Natural Pest Control

Not three weeks ago we had a day where it was 94F in the afternoon and 34F the next morning. The bugs and critters never know what to think when it happens overnight like that. Everything goes into survival mode and anything can happen.

Here is my newest form of bug control. These ladies can eat their weight in bugs everyday. And tomatoes, but that is another story. I love to watch them forage for good stuff to eat. They eat weed seeds, and probably anything I plant in seed form in the spring. We will have to see how that goes. I may need to fence them out of certain areas.  But for bugs they have been amazing. We finally let them out to free range when they were 11 weeks old and fortunately that has worked well for us. When we finally have eggs they ought to be fantastic and the color of gold.

Having had such crazy and extreme changes in weather has meant gross things like gnats hatched out again when the weather went from 27F to 60F. I would have rather had 40F and kept the gnats at bay. Hard to be outside cleaning things up when you breath those gross little things in. But the chickens have found them and are doing their best to get rid of  them. The gnats coat the trunks of certain trees in my yard and the girls have figured out which ones. Thank goodness. Prizes for the chick who eats the most.

This is not the best picture but you can see strings of the gnats hanging from it. The bark is completely covered in blue bottle gnats and it looks like the tree is crawling. Once is freezes solid and stays that way for a few days again this will all be over. Sad to say I am ready for it to freeze again. Yuck!