eating lizards

[i'mclucked]

My BO's turned 18 wks. today. They have been freeranging on my 10 acres for exactly two months. Usually when I come home from work , the girls come running to my truck. Today they didn't come running, to greet me home. Whenever i want my girls to come home, I yell"CHICK CHICK" and they come running ! My girls spend 12hrs. a day free ranging . They didn't respond to my calls. I finally found them,. I watched one of the four kill&eat a bluebelly lizard, six inch lizard, swallowed it hole. Are my girls going wild?

 

[Imp]

from Washington

Chickens will eat lizards, frogs, toads, snakes etc.
Perfectly normal

Imp

 

[Chicky Tocks]

Eww

My girls were out the other day and I caught them snacking on tiny frogs. Every year we get an abundance of these itty bitty froggies and this year is the first that I've let my girls range in the yard. For me that's gross. I am concerned about having frog flavored eggs.

 

[i'mclucked]

Thanks for replying to my post! I'm concerned that my girls are going wild. Tomorrow I will punish them by , not letting them freerange. Am I giving them too much rope?

 

[Wifezilla]

Why in the world would you deprive the chickens of FREE PROTEIN?!?!?!

Plus they will have no clue why they aren't being let out. They will just be confused.

 

[cmom]

There is a thread where a member's chick tried to eat a big cockroach. Apparently it got stuck and the member pulled it out of the chicks mouth. My birds eat about everything. They found a nest of carpenter ants and had a feast.

 

[GrannySue]

My girls love ants. If I don't pick figs just as they ripen, the ants move onto the figs. So I pick the fig anyway and throw it to the chickens.

 

[threehorses]

I've seen my girls go absolutely BONKERS over snakes! Seriously - when they get one, they'll run around like 'OMG OMG I HAVE IT I HAVE IT NOW - WHERE do I go??? You will NOT get my snake. OMG!!!" etc.

It's hysterical.

 

[fowltemptress]

They're not going wild. They just didn't respond to your calls because they were doing something important. Eating a lizard is a big deal, you can't interrupt that! It's just something chickens do, and depriving them of free ranging isn't going to change it.

 

[edb]

Mine were fighting over a frog the size of a golf ball, I never saw the outcome.