How to raise Backyard Chickens: [CHICKENS-101] A tale of chickens/from the WSJ

By HEATHER HADDON

Brian Biggins
Stink bugs cover a tomato at a Maryland farm.Brian Biggins's life stinks.
The Maryland organic farmer is suffering from an infestation of stink
bugs—crop-consuming pests emitting the odor of cilantro mixed with burned
rubber and dirty socks. They began destroying his fields of peppers and
tomatoes in 2010. Now, they've invaded his Adamstown home, where Mr. Biggins
crushes them by hand and has trained his English Shepherd, Coadee, to eat
them.
Still, thousands scurry across the floor of his farm house.
"For the love of God, my wife is the one I feel for the worst," says Mr.
Biggins. "This is the kind of thing that you don't sign up for."
Stink bugs, Mr. Biggins's brown marmorated nemesis, infiltrated the U.S. As
cargo ship stowaways from Asia about 15 years ago and have proliferated in
the past two years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the immigrants
have spread to 36 states; trade groups say they were responsible for $37
million of damage to apple crops alone in 2010.
"It's not so much an evolution but a takeover," says Anne Nielsen, an
entomologist recruited by Rutgers University in New Jersey specifically to
study stink bugs, known to scientists as the Halyomorpha halys.
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Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal
Dr. George Hamilton, an entomologist at Rutgers University, where
researchers are trying to find ways to control the bugThe winged critters
like to feast on crops in the spring and hibernate in warm homes in the
winter. So the battle is on—among both scientists and entrepreneurs—to knock
down the species.
The USDA has devoted $5.7 million to a task force of researchers who are
trying to find a natural predator for the vermin and duplicate its
pheromones—attractive scents males spray to mark the location of food and
mates—to lure them into traps.
Meanwhile, Brian McCausland, a contractor from Chester County, Pa., conjured
up his own solution. He invented a trap that uses light and a spruce-scented
spray to draw the pests to a bowl, where they drown. So far, he says, he's
sold 5,000 of the $9.99 contraptions by word-of-mouth.
"It's a grass-roots product that we developed out of frustration and
necessity," says Mr. McCausland.
The stink bug measures between 1/2 inch and one inch long, with a speckled
brown exoskeleton. Its colloquial name stems from the odor emitted from
glands on its abdomen—a defense mechanism triggered by disturbances like
predators or homeowners who stumble upon them in attics. It feeds through a
stylus that is "as hard as steel," says Mark Seetin of the U.S. Apple
Association.
Scientists are more concerned with the bug's appetite for crops than its
smell. The insects are voracious vegetarians that forage on about 300
species of produce, trees and vegetation. An estimated $21 billion worth of
crops are at risk where stink bugs have been detected, according to the USDA

In 2010, the bugs were particularly ruthless on apples in Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, says Mr. Seetin.
There were fewer apple losses in 2011 because farmers better anticipated the
bugs' arrival and doused their crops with pesticides used on moths, says
Tracy Leskey, the USDA entomologist leading the government's research effort
But the chemicals are effective only on bugs sprayed directly—not the
hordes that follow.
When the weather turns cold, the stinkers wriggle into homes through air
conditioners and other tiny spaces, hibernating in packs. Residents are
often alarmed by their en-masse appearance. Calls to exterminators spike in
September when they migrate from cropland to attics.
But homeowners and organic farmers like Mr. Biggins have had to seek out
other, nonchemical ways to battle the bug. The $70 Strube's Stink Bug Traps,
made by a Pennsylvania man named Andrew Strube whose website says he has
been "tinkering around with flying objects" his whole life, claims to catch
the bugs indoors with a hanging lantern covered in a removable sleeve.
Other commercial combatants include the Asian Ladybug Stinkbug Light Trap.
The $47 device, sold online and in stores, uses synthetic pheromones to
attract the bugs into a plastic funnel that is then supposed to channel them
into water at the base to kill them.
The Rescue Stink Bug Trap, which also uses pheromones, is designed to hang
outside the home. The cylindrical product, made by Sterling Rescue, a pest
control company based in Spokane, sells for $20 at Lowe's and lasts for two
weeks, Sterling claims.
"There are all kinds of things out there," says George Hamilton, chair of
the Department of Entomology at Rutgers University. Efficacy rates of such
products, he says, are mixed. Some traps attract the bugs but don't kill
them, agitating them to spray wafts of their stinky scent, he says. This,
despite the fact that the bugs are also known to be somewhat stupid—often
mistakenly flying into the walls of victims' homes.
Scientists are developing more-powerful pheromones for farmers to use in
traps. The scents are applied to the top of a cylindrical cage set on the
edge of cropland. When stink bugs are found in the cage, farmers would know
to apply pesticides before it is too late.
The long-term goal is to cultivate a natural predator to the bugs. Spiders
will eat stink bugs, but there is no American predator that relies on them
as their main food source, Ms. Leskey says.Researchers have hope for tiny
parasitic wasps from Asia, which scientists are studying to see if they can
be hungrily effective if introduced in the U.S. The wasps lay their eggs
within the stink bugs' own egg masses. When the wasp larvae hatch, they
devour the stink bug eggs and kill them.
"It's like a little mini horror movie," Ms. Leskey says.Researchers are now
studying a colony at a USDA unit in Newark, Delaware. It will take several
years to determine if they are safe to release.
Until then, Mr. Biggins is trying out his own homemade concoction. He has
planted stink bug bait—rows of dispensable pumpkins and sunflowers—to serve
as tasty decoys and distract the pests from his vegetables. He also switched
more of his land to raising chickens.
"I got pretty cocky, I guess, about the tomatoes and peppers and the staples
we grew," says Mr. Biggins, who averaged five pounds of tomatoes per plant
before stink bugs arrived on his farm. In 2010, the yield sank to one pound
per plant.
"It's absolutely a humbling experience," he says.
Write to Heather Haddon at heather.haddon@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared Jan. 9, 2012, on page A1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Out of Odor: Offensive-Smelling Bugs Put U.S. Farmers on the Defensive