While Ches and I (and several of the chickens) were really hoping to make Employee of the Month for May, it quickly became apparent that this was not in the cards for us. The cicadas had simply out-shined us.
While our farm is in Pittsboro, our chickens live in our yard in northern Guilford county. It turns out that the line where the 17 year cicadas emerge falls somewhere in between the two areas. At home, there are cicadas in every spider web, dozens --probably hundreds--of cicadas dripping from every tree. And at Iron Fish Farms/Ayrshire, we have not seen a single cicada. According to this cicada map, we fall right on the northern line of the cicada emergence, which then stretches all the way to Rhode Island.
These 17 year cicadas are a subset of cicada called the Magicicada, which emerge every 13-17 years. Each group is called a Brood, and our brood is on the 17 year cycle. It will not be seen again until 2027.
A theory for why cicadas only emerge after the passage of a certain number of years is that this was a survival adaptation called predator saturation. That is, even though the cicadas are easy prey, there are just too many of them for predators to eat them all.
The chickens have done their part to challenge this philosophy. They have quickly evolved the brood amongst whom only a handful of chickens had the gumption to eat a worm, and now swallow 2-3 inch long cicadas in about two seconds. Ironically, the windfall of insect protein has caused many of the chickens to lose their taste for worms. I recently watch a worm wriggle the long way out of the chicken coop, clearly spotted by several of the chickens. Our chicks are only about 3 months old. In their world, we will always have an endless supply of cicadas. Why waste time on worms? Sadly, the cicada mating season will be over by the end of June, and our chickens and their decedents will have a 16 year cicada drought to endure before we should see this many emerge again.
No comments:
Post a Comment