Bugs Don’t Stand a Chance with This Stuff

The chickens are great for eating the ticks and chiggers in the grass, the spiders get the flying insects, our bat house crew works all night (thanks to my brother) and the geese clean up the larvae in the pond. When we moved here in the lowlands we almost gave up because of the insect problem. As you can see, we have a formidable array of defenders working for us day and night. We have to look high and low to find a bug and if we see one, the chickens most always beat us to it. I haven’t had to spray my tomatoes or other garden crops. I let the geese roam all day because they are home-bodies and the chickens get about two or three hours of yard, snack food before going to roost, that is the easiest way to keep track of them. They always go to bed in the same place at dark. The spiders don’t cost much, they have gotten used to us and we to them. They are friendly to us and seem to tolerate the attention we give them. We have no mosquito problem and we live on the edge of a swamp.

As a side benefit, we get 400 goose eggs a year and they sell for around five dollar a piece. The chickens lay better than 2000 eggs a year and the brown free range eggs bring more than four dollars a dozen at the farmer’s market. Life gets better for us all, we don’t use pesticides or human devices and the environment is much safer for this effective and economical pest service. Not to mention, we are safer as well, with few, if any insects to carry a disease to us.

I might add, when we moved here we were inundated with copperheads. The black, king, rat, red belly and yellow belly snakes, only to mention a few did not bother us, but the copperheads were very sneaky and used to lay on the door step at night hoping one of us would step out. We put up owl boxes and we haven’t seen a copperhead since. A hatch of red tail hawks moved into the trees on the swamp  when they saw we were serious about pest and varmint control and came along to rid us of mice, rats and I think they now have talked the rest of the snakes into leaving too. We used to let the rat snakes spend the winter under the house and every year they would come inside, but since the hawks came to help clean up our swamp, the good snakes have moved on. Well, we can’t please everybody. I might add, I put 100 bottom feeding catfish in the post and 60 surface and flying insect eating bass there as well. Our mosquito population is just about zero.

I would suggest that we all do more to conserve our natural resources, not everyone can have as many bug fighters as we do, but even in smaller property sites, you can let spiders stay over and help you out with your insect problem. Dr Robert E McGinnis, author of the Paradise Books.