JOIN USSrinivas Dotihal, a farmer in Hasagal village of Koppal district, has developed an innovative instrument to protect field crops from birds and wild animals.
This young farmer suffered a huge loss for many years as birds and animals destroyed his standing crop. Though many farmers faced this problem, the intensity was a bit more in Srinivas’s farm as it is adjacent to a forest patch.
This feature of the farm made it easy for wild animals like bear, wild boar, fox, wolf, rabbit, and birds to invade the farm. As the situation worsened, Srinivas was forced to look at effective modes of keeping the wild animals away. After much thought and observation, he devised an instrument to scare the animals.
He developed the instrument using a plastic container, a cycle bell, a small motor net, a long stick and a length of wire. All these materials were pre-used. This simple instrument, which makes sound as it rotates due to windforce, has proved very effective in scaring the animals away.
The instrument is tied to a stick with a metal wire at a height of five feet. It rotates when the wind blows and the bell fixed to it produces high-pitch sound. Srinivas has observed that the sound is loud enough to scare the animals away.
“It saves crop as well as my time and energy,” he says. Other farmers in the village have also followed the method and found it useful.