BBC Correspondent Colin Blane reports from Beijing

They have brought in an army of 10,000 chickens - backed by air support from thousands of starlings - to gobble up some of the millions of locusts which have descended on Xinjiang in the Uygur autonomous region.

According to Xinhua newsagency, the elite fowl undergo 60 days training shortly after they hatch to prepare them for battle with the locusts.

Worst infestation

Public enemy number one

And battle it is, because this year's infestation is said to be the worst in the region for a decade, with a quarter of Xinjiang's grasslands affected.

There were no details given of the chicken training programme.

The newspaper China Youth Daily said the chickens had succeeded in taking on the pests where all else failed.

But the insect-eating chickens are only one prong in the region's assault on the swarms of locusts.

Xinjiang pest control officials are also encouraging starlings to settle in the area by placing nests in the grassland area.

Pesticide alternative

Last month environmentalists in the port city of Tianjin released five million wasps to attack insects which had been damaging crops.

The BBC Correspondent in Beijing, Colin Blane, says it is thought Chinese scientists are being encouraged to find ways of reducing the use of chemical pesticides.

The introduction of chickens and starlings as instruments of pest control is a reverse of the disastrous experiment of the 1950s when the whole nation was urged to scare sparrows away from crops by beating drums for hours on end.