Any who gardens these days is most likely all too familiar with the Japanese Beetle.
Japanese Beetles making more Japanese Beetles
They can easily destroy gardens and fruit trees, and fly in like a plague every summer. Once they start coming, it seems like they never stop. Plenty of sprays and insecticides have been invented to combat these pests, but some people are just not interested in dousing their food with chemicals.
Japanese Beetle Damage on Pole Beans
About the only thing we actually apply for pest control is Diatomaceous Earth, but that washes off every time it rains, and if we sprinkle it on top the plants, it seems all the bugs just hide underneath the leaves. Therefore, we do a lot of hand-picking of these plentiful pests.
Chicken
The benefits of chickens are many. The most common are eggs and meat, but chickens can provide much more than that. When you add a rooster you can have a supply as new chicks as well. This provides a renewable supply of chicks, meat, and eggs. Chicken manure is also a beneficial ingredient for composting, which enriches the garden soil and supplies additional nutrients to the plants. Additionally, chickens are great for pest control, since they basically peck anything that moves and eat all sorts of bugs.
Bloodsucking Tick
Ticks, like the Wood Tick, Lone Star Tick, and Deer Tick, are all parasites that many of us would rather not deal with. Thankfully, chickens are pecky and not picky. They'll gobble the ticks up too! Of course, to be able to eat ticks and other pests, the chickens need to have access to the bugs. This is where free-ranging comes in. This means that though the chickens may have a coop to be in at night, protecting them from owls, raccoons, and other nocturnal predators, they are allowed free access to the yard during the day. A chicken that's allowed to roam will not only eat the bugs crawling around in the yard, they'll also peck and eat the weeds and grass. Getting a good amount of fresh greens in their diet is better for the chickens, and better for those who eat the eggs and the chickens. The more plants and bugs in their diet, the less feed we need to buy too.
Now I don't mind hard work, but I find unnecessary work to be, well, unnecessary. There is no way I’m going to be letting out some animals on a daily basis that I have to chase all around the yard on a nightly basis. I’ve already had to spend some days trying to catch our runaway rooster Monster Truck the Eagle. If I have an animal, I’ll be the boss, and the animal will listen to me, at least as much as they are able to. That’s where the Japanese Beetles come in.
Now eventually, I might seriously build some ramps and cat-walks for the chicken to do pest control along the top of the garden fence, giving them free access to as many Japanese Beetles as they want all day long. Since we don’t spray chemicals on our food-producing plants (or any of our plants), we get plenty of the beetles. These days, one of the best organic methods of bug removal is to hand-pick them off the plants. I personally have no use for them and used to just throw them in a bucket of water and let them drown, only really accomplishing the death of the beetles and receiving no additional benefit from the process. Now, though, I use them to train my chickens.
I’ll start off by calling them with a “Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick” when I approach the cage to let them out. They quickly run to the fencing and peck the bugs out of my hands. Then I’ll let them out of the cage for free-ranging. Periodically throughout the day I’ll find some more Japanese Beetles (they seem to replenish their numbers pretty quickly), and call them as they are running around the yard. They’ll come running right up to me and I’ll give them the “treat”. When it's time to put them away for the night, I walk over to their cage and call them back over. They come running, I give them a treat, and then lock them up for the night.
As well, I teach my children to always walk around the chickens, instead of running by them. They aren’t allowed to scare them or chase them. Often, I’ll even have the kids sit around near them or in the midst of them, and not disturb or touch them. This way they’ll be comfortable around us. We’ll also just pet them quick without picking them up, and get them used to being touched.
Check out these images and see how well they obey when I call.
The other day we were swinging on some swings as a family, with our chickens free-ranging nearby. Another family with some little ones came along, and two of the kids started to chase our chickens. I quickly told the older child that we don’t chase our chickens, we make them come to us if we want them. As I was speaking, the one she was chasing ran up to me and jumped on my arm like a falcon, as I was squatting down to speak to her. I hadn’t even called the chickens, so it sure proved my point.
