I've always worried a bit about the ants getting to my chickens, my yard is just filled with a variety of ant species. When I was planning my coop and reading this thread (and others) the stories of chickens killed by ants made me want to see if I could design the coop to promote antlion habitat around it. So, I built larger eaves on the two exposed sides of the coop. With the soil around the coop softened from the digging of the foundation and the laying of the apron, the eaves created the perfect sheltered area that antlions prefer to forage from and within a very short time after the coop was set in place they colonized that area. It only protects the coop on those two sides and ants can still get in through the side by the pop door and from behind over the wall, but I've never seen seen an ant inside the coop. Of course I probably just jinxed myself.
For those that don't know about antlions they are larval insects that make and maintain these pits while hiding burrowed at the bottom. When an ant gets crosses over an edge, the antlion pulls sand from below the ant, throwing it up over the ant and causing the ant to fall into the bottom of the pit. Once it's finished eating the ant, it throws what is left of the carcass up and over the wall of the pit. You can sometimes see the tracks of their wandering around in seemingly aimless loops as they search for new foraging sites. You can see short tracks in the pic above.
When I was a kid I used to play with ant lions. I would catch ants and other bugs and put them in the pits. If I got tired of that I would dig up the ant lions and see which ones were the biggest. The sarlacc in Star Wars always reminds me of ant lions, except it had tentacles.
Well, I attended Lompoc in 1973. I was in the class of '74, but graduated early by taking additional classes at night at Allan Hancock Jr. College. Looks like I missed him by a year.
not yet. still have a renter in there. gradually moving my stuff in, and surveying for greenhouse, aquaponics, wood shop, and chicken pens. Want to get the new pens built before I move the chickens, so I have 2 houses right now, will be moving gradually. If the renter doesn't find a place soon, may keep her as a roomie, new place is big enough.
LOL! Got a good price on the new place, and it might even come with a woman!
Greetings from the center of Tucson and welcome to our thread! I'll bet you'll get a couple roos in your batch of chicks, but if you don't you can always find good roosters needing homes here on the AZ thread.
I just love this forum and the sharing of experience, knowledge and information. Almost every day I learn something interesting and new and I also love sharing things that I have learned. An odd happenstance this morning really highlights the extent of the influence of this shared information. I recently discovered that our subscriptions to old threads did not migrate to the new BYC platform during the transition a couple years ago (I don't know why it took until now to realize this). Anyway, I checked threads I started and found that a couple weeks ago a faculty member in Argentina posted in my old tick thread that he wanted to use my pics of poultry ticks in an atlas of parasitology that they were writing as a teaching tool. I think it's cool!
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Ty. BTW did you get moved yet?
