One Tree swallow bird pair eats 8000 blood sucking flies per day off your livestock herd. Building and placing tree swallow houses across your pastures gives you natural fly eating predators.
2 months ago (start of spring) we already had flies everywhere here in Virginia, since the beginning of April we have installed 29 birdhouses and from what I can tell all of them except for maybe 5 have had tree swallows move in and the flies are perishing. I hope this continues 🤞. I love watching these birds above the cattle and all around working together. Thanks for this video!
I had been wondering about those swallows. Thank you Sir!! Thank you Mrs. Judy for great filming and keeping Mr. Judy prompt with the things we needed to know 🤣🤣. My mama loves Blue Birds I’m gonna build her some boxes with y’all’s specs so I know they will use them. She’s in a neighborhood. Thank y’all so much!!!!
Awesome, turning bad flies into precious fertilizer if one swallow eats half as many flies as you said it does how many times it poops and spreads high dollar fertilizer along that pasture just adds to the green grass of next year. Great idea. Thank you
That is got to be one of my favorite RU-vid videos. I really do love your cattle and sheep videos, but I do birdhouses also. Great design, great implementation, and great instruction. Thank you for sharing, Jimmy
Sorry to be so off topic but does any of you know a trick to log back into an instagram account?? I somehow forgot the password. I love any tips you can offer me.
@Kyng Adrian I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site thru google and im waiting for the hacking stuff now. I see it takes a while so I will get back to you later with my results.
This would be a great side business for a farm kid. Build the houses, sell them to local ranchers, but then also sell the poles, and also sell the service to mount them in the pastures, and THEN sell the maintenance contract to clean and disinfect them every spring. This is a great business that a precocious 10-12 year old farm girl or boy could do easily. I'm looking at YOU Jonah from Justin Rhodes farm!!!
Greg going to make a bunch of these thanks for your detailed information on this wish I see this video before I seen you I would have gotten some lumber .
Narelle Williams You don’t want to use cedar for bedding with hunting dogs though because the longer term exposure to cedar it will decrease the dog’s scenting ability.
Hi Greg. I’ve put up tree swallow/blue bird houses all over the property and they worked fine for years. Then I started rotating cattle from farm to farm and turning the electric fences off on the places that had no cattle (rotating fence chargers). The bears started coming into the pastures and ripping the tops off the bird houses and eating the birds at night when the electric fence was off (spring/summer). I had to put electricity on all the fences all the time to protect the birds.
I don't live on a farm...but this bird house is amazing! a tree swallow flew by the other day to check out one of my bird houses and gosh! look at how many bird houses he's got! he could get a fortune out of that many, 350??? wow!
Well, every video you put out, you’re teaching us something. I bet a garden sprayer would work good for cleaning them out. I guess you don’t rinse them after the bleach mixture is sprayed? Happy little sparrows at Green Pasture Farms. You should write a children’s book.
I put 9 of these together yesterday. I measured the first hole on the first one. Then used it as my template for all the other holes. Worked like a charm. :)
Was wondering....why not allow space for a vent on the side without the swing hinge also to allow for more ventilation and also have your bottoms come out even with one another? GREAT tutorial, Mr. Judy, and as always, I love your content!
thats really easy , attach the box to a 2x2 then hose clamp the 2x2 to the steel post , thats the best, to mount on a steel post as rats and squirrels cannot get at box .
@@ProtectSwallows Do you have dimensions on the "steel post"? And where to get them? I'm assuming it'd have to be a smooth, round, large-enough-diameter steel post in order to inhibit squirrels from climbing... e.g. you're not referring to a steel T-post
I know in Kentucky we had a group who would use the same style boxes for both swallows and the eastern Blue birds. They would use some fishing line out front because the sparrows didn’t like the line up front.
@@gregjudyregenerativerancher Just a clarification on this distance because I thought you said something like 20-30 feet in one of your vids. Can you confirm you mean 100 feet? Thanks. Built my first one this weekend. Have lumber for a few more, will get them done and up in time for this season.
Quick question on wood dimension size: Are they true measurements or are your 1x6 and 1x4 acutally 3/4 x 5 1/2 and 3/4 x 3 1/2? Sometimes commercial milled cedar is smaller than home milled lumber.
Greg, Not sure how you’d do the equation to compare tree shallow to chicken litter, but the tree shallows’ litter is probably a good source of free manure. So, this would be an extra benefit to eating flies.
Will barn swallows live in these types of houses? Our farm is in the migratory area for tree swallows (SE North Carolina), but we should have barn swallows for our areas.
Would like to see what you think are the best place to mount these as in height and location. Which direction to face the house? Spacing between houses?
My understanding is they birds prefer them free standing, in the field. A tree also keeps growing so the 6-8 foot range will be surpassed in a few years
@@4philippthe birdhouse attached to a tree does not move up as it grows. What does happen, if tight against the bark, is that the tree will attempt to grow around the house. Trees grow in diameter and height from the top and not from the bottom.
Eastern red cedar is used to make cedar shavings which is bad to use as bedding for birds due to it causing respiratory infections. Wonder how bad it is to use to make bird house with.
I need to build these houses because the tree swallow take over the blue bird houses. The swallows throw out the eggs or the baby blue birds. So the swallows are getting other houses.
a 7/8 oval is ideal for Violet Green swallows and keeps out all House sparrows . Tree swallows will not fit into a 7/8 oval but will fit into a 15/16 oval , but the 15/16 will not keep all house sparrows out but does keep most out , needs to be a tight fit 15/16 made with a forstner drill bit .
Hello Greg, I will be re locating all my boxes to the center of my fields, my fence rows have trees. How do you protect your poles/boxes from cattle rubbing up? I was thinking dummy electrical wire? I mig so they will only be around each box for a day.
If I asked a local lumber mill to cut us some cedar, would we want to ask for 5/4 X 4” (and 5/4 X 6”) boards and plane it ourselves to 1” lumber or should we ask for 4/4, or 1”, boards and put them together as rough sawn lumber? Thank you.
Lovely! Two requests: please show how you set up the poles so the dattle don't tip them over. Secondly, please do some log milling vids. I love Jo Sal Jo Won' youtube Woodmizer LT15 milling, drying etc videos. Again thanks to Jan and to you!
If it rains, and the rain is coming in from the south or southwest where the hole is facing, there's no way the water can drain out if there's water sealant and air holes that Greg demonstrated. Water doesn't have a place to go; it'll soak up in the nest which isn't good for the baby birds. No such thing as a dumb question!
Rich Ard Lee I know cedar doesn’t need it. If I was to seal it it would be for looks only. When I asked the question I was wondering if by sealing it would it hurt it in any way like the smell for example keep the birds from using it. I have made a few and not going to seal them.
FWIW I've been using 4" and 6" PVC pipe for birdhouses for years with successful fledging of bluebirds, chickadees, and titmice. I just made sure to make groves or scratches in the PVC under the hole on the inside so they can exit easily.
I have problems with red wasps building nests in my bluebird boxes, the bluebirds wont build a nest if the wasp is in there, the wasp nests range in the size from a dime on up, most are small. I get about 50% bird nesting because of this. Will the bleach help with this or should I use an insecticide?
@@gregjudyregenerativerancher I build my boxes very similar to yours, I think the wasp enter the vent gap much like honey bees do on a hive box, I'm gonna put some screen door cloth over the gap like flap to discourage entry
Question: on the treeswallowprojects.com/buildbox.html they say the bottom needs to be 5x5 at the smallest. it look like 4x4 can work but more babies won't make it. Have you notice when you clean the nest any dead birds? Not to say that yours don't work i just don't want to build some then find not it too small. It probably doesn't matter if your's are doing so well.
I think I'll be using this design to add some swallows here. Mosquitoes here are relentless, and I've read that swallows are one of the best birds for eating them. I can handle most insects, but mosquitoes... they don't do anything but cause suffering and disease to other animals. I can only imagine how much lower the insect populations were back before we ruined the birds' natural habitats. It's not too late to reverse that trend.
Greg Judy Regenerative Rancher we were told that if we use it for 2-3 years then we will see a decrease in flys and idk if we have but do you suggest that we still use it and buy it or what? Is it really killing the soil?
@@bigwhane8603 it not so much killing the soil as it's stunting soil life. You will never have a vigorous worm or dung beetle population until you switch from "preventative" pour ons to spot treating.
@@bigwhane8603 Besides the effects on soil life premixes are mostly salt, and it's an expensive way to buy salt. You could probably save some money mixing your own or switching to free choice minerals.
1. Base is too small for tree swallows. 23 sq in. is too small. Minimum is 25, best is 30. 2. No cross ventilation. You need slots on both sides. Those two holes on the side are of no benefit. The holes in the bottom are not for bird excrement. It is for rain to drip out. 3. Two holes on front are far better because nestlings hog the hole depriving other nestlings of food. 4. No ladder to help them get out. Dangerous. Tree swallows have wide wings. They need that ladder or may well get stuck and die. 5. No discussion of predator guard which should be a 5 foot cylinder, not two feet. Snakes get by 2 feet. 6. Treeswallowprojects.com is the authority on proper tree swallow houses. And, I highly recommend my Miller guard, a 5 foot duct pipe from Lowes or Home Depot. Stay away from commonly recommended 2 foot duct. Does not stop rat snakes.
