Can you teach chickens mice=food ???

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

Ok, I recognized that I had a mouse issue in my yard a while ago. At first I had left it to the ladies to handle until I realized that they were ignoring heir little 'friends'. I even saw them eating out of the same feeder at the same time once!

So after some trial and error I have caught not the three or so I suspected; I have caught SEVEN. And their favorite places are inside the runs beneath the coops. Which is where my girls hang out!

How do I teach the hens that it is better to eat their little 'buddies' as apposed to letting them roam??? I don't mind setting traps every so often but it would be nice to have a little built in control. Maybe make the mice think twice about going for the girl's food.

 

[vannaHaines]

Are wild mice even healthy pickings? I'd worry about disease and if they got into rodent poison from another neighbor....

 

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

People around here don't use poisens for the most part. There are too many other animals that could get into it and just about every neighbor has dogs at a minimum. Then there are the birds and a fair few of those are protected. So poisen isn't much of a worry. These are just fat field mice that decided my yard was nirvana.

 

[sleepysdutch]

My chickens are pretty natural mousers, and will attack, kill and eat any mouse they are fast enough to catch. So far they haven't gotten anything from the mice.

I suppose if you wanted to train them you'd go to the feed/pet store and pick up a few pinkies and fuzzies and let the chickens have at them.

 

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

My chickens are pretty natural mousers, and will attack, kill and eat any mouse they are fast enough to catch. So far they haven't gotten anything from the mice. 

I suppose if you wanted to train them you'd go to the feed/pet store and pick up a few pinkies and fuzzies and let the chickens have at them.

That sounds like a good idea! I will check out the stores tomorrow!

 

[bobbi-j]

I had a mouse in the chicken feeder once (round, hanging tube-type) so I got one of the barn cats and showed her the mouse. She caught the mouse, and was instantly attacked by 4 chickens trying to get the mouse from her. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen - cat running around the coop trying to get away from those crazy birds!

The cat finally decided that it would be best to drop the mouse and exit the coop.

 

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

Sounds hilarious!

 

[Mattemma]

I think they will eat them IF they can catch them. I saw mine fighting over a frog one time.It was like they were passing a footbal around.They just didn't get tired of stealing it from each other and running.

 

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

I wanted to try that, catch and feed, but the little buggers are so soft pawed they don't set off snap traps. Between that and the sun melting the bait off I have had zero luck with those. And I don't want to feed the girls mice I pulled off a sticky trap.

 

[catsbully]

Since my hens seem to think its great fun to chase the cat (boy was she surprised when the table quickly turned on her hunting party!) I can only hope they would view mice as a great meal!...although they dont look twice at a small chipmunk...maybe I feed them too much?