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I am definitely checking this place out. I shop at the Home Depot and Michaels on Grand and Litchfield anyway. Thanks for the info. I am sorry DD didn't place your order though..... that sucks.
 
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tball chicky, it was nice to meet you and your delightful family too! Tell your son that my favorite thing to do with the kefir is blend it with strawberries and bananas.
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When my chickens had ticks I was reading the primary literature about nidicolous parasites on birds and I came across an interesting old paper that talked about wild birds collecting and lining their nests with aromatic herbs. The authors speculated that perhaps the herbs repelled ectoparasites. This immediately brought to mind a peculiar behavior seen in my chickens: they will walk into the middle of my most productive Greek oregano plant and stand completely motionless for a couple minutes and then continue to walk through. After a few minutes, they would repeat this behavior. I've since looked at other papers and have found that lining the nests with aromatic herbs or other green material with volatile secondary compounds is fairly widespread among bird species. Wild birds have been shown to actively and preferentially seek such plant material, but the reason underlying this behavior is largely unknown. Some papers have shown that particular plant materials in the nest may significantly reduce bacterial loads on the exterior of the birds and others have even shown that herbs may influence mite and lice development. I found it very interesting and wondered if maybe it could help my chickens. So, when I went to cut back some of my oregano plants last weekend, I put several branches of it in one of my two nest boxes. So far, the two young birds have laid every egg in the box with the herbs (four eggs in two days) the older birds have laid two of three eggs in the box with herbs (it's always been about 50/50). More time will be needed to see if there is truly a preference. The most interesting thing I've seen is the immediate reduction in the number of mosquitos in the nest box with the herbs. I counted the number of mosquitos in each box three times today (killing or chasing out all mosquitos after counting). Each time I found between 12-15 mosquitos in the box without herbs and only one total in the box with the herbs. Again, it's too early to say it actually repels them, but it seems promising. Here is a very interesting and recent review on how wild birds control ectoparasites: http://darwin.biology.utah.edu/PubsHTML/PDF-Files/Bush24.pdf
 
Quote:
I am definitely checking this place out. I shop at the Home Depot and Michaels on Grand and Litchfield anyway. Thanks for the info. I am sorry DD didn't place your order though..... that sucks.

You will like the place! Friendly folks and lots of stuff!
 

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