I've had similar thoughts: and add extra calories in fall/winter when forage isn't available. They know when the ants start turning up (had a swarm of flying ants last fall: they went bonkers for those) and in spring, tear up much of the ant hill. As more insects wake up, they eat much less of the ants (also depends upon the type of ant: they don't like carpenter ants). They also spend more time digging through the horse manure in the paddock below us in late winter/early spring on warmer days: chance of bugs. In high summer, I still provide a little bit of scratch mix to get them started in the cool morning air and have pellets available to them....For the most part, they ignore the pellets and forage all summer. so far, no snakes or ground squirrels, but a few mice, lots of grasshoppers (some pushing locust sized)and whatever else catches their fancy. I haven't seen them going for mosquitoes, but those are so fast and come out at bed time, that I don't think they've tried them. I did pick up (on clearance) a rechargeable mosquito zapper to try this summer: "crispy fried bug snacks". Testing will probably start may/june.
for both of us, as I also worry. I hope the electric fencing and coop itself is just hard enough to get into to be discouraging, or at least buy time for me to arrive armed with a frying pan and spoon noisemaker. Hmmm, do you have pepper spray? I think it's illegal to have in New York, but I'm not sure.
hives for the honey, and get stung all around their face, but persevere because of the reward.)
Bait wire with peanut butter this way they will get the shock on their nose or mouth.
