Keep The Bugs Away!

As the weather is getting warmer we are all thinking more about spring!

With spring comes bugs, they can be a real pest to you and your chickens especially their larvae! EWW!

Here is how we keep flies away from our coop;

🐾 Keep the coop as clean as possible, chickens and especially ducks can be very messy and as we all know they poop A LOT! But freshening their bedding and scooping out as much feces as you can in the summer will help keep flies' favorite food down. You can also clean your coop with diluted apple cider vinegar and add essential oils. I love this euculiptus and lemongrass refresher from Spring Chicken, every time I clean the coop or add new bedding I just sprinkle some around and it makes the whole coop smell great!

🐾 Don’t let waste build up, of course this applies to keeping the coop clean but also scrap food especially with kitchen scraps, fresh fruits and veggies.

🐾 Reducing moisture, try to avoid wet areas in your coop and run. This can prove to be very difficult especially as the snow melts, the best way to prevent this is to have a roof over your run. If you don't have a roof or don’t have one over your coop you can use pine horse bedding pellets to soak up water and reduce the amount of mud in the run, some people also use a thick layer of pea stone in their run so the water will drain through better. Also keeping water outside the coop, even up on blocks or using no spill water containers.

🐾 Soap on a rope! This past summer we tried something new. I drilled a hole from the top of an Irish spring soap bar all the way through to the bottom, pushed a piece of rope through and tied a knot to hold the bar and hung them throughout the coop run and raised brooders. We have always used Irish spring soap in our garage and shed, especially around our snowmobile and lawn mower in the off seasons to deter mice and it has always seemed to work pretty well.

🐾 You can also plant herbs around your coop, flies will hate them and chickens will love them! We plant all of these either in our hanging baskets or around the coop. These herbs can also be hung in the coop or added to nesting boxes.

• Citronella

• Mint

• Rosemary

• Thyme

• Catnip

• Basil

• Sage

• Bee balm

• Lemon balm

• Lavender

We even made our chickens their own little herb garden using an old wheelbarrow.

🐾 Hanging fly traps or fly ribbon is another easy, inexpensive alternative but I personally have got them stuck in my hair too many times than I care to admit by not paying attention to where they're hanging while walking.

Enjoy your bug free coop and using your herbs for more than just happy chickens!