop, but because this is a no till system, there's also additional residue from whatever crop they've grown, very high residue situation and that did impact the damage that we saw out in the field. I'm going to say ditto to that for our field. I think that the next slide. This is the field. If you click again, are the pictures showing up or did that change? Awesome. You can see there where there was higher residue left over, you can clearly see the furrows there from planting not closed as well, but there's also no plants versus where there's less residue. I will say the texture of the soil maybe was a little bit different. It seemed a little like lighter soil as well, but no residue. A lot of plants that looks like decent population. And you can see in her picture there, you see a little row of plants next to the big row of plants. At the point that this was taken, he'd already gone out and replanted that field, and he replanted the whole thing, including the area, the few areas that had decent stands in it. Yeah, that's a good point. I want to say because the picture we showed before the two little ones popped up, we were in the beginning of the field. Thanks, Jenna, and you can see that higher population to the right there. But this damage actually was the whole field. I will say some of the other calls I got were more patchy. But this particular field, this damage was pretty much the whole field, which was very impressive and unfortunate for the farmer. Yeah. I will say that we don't have great pictures of the ones from the field I was in. They did some tillage on the headlands that year. And in the headlands where they had tillage, they had obviously less residue left on top because of that tillage, better row closure. They also saw less impact going on there with a better population of plants that were less fed upon. All right, ladies, we've got a question. Will our colder current winter reduce insect counts and or percentage? Just in general, no pest in no specific pest in mind. It does not say I would guess. In relation to slugs, but maybe in general. Okay. Yeah, the weather doesn't impact pests, but each pest is different. To that comment, unless there's a really specific pest you're worried about, I would say possibly, if we have drier warmer weather, sometimes we see spider mites. If we have colder weather, I don't know. I can't even actually think of a pest that does, but yeah, it's variable. Yeah. So it really is variable depending on the status of the animal, et cetera, on Chris DiFonzo just put out something with soybean, I do believe it was, which would be an excellent article to read. I don't have the link right off the top of my head, but I may be able to find it. I know we had a question, for example, at a past meeting about alfalfa weevils overwintering. And she and her response to that is they were pretty cold and the direct kill depends on the length of the coldest period with no or little snow being best for mortality of them. But the spring weather she says may actually be more important. So in alfalfa weevils, and this will hold true for some others as well. If you were a bug and you burned up all of your fat over the winter and the spring is cold and crummy, you could potentially starve. There's a lot of factors at play, and how this spring plays out may actually be just as important as how the winter played out. I do want to point out one more thing and that's we have pests that fly in every year, so they don't overwinter here period. The weather in our southern countries southern states, I should say, where they fly from, their weather actually would be more impactful for the population we get flying in. That's like Western Bean cutworm and armyworm. Like I said, if there's a specific pest in mind, please go ahead and message that and we can see what that life cycle looks like. Okay. So I think pretty well I brought it up earlier, but you can see here that the row closure was not great. I will say that this farmer has really nice planting equipment. He's not, I would say new to this no till. Thing and so he's made a lot of adjustments and usually gets good row closure. This condition of the soil was very much to do with weather and he knew that the first time he planted wasn't great. He felt like he mudded it and he wasn't very happy but you get itchy, you want to go, you want to get stuff planted. But the second time around even, His soil wasn't great planting conditions, and so he ended up planting three times in order to get a successful stand. Typically, his row closures don't look like this. This is definitely a symptom of the weather and it's also ideal for the pest that we're talking about to have these open areas. Yeah. So similarly at mine, the this grower has been doing no till for 15 or 20 years. He has a nice no till. He's very good at making adaptations on his no till equipment to make sure he has decent row closure. And this was a heavier soil, and again, it was just they got out there when it was a little wet. I indicated that he has one of his younger partners who was making some of the management decisions, and I think similar to Monica's may have jumped the gun just slightly for the amount of residue they had going on in the field and the moisture that it was holding there. But you can see there we have poor road closure, but also I made sure I included it so you can see the plants. We have what looks like maybe multiple things going on there, different types of feeding. They look rough. They look rough, but before we get to the next slide that has the answers. Yes. As I just look to it briefly the question is, what do we think the pests are? And if you read the description, you know that one has two pests and one has one pest going on. If you didn't, well, I've just told you that. We'd like guesses. What do you think we have going on? If you feel okay sharing, did you have them too? Yes. We've heard they were common this year across multiple things and in multiple crops. Okay. We've got a guess, slugs. Well, either you knew or you read the title in the little introduction. Yes. It is. I guess we can go to the next slide. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for participating. Yes. Both fields had slugs. However, the cornfield was also coupled with another thing. I wish this picture is zoomed in, but we'll get to it on the next page where you can see more damage. The cornfield actually had cutworm damage as well as slug damage. We were able to find both physically active in the field. Yeah. I just want to point out to the slug damage. I had some people who thought they had slug damage and they actually had some root disease stuff going on. We're going to show some of the feeding pictures. We did in the beginning too, but we're going to talk through that life cycle. You should really be seeing them. If it's a wet spring, you can get some root disease issues as well in your soybeans. I just want to point out that it should be pretty distinct if it's slug damage. That's what the critters look like. That's what the little critters look like. On the left or on the right here on your screen, we have a picture of a slug on the corn plant. You can see the feeding damage they have going on there. They create strips and then holes. Then this one also had cutworm. You can see the picture of the little bug there, and then they just cut off the leaves. They go through, they chew through and normally you lose that part of your leaf going on there. We had both going on. I want to point out, I wish the little feller had been open here. Instead of in a ball. But if you're going to be sending pictures of the insects and whatnot to somebody to help you identify and make management decisions, having something for a size reference is always fantastic. Because coins are standardly sized, um, We suggest putting a coin or something like that out by it because especially with cutworms, when they're little, insecticides are going to be more effective. Once they hit a certain size, they're going to get a lot harder to kill with insecticides. If you're going to send a picture asking for help making management decisions on cutworm in particular, RME worm, that kind of thing, try to put a size comparison next to it. Here I've got a question on slugs. Will slug pressure be reduced via the cold winter and what percentage would you expect? I don't think we have enough data to be able to tell you a percentage. So it could be reduced some, but I will say that they go down into the soil for protection. And You can see actually, this is a good slide to pop up next, and so you can see their life cycle here of this gray garden slug, that's probably the main slug you're seeing. That's the most common slug we have. That's the one when we have problems out in the field, that's we're usually finding. Here's what their life cycle looks like. You can see where they're laying their eggs, then they come in mid late May, they're smaller. Although I will say when we came out, they There was many different life cycles in that field. We did have some big fat guys like you saw in the last, but we also had some of these little ones and Jenna was even able to find eggs. Yes, they start here doing some work in the winter. How deep, how deep do they go into the soil just while we're on that? That actually depends on texture. So the sandier soils easier for them to move up and down. It also they could get killed off easier. With the clay soil, they can't move as far down. So, that's a real specific. I can't say when we put out our plots, they came right up to the surface. That's how we counted and knew they were there. How far down specific? It's going to vary. I wouldn't count on If it gets warm this season and our slug populations have built up from last year because of the favorable weather that we had, I wouldn't count on this winter to be the reason you're not going to have slug problems. I'd be vigilant scouting and looking, especially if you know you have an issue. You've seen them out there before. This is a reoccurring problem for you. Again, a lot of it will come down to how are the spring conditions for them? How are they going to fare as they're coming to eat what you have going on in that field. I want to point out that the research at Michigan, slugs are a newer method. Yeah, slugs are a newer problem for us, especially as much damage to be concerned about needing to scout and a treatment. There's been more of an issue in Ohio and they have a really good bulletin. Actually, I'll grab it quick and put it in the chat for everyone. Kelly Tillman more work. Yes. They've been doing more research on that. Yeah. Cristofnzo will tell you Kelly Tillman is the expert on slugs in her opinion and she'll often reference her work. She's out of Ohio State. Here you have the lifecycle of the slug, but as Monica mentioned, these aren't exclusive and they do overlap. Also, if you pop one of those eggs, if you find them, they're more of a paint. This makes it look like they're fun and easy to find. Nice, things obviously when they're covered in dirt. They can be a little bit more difficult to identify. If you smush one though, it has the slug slimiss all in it. We found that one out the hard way. I thought it was something else and I squished it and yeah, it was squishy. I Those slugs, some important notes, both juveniles and adults feed on plants. They tend to feed at night or early. Basically, they don't like the sun. They're, they're moist, they want to stay wet and moist, so they don't tend to be active when the sun is high and at its peak and it's warm. Again, they tend to feed more so at night. You can catch them early in the morning before they retreat too much. The residents in the fields before planting. Slugs are small, slugs don't move super fast. And their numbers don't happen overnight. Most likely those slug numbers have been building in your field for multiple years before you ever notice the fact that you have a slug problem. That's one of the things that's important to remember is these aren't an instantaneous thing. They do not blow in over winter. They're not a high migratory bug. Anything else on the slide, Monica? Just remember that buildup, I guess, because that's going to apply later when we talk about what to do about them. Yeah, they have a really raspy tongue. If you go back, Jenna was talking about how you can see the streaks on the leaves. The raspy tongue, what it does is that's what's creating that streaky look. It is rasping away at the leaf pretty much. I just thought this also was a really cool picture and I'm amazed that we can even take photos like this zoomed up so you can see how this feeding works. It's pretty cool. Oh, and I did go ahead and paste the bulletin which links to more stuff with OSU for everybody in the chat. Oh, you did, but you only shared with panelists. Thank you, Madeline, for getting it to everyone. All right. So you can see that we've talked about the damage. We showed the damage on the leaves a lot on bigger plants. Here we have some baby soybean plants. Yeah. When you're codyne coming out, that's the most sensitive. I know a field can look bad with slung damage. It can look really holy and terrible. But you'd be amazed at the amount of foliation a soybean plant can take and still have a decent field, at least enough that it wouldn't be worth replanting because the amount of cost that goes into that. And so Um, when we get concerned and we have to consider doing replanting, is more when you see areas like this. Or if you remember previous pictures of the field where there's nothing there. You don't even see the little guys like this. But when they come in and these cotyledons, they're small and they're, um, fragile, they're in a state that they're pretty easy to kill off. If they eat off that growth point or you can see the damage that's been done here on the lower part, this is where if you have enough of this or of course, you're seeing a really bad stand because they've, went ahead and taken a lot of plants out, that's where we want to consider replanting. The The old school way of doing it is the hula hoop, going out and looking to see what your population is like to help you make that decision. But this is the damage that's going to make you consider if she should replant. One of the other fields that I went out to very much had patches and it didn't make much sense for him to drive out to get to a patch in the middle of the field. Those patches I want to point out do have to do with soil texture and some of the moisture in that area. If there was some ponding there and everything and it was just a little bit more moist for them. Um, But that wouldn't make sense. Like if you have a 3% of your field has been affected, that's not worth going back out either, right? So those are how we helped make that management decision of replanting. Yeah. Do you have any to add there, Jenna? Yeah. On the corn side of things, the plants, you can see, they were solid. We were at June 12th, and it's corn. So even though there was some damage going on between the cutworm and the slugs in that field, because of how soybean, you can get a shorter maturity, whatnot, right not, you can go in and replant that longer than corn without losing as much. So because of the timing of when we discovered this, et cetera, multiple conversations with PhDs on campus, it was decided that at that point, being that they wouldn't be able to replant until June 12th, well, that's when we went out and saw it. So it would have been later that week when they replanted, it wasn't worth it. So that's why that decision was made. So part of it is sand, but the crop that you have out there is also going to play a point into it as when it affected in the season and if the replant would be worth it to you or not economically. Mm hm. You can strategize on fields that you've had slug issues, making sure that the roads get cleaned up so that soil can heat up, the plants can get out and get going. Creating a quicker germination would be beneficial to helping in fields that you know you have a problem because leaf area is direct for economic loss when you look at um, the damage that's done by slugs. As much as big of the plan as you can get, get them onto the stage, this immature stage, like Jens plant, it was bigger. It could take it where the picture you see here can't. That's going to be beneficial for those fields that you know you may have a problem with. Mm. All right. Favorable. We had them all this past spring. Yeah, and when it started to heat up, depending on the conditions if it was still warm or not, we saw that they either were harder to find because they went down into the soil or that killed them. They got hot and then they shriveled up. So that's pretty important. The condition of the soil is very important for whether A, you're going to get them again or have a population that bursts and then whether they'll stick around to cause enough damage or have to cause a second replant. Our circumstances this fall was just so unfortunate that they just kept populating. They kept going and the farm had to plant that many times. Yeah. Anyhow, as we've mentioned a couple of times, cool and moist conditions they like because they don't want to get dried out and the residue they really like because again, it tends to keep that soil a little cooler in the spring and it acts as a shelter. They can come all the way up to the top and still not be indirect sunlight if they have that residue on top of it. I've got another question here for you. Is there a soybean plant stage that is resistant to slug chewing damage? Resistant resistant to? No. Once they get bigger, they're going to be able to handle more defoliation than when they're the cotyledons, the cotyledons that we showed here. That's where their energy source is coming from until they start photosynthesizing. It's very important when the damage like that occurs, that they're more likely to have an issue with, they're not going to produce, there's going to be more death. As they get larger, they can take a slightly higher defoliation amount because there's more mass there. If it's been clipped off with growth point or the growth points been eaten, then you're done. That is the one point where you're just it's not going to grow back. So what point do you think is it one trifliate? Is it a little larger than that? Like if you had to estimate where they could outgrow slug damage. Well, if you have a low slug population and you're in that first trifolio and it's not that much damage, then you're probably fine. If you're in that first trifolio and you have slugs everywhere and they're really eaten away, you're probably not going to be fine. It's very much you just have to scout and like I said, throw that quadrant, understand your population and look to see how much damage you're getting. It's very situational. We don't make any broad generalizations when it comes to stuff like this. I apologize. Let's just as of right now, I have yet to see any research that is cut and dry. We covered that one. Agonomic practices, favor slug buildup and injury. We've talked about poor road closure. Going out to the field with Chris this year, I think one of my favorite sayings from her that she put on this slide as well. The open furrow is a slug superhighway. So we could literally watch when we were out there, they were in the furrow and you could just watch them crawl down that furrow. And you could see all of the plants like four or five in a row were affected. So that lets them kind of stay in the ground right so they have that coolness around them. And then it gives them a direct path to all of your seeds and plants. Anything else there, Monica? I think I just want to point out that conditions that exacerbate are favorable to slugs are also what are going to exacerbate our planting conditions and how slow and sluggish our soybeans could be in emerging. It is the perfect triangular situation. It's cool and damp and they're happy with that and the little plant is not, and it's slower. Then on top of that, that's not ideal for the dampness and the restriction there in your soil, that's not great for roll closure as well. It's just a perfect situation. They feed into each other. If you're more likely to have one, if the slugs are present in your field at a high enough level, you're more likely to have issues with them too. But that's a big if. They have to be present in a high enough number where it'll matter. There's really interesting point and this was new to me. It's not that I hadn't seen slugs before, but understanding why they favor or proliferate in some fields or not. When I came out to this farm, I had mentioned that he had been doing no till for about 15 years now. This is about a 3-year-old feel to him, so it's fairly new. He's still working it into the way that he manages his farm. One thing he said to me was that he had switched to not having treated soybean seed, but it hadn't been very long. I thought that was interesting. I did not understand the connection between the neonicotinoid seed treatment that is on soybean seed and how it affects the ground beetle and the slug really exacerbating this problem. What happens is that the slug is not affected. It's not an insect, so it's not affected by this neonicotinoid. But our ground beetle, you can see here is doing the job that we want it to is. What happens is that these slugs actually consume it and they I really should make a glowing slug. I'm not sure how I can animate a slug. I got to work on that, but they become like a super slug. They have it inside them, it doesn't impact them, but when the ground beetle goes to try to kill them, it kills the ground beetle. Even if we have decent ground beetle populations because of the onoid treatment and it being inside those slugs, we're actually preventing its natural enemy from being able to decrease the population. Since this farmer, and a couple of my other farmers too, they were aware of that, that their management style, due to the high residue and the no till that they knew they're susceptible. They've made this adjustment in their system so that they have a higher ground beetle population. He said he suspects for the next couple of years he'll have a problem, and then eventually the ground beetle population will get high enough that it's controlling the slug problem and he won't have damage anymore. Um, and he did not have damage on his other fields actually. They were very much concentrated on the fields that were new to him. That's a pretty interesting point. I do want to say, I forgot to list this because our fields were no till and preferred no till. The easiest and cost effective treatment for having slugs is tillage. If you have a patch, then tilling that mixes the soil, it really disrupts their ecosystem, and that is the treatment for it. But they usually get exacerbated in these kind of situations where it is a no till setup. Is there anything you want to add to that, Jenna? No. I was trying to find and failing miserably. Kelly Tillman actually I think it was Kelly and maybe that's why I can't find it. I'm thinking of the wrong person, actually has a video. Of what happens to the beetle when it eats the slug. And like I said, I may be thinking the wrong person. I thought it was Kelly who put it out. I think it was John Tucker. Kelly I think Kelly had used John's video and used it in a presentation. Okay. That may be why I can't find it then. So it's a fantastic video if you want to look at the actual effects of eating a slug that's touched that insecticide or eaten that insecticide. If you want to see the effects of a ground beetle that eats it, you can see it and you just watch this beetle deteriorate before your own eyes. It's really weird to see, but I think it was a very impactful video. Nicole, if you know how to spell it, if you can find that and drop that in the chat, I would love that. So I do real quick want to show this chart because I think it shows that it's not that you're not going to have slugs period, but when there's a peak in the slug population and we know that there's no sea treatment and greater amounts of ground beetles are found, then there's also drops and more of a control in that population as well. And so there is a relationship that exists there. I think we've built up to this. I've talked about how it is the perfect situation. You have a resident slug population. That's why I have brought up a couple of times now you know you have a problem. Because the texture and your soil conditions they lend to the problem. I think farmers who have had this problem, they're like, Oh, I never have them in these fields, but I usually if it is, it's this because that soil is just more inhabitable for them. It's a better place for them to set up. Then on top of that, you have this heavy residue here. You have conditions that are wet, cooler, and that open furrow that we talked about, that open area, the super slug highway. Then to add on top of that, you have that nicoid C treatment that is paralyzing that ground beetle population from being able to help you out with your problem. This is the slug injury risk triangle of population, environment, and agonomic practices. What can we do about it? Well, I mentioned if you're not in no till system, the easiest solution would be to till and the cheapest. I also mentioned knowing how much you have and how big of an area you have. These are the points of economics that we can apply to deciding if we should treat or not. But what we have as far as an application of something in the state of Michigan is this thing called slogo. I want to point out in the OSU bulletin, they're going to talk about an additional product here in the state of Michigan. It's called metaldehyde. There's a couple of different names for it, but the active ingredient is methaldehyde. You cannot use metaldehyde in the State of Michigan on soybe You can use it on corn. On Genes Field that you saw, that was something that the farmer could have considered, but it cannot be used in the State of Michigan soybean. It is not labeled and the label is a law. I want to point this out because during the panic of this spring when they were pretty bad, there was some confusion about it and some applications, I think that were like, Oh, no, please, don't we have some, um, I just don't want any farmer to get in trouble for using off label products. Just make sure you're looking at that label. What we did, you want at least four to five granules. You can see a little picture of the granule there with the slug to impact and that's what we recommend putting out. But I think the plots we put out, we did the application. I'd actually say we did a heavier rate and the impact was and we're going to show pictures of that. And so I would like to tweak the recommendation a little bit from what is on the label. This is an organic certified product, and you're going to see some recommendations for application also in that bulletin. But I think what Chris and I were kind of deciding was like this next year, if we had them again and wanted to do plots, we'd actually maybe do a lighter amount a couple times to be more strategic with the kind of soil conditions. It did seem like it was about distribution and timing. Really critical to getting an effective kill. We did see that the product worked. We did find them, but there was just still so many. I think that timing with the you're hitting them when they're out. Maybe spreading it on really early in the morning or really late at night because if it rains, that pellet does break down with the moisture. There is an importance about timing. What's nice about this iron phosphate is not toxic to pets. It breaks down it's organic. If you're an organic farm, this is a product that you could use. The metaldehyde, which we can't unless it's corn, something else, but not in soybean. That actually disrupts the mucus, can withstand those wet conditions, so it's more persistence in the field and thus it's less finicky as far as the timing goes because it's going to persist out there. It's also toxic to dogs. There's these little granules sitting out there, especially if some people call and ask about garden problems. This is one that you don't want to expose your pets to it. Um, And so we did put out a Chris showed a map there of, like, um, use by state. We did ask for a special use for the metaldehyde with the, um, um, who sells it, the company manufactures it. Unfortunately, that is not going to be done this year. We were really hoping Chris is still in contact with them and also has been in contact with the state on trying to get a special use exemption, but we really need the manufacturer to process that or okay that provide that safety data. It has to do with residue and water concerns, and so we'll just see. I think Chris is going to keep working on it and having plots and doing work research on it would also help create that kind of, um, background information for why we really need a metaldehyde put on in the State of Michigan. Here's a question. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jenna. We should note that it is labeled in soybeans in other states in Ohio, for example, it is labeled on soybeans. So it's not unprecedented that if things move forward, they could eventually get a special use, whatnot up here in Michigan. It's just not currently in place. Yes. Thanks. This question, how impactful is the chemistry at reducing slugs and corn and then soybeans are planted in the previously treated cornfield? I want to make this note. You're going to look at it and it's going to seem like it's not as impactful as you'd like it to be and it's a little more expensive than you want it to be. I want to start with that. But you're actually knocking that population down for years. As you look at the cost for the product and the rate to the product, remember that what you're doing within that season is actually an application hopefully that will be good for five years, six years depending on the conditions because that population gets knocked down and lasts longer than one year. So I just want to point out that's the disruption. The specifics of, I see we're coming up on time and I think we do have a couple more slides to show, but the specifics of rate and effectiveness, I'm going to have you that bulletin that we put in goes through them and also the label would have the preferred rates. She does establish an effectiveness and it's a pretty big range. I would say, is the next picture there, Jenna, of the death Oh, this was our plots just to give you an idea of what they look like, how we counted and saw, but here it is. Yeah. Thank you. When we treated with the slogo, you can see they look shriveled up and dead, and then below you see how they're happy and still eating our soybean plants. We we will state this was purely these were purely, you can see isolated. The only food source we gave them was the slugo in those slugo containers. They did not have the choice of if they wanted to graze a soybean plant or a slugo and that's because we wanted to see how effective that slgo would be with if they ate. So what we're seeing here is it is effective. But in the field, what we saw was, I think in the field that we did the research on, probably maybe 15% and that's not far off from what Kelly talks about in her bulletin as well as far as the effectiveness goes. That's why the multiple treatments spread out in that spring, I think would be more effective. I think that product is just breaking down and because we know if they get by it, it kills them. But I just think it's all about the granular, that interception and that timing. So Okay. Then this was pointing out the label again. I guess Jenna and I jumped it a little bit. It's just so important. You can see here, it's labeled New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania. There's not a label for Michigan for soy beans. Yeah. This is one of the names for it Durham. Okay. I mean, they do mention in here your replication interval, how long you should go, and then the fact that they don't suggest more than three applications per year. Okay. So how do you decide because there is no set threshold for slugs. So how do you decide what to do? Chris, she came up with this slide of recommending, um, You can put out those shingles, like what we used, try to create those slug shelters. It gets moist there. That's how you can get an idea of how, think of a population that you have. Going out with a flashlight in the early mornings or at night will give you a better idea also. They come out in those times of the day more. When we're out counting during the day, we know we're actually looking at a reduced population. A cloudy day, less sunlight, that would also be a good day to go out. Managing those through zone tillage, row cleaners, working with the residue, trying to get that soil to warm up. Those are other management changes that you could do. Planting early before the eggs hatch in late May would be a great head start to getting more growth on that plant so that if you do get damaged, they're able to withstand it. If you have an issue with seed corn maggot though, that's something I would look up. They're going to be eating situations. I'm just pointing that out. Early planting may be good for this, but just if you know you have other problems, consider other pests as well for your field. Then the use of not using, actually the absence of a neoniccooid treatment is also something to consider. Oh, a fun thing. We use the fairs or the boards that we put out. But they love yeasty things and some people actually put out cups of beer or bread, like the yeasty bread for them and they love it. That's another way to trap them to understand your counts. I just imagine beer cups all over in fields I guess it makes me laugh. Just a little summary here. They build up over time. We do have beneficials that could help you. Trying to foster that population of beneficials would be good. They're often patchy. Patchy is more normal. The field this year that we had that was a complete field, that was definitely exception. That was a really large population. To know what to do, you have to scout. You got to go out there, dig around, put something out in order to create a shelter for them to just get an idea of your population. And then your risk factors, high residue, no till, and then those planting conditions and the use of a seed treatment. That's going to be your main risk factors. Do you have anything else to add there? Sorry, Jenna, I feel like I took over the last couple of slides. You're fine. You had these slides with Chris at your meeting. You're more than welcome to take the lead on them. Here's a question on patchiness. If you know till and only have patches of slug issues, how far out should a corn farmer spread the chemical to be safe for next year's soybeans? But if you know until I'm sorry, I'm reading it again. I guess that's how I have to understand these questions. I don't have a good answer for that. So we're going to wait to see if Veronica does. Okay. I don't know if you should preventively spread. That's what I'm reading. That's how I'm taking this. Going out the year before, in the corn in order to prepare for your soybeans the following year. I would consider I don't know if you have a neonicotinoid treatment. I'm not sure if you have the capabilities of going out and broadcast spreading here in season, I think you do if you're going to do it the year before. I think I would work on some of the cultural issues before I would do a preventive application. Yeah. If I could make a comment, I think it looks like you could do prescriptive identifying those patches and treating those specifically, you probably would not have to do the whole field, necessarily? Yeah, I season, definitely. But I don't think the year before is because you may not even have the conditions. So you may go out it's expensive. You may go out and do that and you may also not have the conditions in season for them to be out to consume the product that later in the season. So I just don't think a preventive idea would be very it could work if the kitchen conditions were ideal, but I would be concerned that you'd be spending money on a problem you may not even have in that following season. Is that making sense, Nicole. Yeah. I think we're done with this slide. Is that the end? Oh, this is a pretty good video. It's a little bit older. I put the link in the QR so that however you can obtain this information, it's available to you. It's also very Googlable if you put slugs and corn and soybean in the University of Wisconsin, it's on YouTube. I think they give a really nice overview if you'd prefer to look at something like this versus reading Kelly's bulletin. That is the end. MSU extension is open to all. I want to thank everyone. We've had some really good questions, some hard questions. You guys came ready. We hope that it's not conditions for this problem again this spring. We know we got pretty good soil moisture coming in. Things can still dry out though. We're real far out. But if it is, what we're going to try this next season is that multiple application at a lower rate to see if that improves effectiveness. Specifically with slugo since mealdehyde is not licensed in soybean for Michigan. That's our plan for continuing to do this work on farm. If you have more questions or you're struggling with your slug management issues, you're welcome to contact us. You're Christ Afonso would be a great person, and so would Kelly. Yeah, I would be a great person to contact as well. Yeah. Any more questions? I love talking about slugs, so it's a new favorite hobby of mine and collecting them is way better than sitting in my office any day. I don't know if any of you guys are in the thumb area, but if you have a heavy infestation of slugs in either rashit Isabella, all the way over up here at around the horn into the thumb, please let us know. Because Monica and I, depending on what we have going on, not a guarantee, some of our cooperators have issues every year, and we hope that they don't, but we really appreciate getting to come out and do trials like that when they do have them. If you're in any of those areas, let us know if you're willing to work with us. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's fun. And since it's a newer issue, we also don't have the amount of data, so it's helpful when we can collect.