Spiders, Beetles, Wasps and Ants Oh My!

If you have an aversion to bugs and spiders I'd recommend skipping today's graphic post. No, seriously. It is gross, but who else can I talk to about it? I'll get it out of the way once, and hopefully not mention it again, unless I get bitten by something more interesting. 

A chicken farm, because of its size, can be a host to a lot more creatures than just chickens. It is home to a plethera of insects, ants, arachnids and other creepy crawlies. Over the last two weeks I have had an oddly increase interaction with these pests. 

First there was the fire ant bite on my arm. I had to carry some old feed trays to the dumpster and since they tend to have left over chicken food on them when we pick them up ants found them and moved in. We stack up these paper trays after the first week or so of the flock, and when the dumpster is filled, we have to store the rest at the front end of the houses. They are like little sky scrappers for ants. I didn't notice the ants had moved in, and as I was carrying the stacks of trays to the truck from the chicken house an ant decided he didn't like the idea of moving. I mean, can you blame him. He had probably lived near this chicken house his whole short life and now some giant guy comes along and decides to move his food source away while he was in it. I would totally be upset if that happened to me. Alas, even though I can relate to his plight, he stung me, it caused great pain, and, well, he will be missed. 

The next day that I worked I went about the job of trying to beat back the beetle population. Litter beetles multiply at a quick pace in a chicken house. Farmers do what they can to kill them with pesticides, but there is no way to kill them all in houses that are so large. We use powders, and liquid sprays, but beetles are resilient and hide well in the wooden walls, behind the curtains, outside the houses, up in the roof, and by digging down into the dirt below the litter. The first few days I can see lots of dead beetles piling up in certain locations, like the front doors to the houses. At night the beetles come out looking for food and that is when they eat the pine shavings on the floorwhich have been treated. Millions of them die in the first few days, but there are still many that don't. 

[caption id="attachment_84" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Feed and water lines still raised up"][/caption]

A few days later when I was working in the houses, doing my usual set up, I could still see them crawling around on the floors, cielings, wires and food bowls. It is not as bad, but it is still enough to notice them. And while I am working I am standing still on that infested floor, sometimes I am kneeling on it. Beetles take this opportunity to come and explore my boots, and my legs. That explains the three bites around my ankles I believe.  Also, as I am dropping down the controls and sensors that get wrapped around the food bowls prior to the catch crews coming in to take out the chickens, beetles fall out of the food bowls and land on my head and face as I do this. Of course they don't want to be in the open like that so they look for places to hide. Typically that would be under my shirt, or under my hat. I assume that is where the bite on the back of my head and the one on my chest came from. 

[caption id="attachment_85" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Looking at the side of house from the front"][/caption]

This week I also started the process of mowing the grass. It takes several days for me to cut it all. The worst part is mowing near the houses. That one pass that goes right along the side of the house, where you are high up on the tractor with your head right there by the overhangs is trecherous. This is where the wasps live. Some are in nests that hang down, and others have thought it out a little better and built their nests inside the house through the cracks in the overhangs. I carry a can of wasp and hornet spray with me as I mow. So far I have been able to see the nests, and the lines of wasps trying to get into the house before it was too late. I usually finish mowing the area, and then go back and spray. In three years here I have only been stung twice. Could have been worse. 

The last creepy crawlie I want to mention is the spiders. Lots and lots of spiders live here. The biggest spider I have to deal with is the black and yellow garden spider. They are about four inches long and make huge webs, but luckily they stay on the outside walls, and not inside the houses. The good thing about these is that they make these huge webs, and then stick their giant bodies right in the center of it. That makes them easy to see, and easy to avoid. I also have seen several black widow spiders in my control rooms. Since I saw the first one, I always move things carefully in there now to make sure I don't reach under a bucket only to have my finger bitten. So far no bites from any of these. The control rooms have lots of brown spiders that make webs everywhere. Not the brown recluse, just some random brown spider. These have just gotten so out of control that if you walk into the control rooms at night you can just watch hundreds of baby spiders dropping down from the ceiling. What can I do, I have to go in. I get baby spiders all over me as I go about my business. Luckily, the bites from them are not too bad. The webs all over my face and hair is what annoys me most about these spiders. Finally, inside the houses my biggest spider problem is the webs. They hang everywhere and no matter how many times I knock them down they build them right back up again. They go from wire to wire, and from roof to floor in places. It is an arachniphobes nightmare in there. 

OK, those who closed their eyes during this blog post can now open their eyes and start reading again. Thanks for allowing me to rant about insects. If you need something to read to clear your mind of that you could read the story about Mornings with T. It always makes me smile.