A short agronomist monologue describing rising slug populations (especially ‘black killer’ slugs) in no‑till systems, the damage they cause to canola seedlings, and uncertainty about optimal slug‑bait timing. The speaker notes heavier soils, clods, stubble retention and reduced cultivation as contributing factors, mentions farmers considering crop changes, and suggests seeding-time baiting (possibly multiple applications) is currently recommended though spring baiting shows variable results.
Chapters
Most of the slugs we're seeing at the moment are the black killed slugs. We've also got some grey field slugs and also some brown field slugs. But the black killed slugs seem the ones that are hardest to kill because they seem to get down and burrow down quite deeply in the soil. And obviously with a lot of these heavy soils around here have a lot of clods as well, which is quite a good environment for the slugs to hide in. So many farmers around here are going to no till farming. So there's no burning of stubbles, which means a standing stubble sill, which is quite a nice climate for snails as well. We're also seeing obviously no till. There's not much disturbance to the soil, so no cultivation. Which is leading to slugs around the area here starting to build up in numbers. In the past couple of seasons especially, we've seen a lot more black killed slugs moving and they're causing a lot of damage to the canola early on. And it only took a matter of days for large areas to be wiped out by slug, which has meant a few of the guys around here now looking at growing other crops instead of canola. The only problem with that is our rotation's tightened from being say a four crop rotation back to a three. So it might be going a beans, a wheat and a barley. So there's a lot of confusion about the timing for when the best time is to put out the actual baits itself. A lot of guys are putting it off around seeding, which is what we probably recommend at the moment. The best results are sort of seen around then, but it might even be two or three applications either with the seed going down the tube or early post emergent. We're seeing some guys try baiting in spring. How the results are sort of varied because there's obviously so much other feed around in the paddock as well that the slugs might be targeting. So hopefully in the future with some of the research the guys here are doing will be able to find out a better application timing as well as new products which might be able to help a lot of these guys here sort of bring canola back into their rotations. Sa.
