If you’re no-tilling with an 8-row planter, you’ll be able to obtain a set of FREE positive placement metering kits (PPK) worth $400 at the early January National No-Tillage Conference. That’s because United Ag Products (UAP) is offering these kits that retail at $50 per row FREE to every attendee for controlling costly rodents.

With these kits, you can quickly and easily retrofit the insecticide boxes on your no-till planter for dual insecticide and rodenticide usage. The kits include parts to replace the insecticide-metering wheel or they can be added to the insecticide box by extending the drive shaft to allow both granular insecticides and rodenticides to be applied at the same time.

The kits are required to deliver and meter Prozap Zinc Phosphide pellets in the furrow for the control of mice, voles, 13-lined ground squirrels (striped gophers) and Ord’s kangaroo rats (sand rats).

Avoid 90 Percent Stand Losses.

“The biggest benefit in controlling these rodents is not having to replant while losing 3 weeks of the growing season,” says John Pickle, UAP midwest regional manager for product development at Madison, Wis. “With as much as an 80 to 90 percent stand loss, a delay due to replanting can cost no-tillers 50 to 60 bushels of corn per acre.”

University of Illinois research indicates the economic threshold for vole treatment is five colonies per acre 30 days ahead of no-tilling corn. Yet no-till corn fields often have 60 to 80 vole colonies per acre.

Pickle says a number of…