Training chicken to eat flies...hopefully!

[WhisperingOaks]

After searching the Internet for how to train chickens to eat flies all I came up with was training chickens to fly or raising soldier flies for maggots. I have no interest in encouraging my chickens to fly out of my yard nor do I relish the idea of creating maggots on purpose.
I put the stinky traps in the corner of their run on the outside and then added sticky traps above those. The chickens showed no interest at all in the flies stuck to the sticky traps. Today I pressed mealworms into the sticky traps and will continue to do so until the chickens become accustomed to eating the flies.

If anyone else has done this or has any suggestions please send them my way.

 

[redsoxs]

I remember a post from years back where a guy claimed he put an electrified screen over the inside of his chicken coop window. He said the chickens quickly got used to eating the flys that got zapped on the screen and fell to the floor.

 

[bantamrooster]

Id be afraid youre gonna end up with sticky traps stuck to you chickens.

 

[WhisperingOaks]

The sticky traps are on the outside of the pen. The chickens don't have direct access to put themselves up against it. But they can pack at it through the wires.

 

[centrarchid]

Look into ways of trapping flies in water where chickens can then peck them off surface. Then you can concentrate on attracting flies to trap.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I wasn't sure if chickens would even eat flies but one of mine plucked one out of midair today and happily ate it! The others showed no interest. So maybe it's something they have to want to do, instead of being trained to do?

Maybe you can start with some dead flies that aren't stuck on sticky paper, see if they'll even eat those, and if they're interested, then maybe they'll learn to go for the ones on the traps.

 

[Teila]

Hi there WhisperingOaks

Like rosemarythyme, my gals show no interest whatsoever in catching and eating flies.

My mumma hens use flies as a training aid for the chicks and teach them how to catch them but once they have grown up, not interested.

 

[centrarchid]

Generally not worth effort because too evasive. Mine will hawk craneflies and larger June beetles when they are abundant but will not otherwise pursue the craneflies.

 

[WhisperingOaks]

I'm calling this a success- I have settled on using the stinky traps to lure the flies in and then sticky paper to hold the flies still for the chickens to eat. And eat they are! You can see where the paper is too high to reach based on the number of flies stuck to it ( none on the bottom lots on the top). When a new fly gets stuck and starts buzzing the girls all run over to eat it!

Almost free protein and less flies- how can you beat that?!

 

[centrarchid]

Why not rotate trap 90 degrees?