Greetings all,
My first post here; quite a nice site you have
I have a small farm in upstate NY where we produce 100% natural, organic, no grain, no chemical beef/goat. One difficulty with using no chemicals is that flies can be pretty bad during the summer. There are clever ways that some people have come up with for reducing flies like rotating chickens in paddocks where the cows were 3 or 4 days before; I started doing this but it takes time and then you have dozens of eggs a day to sell (hard to do up here - EVERYONE sells eggs).
Since I really enjoy wild birds, I've been thinking about building some birdhouses to encourage the kind of birds which would impact the cattle fly populations (there are several types - face, black, etc...). Of course, long term I'm working on planting trees and leaving strips of vegetation to encourage birds to stay. However, it might be faster to put up 10-20 (more?) bird houses.
Does anyone have any information about how do this? What kind of birds would I want to encourage? How long does it take for them to take up residency? ;-)
Thanks much for any info,
JR
Oh, by the way, I've also been trying to learn about building bat houses.
My first post here; quite a nice site you have
I have a small farm in upstate NY where we produce 100% natural, organic, no grain, no chemical beef/goat. One difficulty with using no chemicals is that flies can be pretty bad during the summer. There are clever ways that some people have come up with for reducing flies like rotating chickens in paddocks where the cows were 3 or 4 days before; I started doing this but it takes time and then you have dozens of eggs a day to sell (hard to do up here - EVERYONE sells eggs).
Since I really enjoy wild birds, I've been thinking about building some birdhouses to encourage the kind of birds which would impact the cattle fly populations (there are several types - face, black, etc...). Of course, long term I'm working on planting trees and leaving strips of vegetation to encourage birds to stay. However, it might be faster to put up 10-20 (more?) bird houses.
Does anyone have any information about how do this? What kind of birds would I want to encourage? How long does it take for them to take up residency? ;-)
Thanks much for any info,
JR
Oh, by the way, I've also been trying to learn about building bat houses.