don't chickens eat flies??

[YolandaT]

Hi! Just moved my 7week old girls outside today - tomorrow will be their first day in their coop but today I just put their cage (a 3x4 dog pen) under a tree. Their pen now has flies are swarming around, on the small amount of poop that was on the cage bottom. My girls are just pecking at the grass I put in their cage and not the flies at all.

This worries me because I thought that chickens ate bugs?? Will they start figuring out they can eat the flies, or are flies a problem in coops? I really thought that bugs weren't a problem in coops/runs because the chickens ate them.

Please advise!! Oh we newbies have SO much to learn!!

Thanks!~

 

[gryeyes]

Well, I had high hopes when I observed chicks in the brooder LEAP after the occasional fly, but once they were outside full time, they didn't seem to be at all interested in them.

Now and then, I'll see a chicken chase a fly, but I think they are much more "downward focused" - pecking at bugs on the ground and other goodies - than searching out flies. They do hunt for, catch and eat spiders and earwigs on the inside walls and corners of the coop, though.

I don't see many flies IN the coop. But they sure don't go after them out in the run or yard.

 

[nelgkel]

they will eat the flies, just not at the same rate that the flies reproduce! After all the rain and the coop bedding got wet we had hundreds of flies! We put out the gallon jug outside the coop with the weird top on it and some attractant...that helped, we put DE in the coop from the get go..., we also got a spray Max Force Spot bait? and sprayed it around run and outside of coop...HUGE HUGE help that stuff was!! AM keeping that on hand...

Welcome to BYC...

you will find LOTS of info and great people here!

 

[speckledhen]

Mine never eat flies. Never.

 

[Telamon]

mine eats flies, and none of them ever died... yet...

 

[dawg53]

I've never seen mine eat a fly neither, and I've had a zillion of them here until recently when I sprayed. However we've had alot of yellow flies come out and bite the heck out of my elbows,but when they get around one of my hens, they're dead meat, they snatch them up real quick! And I love it!

 

[twentynine]

I don't sit and watch them all day, but I don't think mine eat to many if any flies.

 

[Rennie]

My roo eats flies if he sees them .. Like others said though they mostly just look at the floor for food ..

 

[Glamorgan]

My hen in the picture catches flies out of the air and eats them, but my other chickens don't.

 

[MammaMoose]

I haven't seen my girls eat flies, but I have one that chases, catches and eats wasps. I'm always afraid she'll get stung, but she catches it, throws it to the ground, pecks the heck outta it and then eats it. I've seen them catch millers, but they won't touch ants. I love to watch them chase after flying bugs. They are so funny tracking them and running after them.