Cicadas....yummy chicken treats!

Date sort Score sort
Land of Lost Toys

Land of Lost Toys

In the Brooder
10 Years
Jul 30, 2009
73
2
39
Ohio
Cicadas are abundant here! Loud and all over the place. I've been collecting them and giving them to the chickens. They love me even more now! :). Tried to post a video so you can see but can't seem to get it to load.

700

700
 
The first time my birds discovered a cicada they were afraid of it (it was alive)! LOL! It took one of my braver, bolder girls to take it on.
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ETA - I see you're in Ohio, which isn't terribly far from me. Are you guys being hit by cicadas now??? Or do you have a source for them?
 
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We have tons of them here. Last week we saw the holes, then about 4 days ago they started emerging. We have so many of them I just walked around with a bucket and started collecting them off the trees, shrubs and ground. 10 minutes to get about 100. I've been doing it for the past few days every few hours collecting them for the girls. By the way it's so LOUD here with them all in the trees. I was trying to post a video of it because you can hear them even through the video off of my phone.

Friends who are about 30 miles south of me have none so far.
 
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Yea, it is weird that others aren't seeing any at all. Tons of free protein! Heading out in a bit to collect more. Rudy the rooster ate probably 20 of them this morning. Crazy chickens were going nuts for them.
 
When I have had outbreaks of Periodic Cicadas the chickens would often begin ignoring the complete feed provided. Although that would consume the corn / scratch with gusto. They needed the scratch to balance their protein intake. This provides a good three weeks of very low feed bill. Properly managed the pasture insects can extend that pattern into fall. You still need to keep grit out during this time.
 
One of my friends lives in an area with periodic cicadas... she discovered a year or two ago, much to her dismay, that her dog LOVES to eat them!

I'm rather bummed that FL doesn't have them because I loved the big cicada years as a child in TN. We get a slow steady emergence of cicadas yearly, but no big flushes. I actually love to hear them sing throughout the hot, muggy, summer days. Doves, bobwhites, whippoorwills, and cicadas. Can't have a proper summer without them.
 

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