Orchard pest control with chickens

Chickens can be very destructive in the garden, but if you're more careful, you can take advantage of their busy feet and beaks to improve your garden ecosystem.  A timely application of chickens to the orchard can kill pest insects without chemicals. 

Plum curculio, codling moth, and oriental fruit moth are all orchard pests that have been successfully controlled with chickens.   These insects overwinter in debris under your fruit trees, emerging as adults between the time peaches bloom and apples reach the pink stage (for plum curculio and oriental fruit moth) and when the last petals fall from the apple blossoms (for codling moth).  If you allow chickens to scratch around under your fruit trees in early spring before the adult insects emerge, your flock will eat a large number of the overwintering insects and cut back on damage to your fruit trees.

If you've waited too long and the adult insects have already emerged, you can still get some benefit from chickens in the orchard.  Plum curculio is a type of small beetle that tends to be slow-moving on chilly mornings.  Head into the orchard and jar the trunks of your trees several times soon after dawn and the beetles should fall to the ground and into your hungry chicken beaks.

Another useful time to let chickens into your orchard occurs as fruits begin to drop from the tree.  While the good fruits are still hanging on the branches but pest-ridden fruits are falling to the ground, you can turn chickens (or other livestock) into the orchard to clean up dropped fruits and lower insect pressure for next year.  It's also handy to let your chickens eat any rotten fruits after you've harvested, since these fallen fruits sometimes harbor diseases as well as pests.

You won't want to run your chickens in the orchard 365 days a year since the flock might overdo their scratching and will likely overfertilize your trees.  I located our outdoor brooder close to our oldest peach tree so that our first batch of broilers can scratch through the mulch, figuring that these three week old birds will work the ground up in the two weeks left before they get moved to the main coop.  If all goes as planned, I'll let our second batch of broilers visit our next biggest peach tree for a few weeks as well.  We've had serious problems with oriental fruit moths in the past and are hopeful that chicken feet will mitigate some of the damage.