Well, we all know how soya has become one of the most grown crop recently, thanks to livestock farmers. Soya is one of the main ingredients in most commercial animal feeds hence a crucial crop in the agricultural sector and one of the reasons most farmers are growing it. Of course the other reasons being a short term crop almost like beans, and the other for human food as well, et cetera.
So I decided to plant soya. I had an available fertilize land almost an acre where mom had previously planted maize. Actually it was motivated by the fact that the previous season I had tried growing soya on a small portion of land for my pig feed and it had done pretty well, except for birds, which by the way at the time I hadn’t noticed that they were the reason I had meager yield especially on one part of the farm.
Well, this time having a large piece of land and armed with enough capital I did primary cultivation and all the preliminary activities and then sowed my quality seeds I had purchased from a reputable agrovet shop in our small town. The rains were in plenty — they still are — and soon the beautiful yellowish-looking soya shoots started shooting up ambitiously, and I was the proudest young farmer alive.
But then I noticed large droves of birds, mostly the notorious Sudan dioch walking in my farm and I thought, well, they’re just grazing and looking for food. The food, I couldn’t tell? At least not until I started walking into my farm to monitor the progress closely that I noticed shriveled and dying — if not dead already — young shoots lying on the ground and many others with heads cut off. I was shocked!
So these birds were not just grazing grasses and other foreign stuff in my farm and those weeds but my soya. I was so angry I wanted them all dead. I wanted to get poison and lay a trap for them.
But then I eventually calmed down and my rationale returned and I decided to ask around for ways of keeping those nasty pest birds away. Most nearby farmers advised me to try erecting warders of white nylon papers and tape in the farm so that when wind blows it makes noise that scares the birds away. I tried it and it was a total flop. I erected a scarecrow, still no effect. I tell you the birds were daring enough to even attack the shoots around the damn scarecrow. It wasn’t working. I tries looking online for a better solution but there was none and I was now desperate.
I finally decided to get a neighbor’s son who was home for the concluded one week school holiday to help me chase away the birds in the mornings for a small fee as I took care of other businesses and then in the evenings I would take over. I noticed that in the late afternoon they went away, probably to escape the scorching sun. And we made a catapult that we used to show them terrorists we meant business. I had declared war.
And that’s how I managed to save the rest of my soya. I was also forced to do gapping in most affected areas. The soya is doing fine, thriving and past the bird-damaging stage. We are now on first weeding.
To you fellow farmer planning to go into this lucrative venture of soya farming, while planning, better plan for how to manage birds as well. Those pest birds will make you hate soya. To avoid any loses to your project, be prepared of the gruesome battle with the sudan dioch. I wish someone had told me this earlier.