Just found cockroaches the size of hamsters in my coop. HELLLPPP!!!!! - Page 8

Crap. Now you just made all of my hair stand up!

I have noticed a lot more black widows. And now have BROWN widows. Great. More to watch out for!

I know alot of people here dont like DE, but my DD stored something in her house for a friend and ended up with roaches. For 2 years she tried everything from hiring exterminators to buying stuff at the store. Nothing worked. Then her dog got into some gel she had put out and she freaked. Luckly the dog was ok but then she was afraid to use anything. I read about DE so we went to the health food store and bought a pound of it. $1.59 Oh well if it doesnt work not out much. In 3 weeks no more roaches and she hasnt seen any for a year. She swears by it.

Yeah, we got them too. Havnt seen any brown recluse's...YET !

Brown recluses don't seem to be very prevalent around here. Always hearing about infected "spider bites" that are more likely just staph infections.

You all are making me really glad I live in Minnesota! Next winter when I'm bemoaning yet another blizzard and sub-zero temps, I'm going to look up this thread, re-read it and happily go out and play in the snow!

Funny messages.....true, somewhat gross, a little frightening, but funny.
I'm no expert but wouldn't diatamacious earth do a number on those roaches?
Seems like it's good for getting rid of lots of little critters.

See and read post #65.

Get some powdered BORATE Dust.  It is course and will actually slice the roaches up.  Slows down the older palmetto roaches kills the soft young ones.  Shouldn't hurt the chickens.  Good luck.

Sometimes sold as Boric Acid Powder

Boy did I laugh. I am a native so I know the yankees say Palmetto bugs because they hate to say they have roaches! They do fly, at you and I would rather wrestle a possum than have a roach fly at me.
My concern is this...I raised tropical birds further south and lost a few ,indirectly from roaches.Seems that if a roach eats possum poop and the contam the bird food by crawling across it(they regurgitate all the day while crawling) it causes a tumor in the muscle of birds that kills them before you know they are sick and only necropsy can detect it . For the life of me I cannot remember the name.
But aside but being a really vile thought, it is a health hazard and I hope someone can give you an answer.I use boric acid around my place in caps  because of the dogs.
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

I'm with darkmatter on this one! I hardly ever see a single roach in my coop, and when one appears the chickens snap it up so fast it doesn't know what hit it! And just for the record, I live in Hawaii, so I grew up with roaches too: roaches in the house, roaches in the compost--it's a fact of life in the tropics.

I say congratulations to you, if you've been able to grow so much free protein feed for your birds. I've been building up deep bedding for months now, putting rotten logs in the coop and flipping them periodically, all TRYING to breed things like roaches and potato bugs and stuff for the chickens so they can get some free natural protein to eat. Chickens are naturally insectivorous! I'm sure chickens CAN get diseases from roaches--it doesn't mean they WILL. Humans CAN get E. coli from eating spinach, but that doesn't mean I'm never going to eat spinach again. Our flocks have eaten all kinds of stuff for twenty years. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about the hazards (to the birds, to yourself, to other organisms in the area) of using pesticides to kill the roaches than I would be about diseases from the roaches.

But if you really can't stomach them anymore, or get the chickens to eat them, it sounds like there are plenty of natural alternatives out there too. Good luck!