chickens as mousers

[Mac in Wisco]

I see ours eat mice and small rats all of the time. One day I was walking through the layer barn and noticed something white on the floor, like a small sheet of paper. I found that it was a large rat pelt, leather side up. I don't know how they did it, but it was almost a perfect rat pelt as if I had skinned and fleshed it with a knife.

 

[mangled]

My girls are great mousers. When we started getting mice in the farm truck we keep to haul firewood, we started parking it up by the runs, and we've gone 3 seasons with no mice in the truck.

Mine will eat anything that doesn't try to eat them. I've seen them eat snakes, they fight over toads, baby birds ( I take the baby birds from them, it distresses me ), salamanders, whatever crosses their paths.

My husband calls them "opportune-ivores". If you give them the opportunity, they'll eat it.

Em