I raise a few chickens for eggs. I just have a dozen hens. I supplement their commercial feed with table scraps and things I leave too long in the refrigerator. Chiles are always included. I was supprised to find they like chiles, but I don't think birds have the same reaction to capsicum that mamals do. I use the chickens like most people use the garbage disposal in the sink. They will eat anything, and especially love meat which is always highly spiced at my house. I also use the hens as insect sentinels. My latest endeavour in raised beds, this year I located the beds inside the chicken run. I built 1-meter diameter beds using lawn edging, filled it with topsoil and poultry manure. After planting the beds I ringed them with welded wire cages. The cage is larger than the bed by a little more than the length of a hens neck, so they can't peck the plants. The holes in the wire are just large enough to reach your hand through. The hens have created a kill zone around the beds. No flying or crawling pest can get past them. The squirrels are afraid of the hens and other birds stay away too. The squirrels don't eat the chiles, they just dig them up. The birds, Cardinals especially, love to eat the small red chiles like Tabasco or Thai .chiles. ----- Original Message ----- From: Brent Leatherman <brent@mail.feist.com> To: Scott Northup <northups@ohsu.edu>; <Chile-Heads@globalgarden.com> Sent: Saturday, May 08, 1999 2:03 PM Subject: Re: [CH] Fotified pets... > >Do any of you gonzo's feed chiles (or chile byproducts) to yer non-human > critters?? > >Inquiring minds wanna know... > >You all behave- > >-S- > > > > Tried to use pickled Jalapenos to teach the dawgs not to beg from the > table. Utter failure - they *liked* 'em...;>) > B > ************************************************************************* > Zero Tolerance: the politically correct term for zero thought, zero common > sense, zero brains. > > > > >