Ducks - a new type of pest control for vineyards
Like 4 Dislike 0 Published on 17 Nov 2016
(16 Aug 2016) LEAD IN:
A novel method of pest control at a South African vineyard has snails ducking for cover.
Hundreds of Indian runner ducks have been put to work at a vineyard near Cape Town to keep the pests under control.
The twice daily duck parade has also become a spectacle for visitors.
STORY-LINE:
It's rush hour at the Vergenoegd Wine Estate in Stellenbosch.
These Indian runner ducks are about to start their morning commute to work, jostling for top billing among their colleagues.
They've been enlisted as an environmentally-friendly method of pest control to keep the vineyards free from snails, worms and other edible pests.
Vergenoegd Wine Estate, about 50 kilometres east of Cape Town, has been using ducks as pest control for many years but recently increased the numbers.
For the past three years, handler Denzil Matthys, who's also known as the duck whisperer, has been looking after this team of mighty ducks.
"These India runners are our pest controllers, meaning by that, they eat the snails and also the insects inside the vineyards," he says.
Every morning the ducks are ushered into the grounds by a team of handlers - it's billed as the duck parade.
"The duck parade is almost like a marching of lots of ducks together. So what we do is we let them exit through a gate – you saw them this morning exiting through a gate – and then they move in front of the main house, so that is actually called our duck parade. It happens at a quarter to ten in the morning and also in the afternoon at half past three, they will come back and do the duck parade again," says Matthys.
Although Matthys was not officially trained in how to look after ducks, he learned on the job and now loves working with them.
"I started working on the farm, but I was working in the vineyards and then the manager of the farm saw potential in me. Then she decided to put me by the ducks and there by the ducks I started learning about the ducks," he says.
Keeping all your ducks in a row can often prove a challenge. The handlers use white flags to keep them in line.
The spectacle of hundreds of ducks running in procession has caught the attention of visitors who are flocking to the vineyard.
The whole trip from the house to the vineyard is about 500 metres - a short but noisy distance.
The farm's social media manager, David Badenhorst, says Indian runners were introduced by a former owner more than 20 years ago.
"Indian runner ducks originate from Malaysia. They are obviously used in the rice fields in those regions.Then they were exported in the 1800's. John Faure (then owner of the Vergenoegd wine farm) bought over some ducks and then started in 1983/1984 he started with six. And today we are standing at 1071 ducks on the farm. And their duty is to control the pests in our vineyards," he says.
But Badenhorst says using ducks as a means of pest control is much more expensive than using more conventional means of extermination.
He says the average cost for using ducks is about US $2,300 per month. Conventional pesticides would cost about the same for the whole year.
"We decided to use ducks as pest control, because obviously it is environmentally friendly. Whatever you work into the ground, if you take conventional pest control, those things get back into the ground and it really affects the growth of the vines, insects also die obviously. Conventional pest control kills anything and everything, whereas the ducks go into the vineyards and they eat what they need to eat. They eat the snails, they eat the snails' eggs and they leave the other things. There is no need to touch anything that doesn't harm the vineyards," says Badenhorst.
Apart from pest control, the birds also produce fertiliser for the vines.
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/2af9f131258fcc7361614d6569da3341
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork