they live all over the place here, including in/on trees, so the coops are especially vulnerable when I park them under trees (but then the shade is nice, so it's all a compromise). They move fast too, so there was one running across the keyboard earlier, which obviously had hitched a lift on me. I think they're unavoidable in many environments, which is why the ease with which a coop can be rid of them is important.
is there a downside to the use of sulfur?
Smells like brimstone
I don't close the coop door. With the tribes in Catalonia I used to feed them their supper about an hour or so before roost time, mainly to get them out of the trees. Rather than climb the ramp, they jumped onto the perch bars outside and waited for the senior rooster to inspect the coop and then sort of filed in by order of seniority.
We get textile, paper and plastic feed bags here. The plasic ones get used for the rubbish and get sent off to the recycling. I've used the paper bags as floor liners in the coop and the textile ones for cleaning rags.
I've got ants by the parsnips on my plot. I'll try cinnamon on them and see if they move somewhere else.
We had a bit of rain here after weeks of dry weather. It wasn't enough to do much for the land but it's brought the temperature down a few degees. 18C here this evening which is much more to my liking.
