Increase Your Crop Yield With Our Leading Corn Seed Treatment

Are you are losing 2 or more bushels per acre to birds?  Avipel is for you! Pretreat your corn seed with Avipel and repel birds all the way through emergence.

Avipel is the first scientifically proven corn seed treatment to stop birds from eating newly planted seed.

What Is Avipel and What Can It Do?

Avipel is the first scientifically proven seed treatment to stop birds—from blackbirds, crows and grackles to pheasants, sandhill cranes, starlings and more—from eating newly planted corn seed.

Made from an organic chemical found in plants, Avipel is a nonlethal, nontoxic and nonsystemic corn seed treatment that can lead to greater corn crop yields, raising growers’ bottom lines.

How Avipel Works

In many areas of the country, birds are known to destroy hundreds of acres of field and sweet corn before it even has a chance to emerge. To stop this potentially devastating yield loss, a growing number of farmers have turned to Avipel.


Scientifically formulated seed treatment

Avipel is the scientifically formulated seed treatment that stops birds from eating newly planted corn seed. Avipel’s dry hopper box application surrounds each kernel with a protective coating that causes birds immediate, yet temporary, digestive distress. After attempting to eat newly planted seed, they quickly look elsewhere, leaving your newly planted field unharmed.

In the lab and the field,Arkion Life Sciences, the manufacturer of Avipel, has been researching and developing bird repellency products for more than a decade. Studies of Avipel conducted by the USDA and others have demonstrated Avipel’s efficient protection of planted corn seed.

AQ, the Active Ingredient in Avipel

Avipel’s active ingredient is 9,10-anthraquinone (AQ), an organic chemical found in a number of plant species, including aloe vera, rhubarb, greater plantains and sennas. While being a particularly effective agent for repelling birds, AQ is non-lethal to them.

No matter the bird species causing the damage in a corn field, the active ingredient in Avipel causes a gut reaction without harming the bird. These birds and their flocks quickly learn to avoid seeds treated with Avipel and begin foraging for other sources of nourishment, enabling your cornfield to remain fully protected.

Avipel continues to work throughout the vulnerable period in which remnants of the seed kernel remain as a food source. This can last as long as 30 days after planting.

AQ offers multiple advantages:  

- Is a biopesticide

- Is ultraviolet light-stable

- Biodegrades with a 28-day half-life in soil

- Features very low soil mobility

- Is insoluble in water

Are You Tired of Losing Corn Seed to Birds?

If you’re like many corn growers, as you prepare to plant corn this season, you probably have many concerns about how bird damage can negatively impact your corn crop and your farm financially.

Bird damage to corn can start as soon as your planter puts the seed in the ground. Birds come to freshly planted fields as they offer a variety of food sources such as bugs and worms. When they discover the corn seeds, they quickly focus on them as a food source. Don’t feed your valuable corn seed to birds!

Don’t feed your valuable corn seed to birds

Wildlife biologists report that bird populations are increasing, with pest birds having more of an impact. In many areas throughout the United States, birds have been identified in destroying more than 1 million acres of field and sweet corn every year before the crop can even emerge.

Corn is especially vulnerable to bird populations because it is planted at a time of year when other food sources are limited. Additionally, the corn planting season coincides with birds’ preparation for migration and breeding season in many regions of the United States. When a flock discovers corn seed, a highly desirable food source, it can ravage your fields of corn seed. This damage isn’t always clearly apparent as bird damage because spring rains often fill in the holes and other evidence of bird presence.

As a grower reliant on your corn crop to be profitable, you can’t go weeks in the dark, only to find that many of your corn seeds have been taken.

Why Do Birds Target Corn Seed?

Birds target corn seed as a food source because they use the starch from corn for egg production. Because breeding couples eat together, male birds generally eat the same food source as their female partners. The average bird consumes about 200 seeds daily.

Different bird species use different methods to pull corn seed out of the ground. Cranes use their bills to peck seeds out of the ground, for example, and pheasants or turkeys scratch out corn seed with their talons, or claws.

Avipel Corn Seed Treatment Replaces Toxic Organophosphate Insecticides

Years ago, organophosphate insecticides used to treat seeds either tasted bad or, if enough was eaten, killed birds. These chemicals have been removed from the market. In recent years, however, a safe and effective corn seed treatment option has emerged to help you prevent bird damage in your cornfields: Avipel.

Avipel bird repellent prevents blackbirds, boat-tailed grackles, crows, European starlings, grackles, pheasants, red-wing blackbirds, ring-neck pheasants, sandhill cranes, starlings and turkeys from consuming planted corn seeds. Avipel is available to farmers, growers and/or producers as a dry application.


Enjoy Peace of Mind When You Treat Your Corn Seeds

Farmers, growers, and/or producers who use Avipel bird repellent also enjoy greater peace of mind, trusting that their money and time investments are well-protected.

These growers face fewer hassles that many face on their fields, with birds known to destroy 1 million-plus acres of field and sweet corn every year before the crop can even emerge.

Avipel Is Preferred by Growers for Safety Reasons and Effectiveness

Growers across America prefer Avipel because it is not only effective in helping safeguard corn seed but non-systemic to corn, nonlethal to birds and nontoxic to plants and fish. Endorsed by the International Crane Foundation, Avipel has been shown to cause no side effects that could be costly. It also causes no groundwater contamination, ensuring growers’ aquifers and wells remain safe.

Learn More

Corn growers wanting to learn more about Avipel, including avian depredation to planted cereal crops may explore application guides, independent research studies, USDA state-specific labels and more information.


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