Chickens for Pest Control
(Page 2 of 2)
We also let guineas loose in the garden (they don't tend to
scratch as much or peck the vegetables the way chickens and
turkeys do). So far, this one-two punch is working well.
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CURT AND GINNY HOSKINS
Cross Plains, Texas
An outbreak of pillbugs (rolypoly bugs)
was eating us alive! Eating up all our tender little
lettuce plants, that is. The big greenhouse was filthy with
them. So was the hoophouse. Even the new midsized
greenhouse was infested with these little wriggling
crustaceans.
They were everywhere. Big ones. Little ones. And lots of
in-between ones. We had to do something before they ate us
out of greenhouse and home. But what? We searched all our
books and files for nontoxic controls, to no avail. Old boo
ks said to use DDT, lindane or chlordane, all toxic
pesticides now banned in the United States. New books said
pillbugs usually feed mostly on dead organic matter, but
that wasn't true in our greenhouses.
Finally I remembered a book about using portable coops to
let chickens feast in garden beds. Before we replanted the
lettuce beds, we penned a half-dozen hens in a bed. The
minute they spotted the first pillbug, garden soil flew,
hens' feet became yellow blurs, and the chickens' heads
bobbed up and down like runaway sewing machines.
After about an hour, things calmed down and the chickens
were napping on the freshly fluffed soil. There wasn't a
pillbug to be found.
GEORGE DEVAULT
Emmaus, Pennsylvania
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