3o8 Journal of Agricultural Research voi. xxn.No.6 



POISONED BRAN MASH DRII,IvED INTO THE SOII# 



Since Porosagrotis orthogonia very rarely comes to the surface to feed, 

 placing the poisoned bran mash beneath the soil was tried in the hope 

 that the cutworms would thus come in contact with it and feed upon it. 

 The most promising way of doing this seemed to be with a seed drill. 

 This method was tried out in northern Montana at Havre and in southern 

 Montana at Wilsall. 



TESTS AT HAVRE 



At Havre two formulae were used. 



FORMULA NO. I 



Shorts pounds . . 25 



Paris green do ... . i 



Oranges 4 



Molasses quarts . . 2 



Water gallon. . i 



FORMULA NO. 3 



Shorts pounds. . 25 



Paris green do ... . i 



Molasses gallon . . i 



Water quarts . . 2 



These mixtures after being prepared were spread out and allowed to 

 dry for 24 hours. When dry, No. 2 was distinctly stronger smelling, 

 although both had a good molasses odor. The reason for using the 

 large amount of molasses in these formulae w^as to secm-e a distinct odor 

 in the dried material which we hoped might attract cutworms in the 

 soil for some little distance. 



The dried material was seeded into the ground with a Van Brunt 

 drill at the rate of 16 pounds to the acre and at a depth of about 1.5 

 inches. Six acres were ti"eated. The drill was run at right angles to the 

 rows of grain so that the worms in working from plant to plant would 

 only move a few inches before coming in contact with the bran. The 

 greatest difficulty encountered was in getting the bran to feed evenly 

 through the drill. When it was sufficiently dr}^ to be well divided it 

 was too light to force its way through and it was necessary to agitate 

 the mixture continuously in the seeder box to get any-where near an 

 even distribution. 



The field was examined two days after the poisoned bran mash was 

 drilled in, and it was found that formula No. i had killed approximately 

 50 per cent of the worms while formula No. 2 gave slightly better results 

 with a kill of about 55 per cent, which was not enough to prevent the 

 destruction of the crop. 



