Slugs

[Claire_Price_HAU]

Greetings from Harper Adams University!

Understanding slug behaviour is essential to developing targeted control measures. Scientists at Harper Adams have carried out lots of research including how and where slugs form patches in fields. And in the first year of our SLIMERS project this knowledge developed further with the results collected by our Slug Sleuths. This insight is now being used in the development of the SLIMERS AI and autonomous slug control.

Did you know that slugs are quite particular about soil moisture? They prefer damp conditions but once it gets too wet they go into 'survival mode' and move around more to find drier soils. Did you notice slug behaviour being different when your soils are waterlogged?

How are your slug identification skills?! Take a look at our guide below - what type do you see on your farm? Are they all as bad as each other? Have you noticed any changes to the type of slugs or their impact in recent years?

What are your experiences of slug damage? What are the telltale signs that your crops are being affected and how early can they be detected? Which crops are affected the most?

 

[Yapter]

For me slug control is based mainly on experience. Like most farmers & agronomists I can predict reasonably accurately where and when slugs are going to cause economic loss. We know our land, we see the conditions, we monitor the weather, we know our cropping sequences, we put out traps and our agronomists walk the land & corroborate our reasoning. We mostly know about this because at some stage previously we got caught with our pants down and the slugs got the upper hand.

 

[Dry Rot]

When is the penny going to drop that badger control has a direct influence on slug control? The slug population is out of control because their natural predators are missing and these predators are missing because the badger population is out of control. A species without a natural control will continue to expand until things happen -- and they won't until the powers that be recognise that sometimes human intervention is necessary in a man-made environment. Surely, even the protectionists have to recognise that.

 

[Easter Myre]

Greetings from Harper Adams University!

Understanding slug behaviour is essential to developing targeted control measures. Scientists at Harper Adams have carried out lots of research including how and where slugs form patches in fields. And in the first year of our SLIMERS project this knowledge developed further with the results collected by our Slug Sleuths. This insight is now being used in the development of the SLIMERS AI and autonomous slug control.

Did you know that slugs are quite particular about soil moisture? They prefer damp conditions but once it gets too wet they go into 'survival mode' and move around more to find drier soils. Did you notice slug behaviour being different when your soils are waterlogged?

How are your slug identification skills?! Take a look at our guide below - what type do you see on your farm? Are they all as bad as each other? Have you noticed any changes to the type of slugs or their impact in recent years?

What are your experiences of slug damage? What are the telltale signs that your crops are being affected and how early can they be detected? Which crops are affected the most?

Not sure what these are but I seem to have plenty of them in my trial traps!!!

 

[Easter Myre]

Initially this photo was taken to show a swollen mantle, but on zooming in, it is possible to see broken down pellets inside the slug, which was not dead. Also, no pellets applied for 5 weeks!!