Tag: chicken pest control

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It’s Time to Prune Fruit Trees

Here’s a picture of my Red Delicious Semi-Dwarf apple tree I bought from Stark Bro’s, www.starkbros.com, along with three other apple trees, about two years ago.  It’s healthy-looking, and gave me a some wonderful apples last summer.  I pruned it as much as I dared, although I didn’t do enough pruning, and I sprayed it with lime sulfur and dormant oil to protect it from pests.  I even managed to keep it alive during last year’s hot summer, and when I had 100 pine and hardwood trees cut from around it, the tree cutters carefully avoided damaging it.  I am happy with the plants I bought from Stark Bro’s, and I want to buy some more trees from them to fill some of the space vacated by the 100 cut trees when I figure out what I want. 
Unfortunately, though, as experienced apple growers will note, the central leader is missing.  Apple trees produce best when they are trained to a central leader, where the main trunk continues straight up, and the other branches grow off the trunk like alternating rungs on a ladder. 
Unpruned apple tree
Last summer, my chickens panicked when I moved their house and they couldn’t figure out where to sleep, and three of them tried to roost in the tree. Chickens want to go to the highest place they can reach when it’s time for bed, and unfortunately for my tree, the central leader was the place all three tried to roost. I described it in detail in this post  http://www.maryannscountrygarden.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-many-roosting-chicken-does-it-take.html.   The central leader snapped, the chickens fell squawking to the ground, and I eventually got them to their beds.
Saturday, I selected the most upright branch, tied it to the stake, cut off the other one, and trimmed the rest of the tree, thinning branches and cutting back the limbs.  I am no expert in tree care, but if you are, please give me your opinion of my trimming and rejuvenation of my tree.  I try to err on the side of cutting too little, but, based on my observation of overgrown orchards, too little pruning is nearly as bad as too much pruning.  The chickens you see in the photos now know where they are supposed to sleep, and I let them into the orchard to provide a little pest control and fertilization.
Pruned apple tree
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What Are These Grubs Called?

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Last summer, I found these larvae, or grubs, or whatever they are called, living underneath and inside a black plastic bag I put broccoli plants in to kill the caterpillars that were feeding on them. Not having chickens at the time, I found them disgusting and imagined they would become another plague to attack my garden. I killed as many as I could, but I continued to find a few of them in the compost pile. I didn’t worry too much about it, because I hadn’t seen an influx of the creatures.

This summer, I have chickens, and I have found masses of the creatures happily wiggling in my compost. I test the chicken’s appetites on any critter that I don’t think is a beneficial insect, and they love these things.  I just don’t know what they are called. They prefer hot locations, like under a black plastic bag in the sun, and in the middle of a compost pile that’s becoming hot from the biological activity. I can’t see any harm they do, and the chickens love them, so I like their presence.

I wonder if they are Black soldier fly larvae, but my husband says he thinks they are too big to be a fly. The largest ones are about 1/2 inch long. He thinks they are a beetle. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

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Chicken Pest Control Report

One of my enduring pleasures this summer is picking fat green tomato hornworms from my tomatoes and feeding them to the chickens.  It sends them into a frenzy of excitement as they each try to get part of the caterpillar.  I used to heave the caterpillars over the garden fence with the assumption that they would not find their way back to the tomato patch, because they are too large for me to stomach stomping, but the chickens make quick work of them.

Unfortunately, they do not like Japanese Beetles, although they love their grubs, as I have mentioned in previous posts.  After throwing adults into their pen and watching them fly away as the chickens looked on, confused, I began knocking them into a bowl of water so the chickens could go “bobbing for beetles.”  Because I am not sadistic, even given my aforementioned pleasure at feeding tomato hornworms to the chickens, after I found them still swimming desperately in the bowl for an hour, quite uneaten by the chickens,  I added some dish soap to the water.  It kills the bugs quickly, and I presume, does not harm the chickens.  In either case, after some initial fun in grabbing the beetles, the chickens have decided they don’t like the taste of beetles, and so I have gone back to drowning the beetles in soapy water, without offering them to the chickens,  as I do every summer.  I guess the adults are too crunchy for them. 

They peck at snails and eat out their soft bodies, and they like slugs.  And as they scratch away in the ground I know they are devouring many little creatures.  They also dislike squash bugs, and adult potato beetles, I guess because the squash bugs emit a foul odor I can smell, and I presume, also taste bad. 

When the corn earworms arrive, I’ll feed them to the chickens, and I remain vigilant whenever I dig to feed any grubs or larva I find to the chickens.  I have spoiled them and they now come running to the fence, clucking away, when they see me approach, saying “What do you have for us this time?”