HGG Community Forums

Yep, you can squish em and squish em, and they keep coming back...

Bugs are problematic to squash at times. Have any of you tried to squash a louse fly? That's like a bad penny. It keeps popping up. The first one I ever saw was on me! Took forever to squash, because I'd never seen them before. Smacking them doesn't work....they're already flat. =))

Ew... like a tick! So tired of wood ticks this summer... I can't believe I'm already looking forward to next winter, especially after the brutal winter we just came out of. We didn't even have that brief glorious time in the spring we usually have where it's nice weather AND there's no bugs. This year the snow wasn't even entirely melted yet and we had mosquitos already. :(

@bluchrystals I'm in northern Minnesota. I used to have guineas years ago, but that was before I had the whole place fenced and they were always getting out of the pen and the foxes and owls got them all. It was partly my fault for wanting the fancy colors, they stuck out like they were advertising to be eaten. But before that they really did keep the ticks down nicely. I kind of liked the noise, one time when they were confronted with a young fox that didn't know what he was doing, they all gathered around and barked at him and freaked him out and chased him until he finally ran off. I'd love to get guineas again, maybe the jumbo pearls this time, but I don't have my good livestock guardian dog anymore. He died last year and the two puppies I got last fall aren't really trained up yet. We have a huge fox problem here so all my poultry has to be well fenced until I have guardian dogs I can trust to look out for them again.

Oof, that louse fly sounds nasty! I'm glad we don't have anything like that around here... I think... and hope.

Yikes, well if it works. What kind of chickens do you have? I have some blue birchen marans and buckeyes that I really love. Other than that I have a mixed flock I've kept going for the past 15 years or so. There's some ameraucana, jersey giant, black copper maran, buckeye, dark cornish, and others and even some cornish cross broiler in them. I had a few broiler hens years ago that started laying and they had crossed with my black copper maran rooster, so I put the eggs in the incubator with my maran eggs and one hatched. I named him Captain Crunch because I named all my chickens after cereals that year. He turned out really big and nice, was a good forager. I still have decedents of his, I call them Crunchies.

Sorry for the rambling tangent, Ammit. :-B

@bluchrystals Nice! I've loved all of my Marans, but the French blue birchen Marans I have now are my favorite. I think I had some Wyandottes once in a mix with some Cochins, but I've never had Speckled Sussex or Salmon Faverolles. I've seen them in the county fair here though, they sure are pretty. :)

@Fiddler Me too. They're my favorite poultry, almost my favorite animal. I could tell chicken stories all day but I would probably bore people. :P

@OopsDotCom Oooh, I could tell you a spider story that would give you nightmares. :D

I love spiders, @Cavalynn. Growing up I had an outside aquarium that was full off wolf spiders and black crickets every summer.

Best way to kill ticks is to drown them in rubbing alcohol. We’ve got a partial bottle of it that is dedicated to drowning ticks in lol

Some of you mentioned chickens of various sorts. I have a funny chicken story to add to this rambling thread. At one time we had some bantam chickens at the barn where the therapeutic riding program I work with is located, and some larger chickens as well, I forget exactly which kind now. There was also a dog who spent a lot of time there.

Anyway, the bantam rooster would crow a high pitched "er-er-er-oooo." The large rooster responded with a low pitched "ar-ar-ar-ohhhhhh. And Jamie, the dog, would speak up with a medium pitched "owuuuuuuuuuuuuuu." There would be a brief silence and then the bantam rooster would start them off again. It was quite a performance.