10-12-2007, 10:09 AM
The chickens eat the coquis during the day while they are trying to sleep under the leaf litter. Chickens scratch around looking for bugs and tasty things. Fortunately, their idea of "tasty things" also includes coqui and centipedes. Yay! I've seen chickens catch and eat small mice, too.
KathyH, you will need someone with a tow hitch to pull the County sprayer. It can weigh over a ton when it is full of water, too, so a half ton or bigger truck is best. Also the hoses are very similar to the type firefolks use on house fires so you need someone to maneuver the hose around while someone sprays and someone to man the machine or to drive the truck along. We have at least three folks when we spray and that works pretty well. In some instances we can use the short hose and put most of it on the trailer so one person sprays while walking near the trailer, one person monitors the machine and points the flashlight and the third person drives the truck slowly along as the road edges get sprayed. The last time we sprayed, we positioned the truck in one spot and laid out about 200' of hose then thoroughly saturated the area within reach of the hose.
The lime does leave a white/grey dusty look to the leaves for awhile until the rains wash it off. Usually within a week or two you can't tell the plants were sprayed. The lime is good for the soil, generally, too since our soils are typically very acid.
You don't necessarily need a coop for chickens, that's just if you are keeping them as a domestic sort of bird. You can keep them as "feral" chickens and just let them nest anywhere although it will be harder to catch them when you want them and you won't get as many eggs since they will lay them all over.
My friends have been working on a "yard chicken" which is a cross between araucana, red shouldered Yokohama and lakenvelder, I think. It is a smaller long legged chicken good for foraging around the yard and hopefully able to run from mongoose faster. One hatched out of the last batch of chickens, a small dark one although if it is a hen, my neighbor wants it. If it is a rooster and the folks we got the eggs from don't want it back then we will eat it. We are getting another batch of eggs from them in the next day or two and will run the incubator again.
KathyH, you will need someone with a tow hitch to pull the County sprayer. It can weigh over a ton when it is full of water, too, so a half ton or bigger truck is best. Also the hoses are very similar to the type firefolks use on house fires so you need someone to maneuver the hose around while someone sprays and someone to man the machine or to drive the truck along. We have at least three folks when we spray and that works pretty well. In some instances we can use the short hose and put most of it on the trailer so one person sprays while walking near the trailer, one person monitors the machine and points the flashlight and the third person drives the truck slowly along as the road edges get sprayed. The last time we sprayed, we positioned the truck in one spot and laid out about 200' of hose then thoroughly saturated the area within reach of the hose.
The lime does leave a white/grey dusty look to the leaves for awhile until the rains wash it off. Usually within a week or two you can't tell the plants were sprayed. The lime is good for the soil, generally, too since our soils are typically very acid.
You don't necessarily need a coop for chickens, that's just if you are keeping them as a domestic sort of bird. You can keep them as "feral" chickens and just let them nest anywhere although it will be harder to catch them when you want them and you won't get as many eggs since they will lay them all over.
My friends have been working on a "yard chicken" which is a cross between araucana, red shouldered Yokohama and lakenvelder, I think. It is a smaller long legged chicken good for foraging around the yard and hopefully able to run from mongoose faster. One hatched out of the last batch of chickens, a small dark one although if it is a hen, my neighbor wants it. If it is a rooster and the folks we got the eggs from don't want it back then we will eat it. We are getting another batch of eggs from them in the next day or two and will run the incubator again.
Kurt Wilson