Oh, I agree. It was my plan to cook them (outdoors) before feeding them to the chickens.
That said, I will say that, in my experience, while deer are disgustingly swarming with ticks and other parasites, coyotes seem to have many fleas, and mice can also have tons of small ticks, the squirrels...
Three years more later, I want to thank everyone for addressing my exact question, which I come at from a different perspective. I have fruit trees and cute red squirrels with fluffy tails (Eastern fox squirrels, I believe). They don't cause trouble burrowing and are pretty funny creatures...
