Locusts

St. Louis Post Dispatch - Wednesday, September 2, 1998
Chinese unleash chickens to help control severe outbreak of locusts.

The Associated Press Beijing. In northwestern China's war on its worst locust infestation in a decade, some talented chickens have emerged as heroes. A program to use 100,000 chickens to control the dreaded farm pests worked so well this year that counties around the regional capital of Urumqi have decided to train 200,000 chickens next year, the government-run Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday. The chickens had to be trained for two months so that they would start hunting locusts at the sound of a herdsman's whistle. No details of the training regimen were released. Each chicken can cover about an acre of grassland during a summer. As an added bonus, chickens fattened on protein-rich locusts fetch a much higher price than ordinary chickens, Xinhua reported.