Free, organic pest control.

Have a bug problem? Ants? Grasshoppers? Slugs?

Then get a chicken. Or two, even!

Today I let Molly out again, and she wreaked havoc on the local grasshopper population, as well as eating a few daddy longlegs in the process, which isn't as good. There were a lot less grasshoppers than yesterday, and the surviving ones were the large, flying ones or the huge ones that live in the raspberry patch, crawling and nibbling among and on the tall leaves and stalks.

Now, this pest control is free, but not free of work. You see, Molly couldn't get up to were the grasshoppers were, seeing as they were hopping around at my head height, were the raspberry branches were tallest. After putting her back in, I got out the net, and attempted to catch some of the sneaky, huge, and tasty (to a chicken, at least, I imagine) grasshoppers that were frolicking around and eating the berries and leaves. The first few times I failed, but once I got the hang of it, they were extremely easy to catch. A foolproof way of catching grasshoppers? First, scare them out of their hiding places. I did this by rustling the branches with the net, trying to get any grasshoppers to jump away. Once they flee, watch them as they jump and see where they land. Get closer to them, and, quickly, swoop the net down over the branch the grasshopper is on, but do try to slow before you hit the branch, as to not do more harm than good. Now, since these huge, berry-eating grasshoppers have survived for so long, you'd guess they'd have quick reflexes to insure survival, but in this case, you'll be using their strength against them. Seeing the net coming towards them, the grasshoppers will probably jump up and away. If you were trying to catch them by hand, that trick would have worked, as someone's hand is a lot smaller than a net. But since the bigger the thing, the harder to dodge it, there's a 99.9% chance that the grasshopper will jump right into the net. A bit counterproductive for the grasshopper, but if you want to get rid of plant-eating pests and feed your chickens at the same time, it's pretty damn useful for us humans.

As if the chickens didn't get enough excitement and didn't eat enough insects, the birds were put to work again, this time helping us with out ant problem. There was a huge ant nest underneath some of our paving stones near the back door to the garage and in front of the stairs near the deck. The ants had started to mess around underneath and inside the garage, and the day seemed as good as any to try and take care of the ant problem. The paving stones were dug up and overturned, and the chickens scratched and pecked away at the amazingly huge, sprawling ant nest. I don't even want to think about how weird it must have felt to the chickens eating the bugs. Yeuch.

So, want organic, free, pest control that actually pays you in eggs, that takes only a little bit of work, some grasshopper catching abilities, and minimal food, water and shelter as compensation for your workers?

Get some chickens.